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Inside the LHC tunnel

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the world's largest particle physics laboratory

CERN Director General Robert Aymar (right) passes the baton to his successor Rolf Heuer at the close of today's CERN Council meeting.

CERN Council rings the changes

Geneva 12 December 2008. The CERN Council today thanked the Organization’s outgoing management, and welcomed in the new. It was an occasion to take stock of the achievements of the past five years and to look forward to the next.

» Read the press release

A view of sector 3-4

LHC to restart in 2009

Geneva, 5 December 2008. CERN today confirmed that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will restart in 2009. This news forms part of an updated report, published today, on the status of the LHC following a malfunction on 19 September.

» Read the press release

CERN inaugurates the LHC

Geneva, 21 October 2008. Swiss President Pascal Couchepin and French Prime Minister François Fillon were joined at CERN today by science ministers from CERN’s Member States and around the world to inaugurate the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest and most complex scientific instrument.

» Read the press release

A diagram showing the type of electrical connection in question

CERN releases analysis of LHC incident

Geneva, 16 October 2008. Investigations at CERN following a large helium leak into sector 3-4 of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) tunnel have confirmed that cause of the incident was a faulty electrical connection between two of the accelerator’s magnets. This resulted in mechanical damage and release of helium from the magnet cold mass into the tunnel.

» Read the press release

CERN openlab boosts the performance of LHC computing

The LHC Grid Fest, held last Friday at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, and at several sites around the world, commemorated the readiness of the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid (WLCG). At full capacity, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world's largest particle accelerator, is expected to produce more than 15 million Gigabytes of data each year. Hundreds of millions of subatomic particles will collide each second, presenting a massive data challenge. The mission of the WLCG is to build and maintain the data storage and analysis infrastructure for this immense flow of data, thus helping physicists open new frontiers in our understanding of the Universe. This ambitious project connects and combines the IT power of more than 140 computer centres in 33 countries.

» Read the Spotlight article

Let the number-crunching begin: the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid celebrates first data

Geneva, 3 October 2008. Today, three weeks after the first particle beams were injected into the Large Hadron Collider - the world’s largest particle accelerator - the Worldwide LHC Computing Grid celebrates the start of its crucial data challenge: the analysis and management of more than 15 million Gigabytes of data every year, to be produced from the hundreds of millions of subatomic collisions expected inside the LHC every second. This data-handling feat marks an essential stage in the process of enabling researchers to discover new physics.

» Read the press release

LHC first beam day in the CCC

LHC to be inaugurated on 21 October 2008

Geneva, 2 October 2008. Following the successful circulation of first beam in the LHC on 10 September, the world’s largest and most complex scientific instrument will be officially inaugurated at CERN on 21 October 2008. Representatives of the governments of CERN’s Member and Observer States and other participating nations have been invited.

» Read the press release