The Physics Forecast 🌥️
At CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, high-energy beams collide in our giant detectors, generating vast amounts of data. This data is visualized through event displays.
To create these displays, experiment teams use software to transform data into graphical objects, which are then rendered in a specialised application.
Ever wondered what these displays reveal? Dilia from @atlasexperiment decodes the physics forecast.
Disclaimer: This is a playful take on real event displays from the #LHC.
Learn more in our stories.
Back to the analogue days… 💽
Today’s #ThrowbackThursday takes us back to 1966, featuring the Calculatrice Control Data (CDC) computer, also known as the CDC 3800.
The CDC 3800 was part of the Control Data Corporation 3000 series family of computers.
It had a 48-bit architecture, and its 64K-word core memory was later replaced at CERN with a faster 800-nanosecond memory. The machine was eventually acquired by the State of Geneva and installed at @unigeneve .
#FunFact: the CDC 3800 was used to process Swiss election data in 1967.
Ready, set, go particles 🏃💨
CERN’s #PhotoOfTheWeek features photos of last week’s Relay Race that took place on the Main site of the Laboratory, where runners from various departments, CERN alumni and children, competed for the awards of fastest team and the best costume.
#FunFact: this tradition has been happening #AtCERN for the past 53 years.
The public consultation process for the Future Circular Collider (FCC) project begins in Switzerland and France 🇨🇭🇫🇷
These four months of exchanges and dialogue with the public are part of the preparations for a final decision on the project.
As the CERN Council, comprising representatives of all the Organization’s Member States, prepares to update the European Strategy for Particle Physics on the basis of recommendations from the scientific community, the FCC remains a project under study for the time being, with the approval decision set to be taken in 2028 at the earliest.
🔗 Find out more on home.cern, link in our stories.
Fashion week, relay race edition 🏃
Last week’s CERN’s running club organised a relay race, where runners from various departments, CERN alumni and children, competed for the awards of fastest team and the best costume.
Which one is your favourite? 👀
#CERN #relayrace #AtCERN
Can you guess what this is?
Hint: It’s magnetic 😉
Here we see the fourth 2.5m-long Spanish corrector magnet for #HiLumiLHC, completing the units required for installation.
This is an orbit corrector from CIEMAT in Spain, which will help steer the beam trajectory in the inner triplet regions of the new machine.
This summer marks the start of Long Shutdown 3 (LS3), a four-year intensive work period to transform the LHC into the #HiLumiLHC, a groundbreaking accelerator set to usher in a new era for high-energy physics.
Find out more in our stories.
Nothing else (anti)matters 🎸
#ThrowbackThursday to April 2018, when Kirk Hammett and Lars Ulrich from @metallica , visited CERN.
During their visit, the two members of the famous heavy metal band toured facilities like the @atlasexperiment , the Cloud Experiment, the #Antimatter Factory, the Synchrocyclotron (CERN’s first accelerator) and the Data Centre.
Lucky no. 777 ✨
Today’s #PhotoOfTheWeek captures the ceremony marking the laying of the first beam of Building 777, CERN’s new net-zero carbon building.
Located on the Prévessin site in France, Building 777 will provide office space for approximately 475 people, along with laboratories, workshops, and meeting rooms.
The building is scheduled for completion by the end of 2027.
Can you guess what this is? 👀
Hint: We would tell you a construction joke… but we're still working on it 😉
Here we see the interconnection work for the #HiLumiLHC Inner Triplet String, which is joining the individual cryoassemblies to form the final electrical circuits for the machine.
On 20 April 2026, the electrical powering of the 95-metre-long IT string began. Following its successful cryogenic cooldown to 1.9 K (‑271.3 °C) a few weeks ago, the ongoing commissioning phase will achieve powering to nominal current, circuit by circuit, over the next few weeks.
This test stand is essential for #HiLumiLHC, which will increase the number of collisions to study the fundamental components of matter in much greater detail.
Find out more in our stories.
#ThrowbackThursday to 1993, when the World Wide Web was launched in the public domain 💻
On this day, 33 years ago, CERN put the WWW software in the public domain. Proposed by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the web was originally created to allow scientists and institutes working on CERN data to share information accurately and quickly from across the globe.
Later, CERN made a release available with an open licence, to maximise its dissemination.
Here we see:
1️⃣+2️⃣ The document that officially put the World Wide Web into the public domain
3️⃣ Tim Berners-Lee’s NeXT computer that served as the original web server and development machine for the WWW project
4️⃣ A screenshot of the recreated page of the first website
Spring is in full bloom at CERN 🌸
This #PhotoOfTheWeek, we swap the photos for some snippets of #LifeAtCERN around the Main site of the Laboratory.
Do you recognise any of these spots? Let us know in the comments.👇
