16 Facts About CERN

1.

European Organization for Nuclear Research, known as CERN, is a European research organization that operates the largest particle physics laboratory in the world.

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2.

CERN is the site of the Large Hadron Collider, the world's largest and highest-energy particle collider.

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3.

Convention establishing CERN was ratified on 29 September 1954 by 12 countries in Western Europe.

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4.

The acronym CERN originally represented the French words for, which was a provisional council for building the laboratory, established by 12 European governments in 1952.

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5.

Therefore, the laboratory operated by CERN is commonly referred to as the European laboratory for particle physics, which better describes the research being performed there.

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6.

In September 2011, CERN attracted media attention when the OPERA Collaboration reported the detection of possibly faster-than-light neutrinos.

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7.

World Wide Web began as a CERN project named ENQUIRE, initiated by Tim Berners-Lee in 1989 and Robert Cailliau in 1990.

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8.

On 30 April 1993, CERN announced that the World Wide Web would be free to anyone.

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9.

CERN operates a network of seven accelerators and two decelerators, and some additional small accelerators.

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10.

Many activities at CERN currently involve operating the Large Hadron Collider and the experiments for it.

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11.

In July 2012, CERN scientists announced the discovery of a new sub-atomic particle that was later confirmed to be the Higgs boson.

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12.

In March 2013, CERN announced that the measurements performed on the newly found particle allowed it to conclude that this is a Higgs boson.

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13.

CERN has developed a number of policies and official documents that enable and promote open science, starting with CERN's founding convention in 1953 which indicated that all its results are to be published or made generally available.

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14.

Since then, CERN published its open access policy in 2014, which ensures that all publications by CERN authors will be published with gold open access and most recently an open data policy that was endorsed by the four main LHC collaborations .

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15.

Beyond the policy level, CERN has established a variety of services and tools to enable and guide open science at CERN, and in particle physics more generally.

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16.

CERN provides daily tours to certain facilities such as the Synchro-cyclotron and the superconducting magnet workshop.

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