Opening of the exhibition “The largest scientific instrument ever built”

The opening event, which takes places on 7th March at 7 p.m. in CosmoCaixa, is composed by a round table to discuss the future of CERN and the research on particle physics in a complex economic context and after the crucial achievement that meant the discovery of the Higgs boson made by the LHC. The personalities who participate in the round table are: Dr Martine Bosman, research professor from the Institute for High Energy Physics (IFAE) and Council president of the ATLAS experiment; Dr Antonio Pich, coordinator of the National Centre for Particle, Astroparticle and Nuclear Physics (CPAN), and Dr Manuel Delfino, professor from the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) and director of the Scientific Information Port (PIC), a data centre of excellence for scientific-data processing which has been collaborating closely with the LHC. The debate will be moderated by Dr Lluís Garrido, research professor from the ICCUB and leader of the group of the experiment LHCb in Barcelona.

The Large Hadron Collisioner (LHC)

Until the beginning of the 20th century it was thought that atoms were composed by groups of protons, neutrons and electrons as fundamental and indivisible particles. This theory began to be questioned when new particles were discovered. So, physics began to build a new theory of fundamental particles organization which later was named Standard Model. This new theory presumed the existence of more fundamental, indivisible, particles, which could not be proved until mid-20th century.

Consequently, today we know that protons and neutrons, for example, are composed by groups of three particles named quarks, whereas electrons are fundamental particles. The Standard Model is composed by six quarks, six leptons and five bosons (one of them is Higgs boson, responsible for particlesʼ mass).

In only three years, since its set up, the LHC has made important contributions to fundamental physics. In 2012, CERN scientists discovered a new particle which could be consistent with Higgs boson. The LHC has also discovered the rarest particle decays and measured with an unprecedented precision some of the differences between matter and antimatter.

The first part of the exhibition “The largest scientific instrument ever built” shows the most relevant experiments developed throughout the three years that the LHC has been working; it occupies a surface of 100 square metres and was designed by the CERN. Its second part describes the contribution to the LHC made by researchers from ICCUB and IFAE, centre located at the UABʼs campus, and was developed by Obra Social la Caixa.

The teacher training activities which complement the exhibition, and the exhibition itself, are an initiative of the European project Pathway, in which the Faculty of Education of the UB participates. The project aims at supporting education to research on experimental sciences and provides teachers with training and resources. Moreover, guided tours to the exhibition and other activities and lectures are offered to groups of students and to the general public, respectively.

UBʼs collaboration in the exhibition was led by the researchers Hugo Ruiz, from the Particles Physics Group of the ICCUB (located at the campus of international excellence BKC), and Mario Barajas, professor from the Department of Didactics and Educational Organization of the UB and Spanish coordinator of the project Pathway.

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