Highlight of the Week

A Live Conference with CERN

On Wednesday 10th June, the Sixth Form physics students attended a live conference hosted by CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research. We were lucky enough to hear from Alex Brown and Giovanni Porcellana, who spoke about the CERN projects and accelerators.

As well as introducing us to CERN’s global importance in peaceful physics research and answering fundamental questions based on particle physics, we were introduced to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and the detectors used to observe which particles were produced after protons were forced to collide. It was great that Alex was able to talk about complicated ideas in a way that made it understandable and intriguing. After delving into the realm of quarks, leptons and force-carrying bosons, we discussed theoretical particles that haven’t been proven to exist – the Tachyon (the particle of time that could travel faster than the speed of light) and the Graviton (the force particle for gravity). We had the chance to ask questions as well as take part in lots of interesting discussions on so many things, including: Higgs bosons and Higgs fields, the precision of components inside the particle detectors and the future projects for CERN. Another aspect that inspired many of us was the links CERN has to humanitarian projects – they share their computing power during disasters, meaning the research and technology can have a huge positive impact. Overall, this was a highly interesting and informative talk that really opened up the doors to particle physics to us in an easy and accessible way. Holly P, Lower Sixth