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08/01/06

First thoughts of the LHC

At the CERN Scientific Policy Committee meeting held on June 18-19, 1979, the construction of LEP, the Large Electron-Positron collider, was on the agenda.

08/01/06

Higgs boson

The discovery of the Higgs boson provided insight into what gives elementary particles mass.

08/01/06

The United States and the LHC

The United States has contributed the energy and expertise of hundreds of scientists and engineers, and more than half a billion dollars to the construction of the LHC particle collider and two of its experiments at the European laboratory CERN.

08/01/06

LHC meets industry

Building the parts for the Large Hadron Collider has presented challenges but taught many lessons for both particle physics laboratories and their industry partners.

08/01/06

Fire-fighting foam

When the CERN safety team and I heard the loud rumbling 25 meters underground, we weren't concerned. With no warning, it would have been frightening, but the rush of water through pipes overhead presaged a thrilling event.

08/01/06

Computing grid is racing the clock

To deal with the computing demands of the LHC experiments, scientists have created the world's largest, most international distributed-computing system.

08/01/06

From swords to plowshares

Despite struggling through economic failure during the 1990s, Russia's devotion to scientific collaboration in high-energy physics has grown stronger.

08/01/06

Looking for leptons in all the right places

In a typical high school physics textbook, says scienceeducation specialist Beth Marchant, only the last chapter is devoted to all the developments since 1900–the stuff that physicists are actually working on today.