CERN
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The European Organization for Nuclear Research (French: Centre Européenne pour la Recherche Nucléaire), known as CERN, is the world's largest particle physics laboratory, situated in the northwest suburbs of Geneva on the Franco-Swiss border. The organization has twenty European member states, and is currently the workplace of approximately 2600 full-time employees, as well as some 7931 scientists and engineers (representing 500 universities and 80 nationalities).
CERN's main function is to provide the particle accelerators and other infrastructure needed for high-energy physics research. Numerous experiments have been constructed at CERN by international collaborations to make use of them. The main site at Meyrin also has a large computer centre containing very powerful data processing facilities primarily for experimental data analysis, and because of the need to make them available to researchers elsewhere, has historically been (and continues to be) a major wide area networking hub.
As an international facility, the CERN sites are not officially under Swiss nor French jurisdiction. Member states' contributions to CERN for the year 2008 totalled CHF 1 billion (approximately €664 million, US$ 1 billion).
CERN member states
CERN's main site, as seen from Switzerland looking towards France.
The smaller accelerators are located on the main Meyrin site (also known as the West Area), which was originally built in Switzerland alongside the French border, but has been extended to span the border since 1965. The French side is under Swiss jurisdiction and so there is no obvious border within the site, apart from a line of marker stones. There are six entrances to the Meyrin site:
The SPS and LEP/LHC tunnels are located underground almost entirely outside the main site, and are mostly buried under French farmland and invisible from the surface. However they have surface sites at various points around them, either as the location of buildings associated with experiments or other facilities needed to operate the colliders such as cryogenic plants and access shafts. The experiments themselves are located at the same underground level as the tunnels at these sites.
Three of these experimental sites are in France, with ATLAS in Switzerland, although some of the ancillary cryogenic and access sites are in Switzerland. The largest of the experimental sites is the Prévessin site, also known as the North Area, which is the target station for non-collider experiments on the SPS accelerator. Other sites are the ones which were used for the UA1, UA2 and the LEP experiments (the latter which will be used for LHC experiments).
Outside of the LEP and LHC experiments, most are officially named and numbered after the site where they were located. For example, NA32 was an experiment looking at the production of charmed particles and located at the Prévessin (North Area) site while WA22 used the BEBC bubble chamber at the Meyrin (West Area) site to examine neutrino interactions. The UA1 and UA2 experiments were considered to be in the Underground Area, i.e. situated underground at sites on the SPS accelerator.
Member States of CERN Founding members Members who joined CERN later
The original CERN signatories were:
Belgium
Denmark
Germany (then West Germany)
France
Greece
Italy
Norway
Sweden
Switzerland
Netherlands
United Kingdom
Yugoslavia
Since then:
Austria joined in 1959
Yugoslavia left in 1961
Spain joined in 1961, left in 1969, rejoined in 1983
Portugal joined in 1985
Finland joined in 1991
Poland joined in 1991
Hungary joined in 1992
Czech Republic joined in 1993
Slovakia joined in 1993
Bulgaria joined in 1999
There are currently twenty member countries.
Eight additional international organizations or countries have "observer status":
European Commission
India
Israel
Japan
Russia
Turkey
UNESCO
United States
CERN Globe of Science and Innovation
Facilities at CERN open to the public include:
This guide is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia.
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