Nuclear research

CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research based in Geneva, is a center of pure research into physics. CERN brings together more than 7,000 scientists from some 80 countries who are collectively researching the composition of matter and the forces that hold it together. The organization provides its physicists with all the necessary tools: accelerators in which particles are brought almost to the velocity of light, and detectors that render the particles visible. More than € 3 billion has been invested in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and its four detectors in preparation for research which is scheduled to begin in late 2007. Besides answers to the great questions of physics, it is hoped there will also be spinoffs, useful technological side effects. Undoubtedly, the invention of the World Wide Web has been the most significant spin-off to date: it was originally conceived at CERN to enable particle physicists to exchange data between research institutions often far removed from one another. (kw)