CERN CELEBRATES ITS 70TH ANNIVERSARY
The European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN, is celebrating its 70th anniversary. The jubilee is associated with the date of September 29 and was commemorated at the national level throughout the year by all member and associate member states of the organization. The celebrations culminated on Tuesday, October 1, 2024, in the Science Gateway premises at CERN with the participation of CERN Director General Fabiola Gianotti, Her Royal Highness Princess Astrid of Belgium, President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen and several European presidents. The Slovak Academy of Sciences was represented at the gala event by Pavol Stríženec from the Institute of Experimental Physics SAS and Martin Venhart, SAS Vice-President of the Scientific Section 1 from the Institute of Physics SAS, respected physicists who use the CERN infrastructure in their projects.
The CERN organization was established to build a top workplace for basic research in nuclear and particle physics in post-war Europe. Many scientific discoveries have been made thanks to CERN's infrastructure, several of which have been awarded the Nobel Prize. It is also the place where many technical inventions that are now part of our everyday life come from - for example the "World Wide Web" system or the touch screen.
As CERN Director General Prof. Fabiola Gianotti stated in her speech at the ceremony, CERN was founded in 1954 as an effort to address Europe's lagging behind in the field of basic research. CERN was created as a centre for the peaceful use of the atomic nucleus and elementary particles.
The Slovak Republic is a member state of four experiments at CERN: Atlas and Alice at the LHC and the NA62 and ISOLDE experiments. Scientists from the Institute of Experimental Physics SAS are involved in the Atlas and Alice projects, and a team of experimental nuclear physicists from the SAS Institute of Physics works on the ISOLDE project.
Currently, the upcoming CERN project is being discussed - the construction of a new FCC accelerator (Future Circular Collider) with a circumference of up to 100 km. "The new accelerator project opens up huge possibilities for many scientific fields. Thanks to it, there will undoubtedly be a huge development in technology of very strong magnets and many others. Given the dimensions of this project, the launch of the new accelerator is expected within a few decades," said SAS Vice-President Martin Venhart.
Edited by: Katarína Gáliková
Photo: TASR, Martin Venhart