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Feature

Is the Higgs enough?

by Rika Takahashi

Few particles get as much attention today as the theorised Higgs boson, which so far has eluded detection. Whatever the outcome of the Large Hadron Collider's search for it - whether it finds a Higgs particle or not - there is still compelling physics that a future collider should explore.

Feature

From CERN Courier: Advances in acceleration: the superconducting way

The most ambitious future application under study is for the International Linear Collider (ILC), a 500 GeV superconducting linear accelerator. It will require 16 km of superconducting cavities operating at gradients of 31.5 MV/m. Intense research is underway to reach a high yield for high gradients: 30–40 MV/m. New vendors for niobium, for cavities and for associated components are being developed around the world.

Director's Corner

Breaking the speed limit of the universe?

by Barry Barish

An experiment at the Gran Sasso Laboratory in Italy, designed to study the oscillation properties of neutrinos in travelling 732 kilometres from CERN to the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Italy, reported evidence that these neutrinos arrive sooner than expected for particles travelling at the speed of light. Although the reported deviation is quite small, if correct, it would violate Einstein’s theory of relativity. The physics community now has to check whether the evidence is correct.

Image of the week

Electrons dance in Paris

Image: Sciences-ACO

Last month, a true tabletop electron accelerator was shown to the public for the first time during the CNRS exhibition Entrée en matière in Trocadéro’s gardens in Paris, France. This model was built to serve as a general introduction to the understanding of the principles underlying accelerator operations in general and more specifically colliders. The public can actually see and manipulate the controls and therefore easily grasp what is happening. The model is a small replica of the Orsay storage ring (Anneau de Collision d’Orsay, ACO) at LAL. ACO was in service as a collider from 1965 to 1980 with an energy of 500 MeV for each beam. The real accelerator is now a museum, listed on the French heritage register.

Learn more (in French) about the model called “Electrons’ dance”.

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