Rare trio of particles observed for first time at CERN's ATLAS Experiment

The ATLAS Experiment observed a rare trio of particles.

Check the video:

Higgs Discovery Explained - Ep. 1/3 | CERN

Virtual Visit to CMS at CERN (2016)

On February 24, 2016, at 15 hours, 55 students and 5 teachers in Escola Secundária Dr. Júlio Martins (Portuguese high school), made a virtual visit to CMS at CERN.

The activity was promoted by the European Project Inspiring Science Education (ISE), and it was made, for the second time, with a total of five portuguese schools: Escola Secundária Dr. Júlio Martins (Chaves); Escola Secundária Paços de Ferreira (Paços de Ferreira); Escola Secundária de Loulé (Faro), Agrupamento de Escolas Dra. Laura Ayres (Quarteira); Escola Secundária Adolfo Portela (Águeda).

The students saw the control room, the cavern of CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) experiment, installed in LHC (Large Hadron Collider) and asked some questions to the scientists.

The students made a contact with Portuguese scientists, Pedro da Silva, André David Mendes and José Carlos da Silva, with technical support of Angelos Alexopoulos, Noemi Beni e Zoltan Zsillasi. They drove our students through CMS control room, and explained all the graphics in their computers, to the CMS cavern, 100 meters deep, and they explained all the objects observed, how it works and characteristics.

On the web:
- CMS virtual visit https://indico.cern.ch/event/502813/overview
- Miguel Neta website http://www.miguelneta.pt/pt/atividades/93-cms-virtual-visit-2016
- EUFISICA blog http://blog.eufisica.com/2016/02/visita-virtual-ao-cms-no-cern-2016.html

Virtual Visit to CMS at CERN

On February 25, 2015, at 15 hours, 150 students and 10 teachers in Escola Secundária de Penafiel (Portuguese high school), made a virtual visit to CMS at CERN.

The activity was promoted by the European Project Open Discovery Space (ODS), and it was made, for the first time, with a total of five portuguese schools: Escola Secundária de Penafiel (Penafiel); Escola Secundária Ferreira Dias (Sintra); Escola Secundária José Saramago (Mafra), Agrupamento de Escolas Dra. Laura Ayres (Quarteira); Escola Secundária Adolfo Portela (Águeda).

The students saw the control room, the cavern of CMS (Compact Muon Solenoid) experiment, installed in LHC (Large Hadron Collider) and asked some questions to the scientists.

The students made a contact with portuguese scientists, Pedro da Silva, André David Mendes and José Carlos Silva, with technical support of Angelos Alexopoulos, Noemi Beni e Zoltan Zsillasi. They drove our students through CMS control room, and explained all the graphics in their computers, to the CMS cavern, 100 meters deep, and they explained all the objects observed, how it works and characteristics.

We achieved a total of 553 students in this virtual visit, and it was established a new record of students participating in a same session. All the students were pleased to visit virtually this especial science center.

Some feedback from our students:

“Hello teacher, I would like to thank you the opportunity to participate in something unique. For students that study Physics, CERN is the epicenter of investigation and knowledge. I loved the fact that we made contact with scientists and it was so fun how they present the detector and technologies provided by CERN. It was useful to extend the knowledge of tiny world despite the fact that we need such a huge machine, like CMS, to discover that world. To see all of this visit in real time image was exceptional...

Thanks to all, specially people at CERN and our teachers to make this happened.” - André Queirós

"Hello teacher, I'm written this email about our virtual visit to CERN. It was a visit that arises our interest and curiosity to know better CERN and the experiments made by scientist. The simple language used by scientists helps us to understand the experiments, and kept students' attention.

I liked to thank the availability and I hope someday to know CERN even better." - Ana Catarina Moreira

"Hello teacher, I like to thank you for the visit, even virtually, it was very good and educative. I hope to perform another visit, but this time a live one. I was curious on CERN center and LHC detectors, and the explanation of both made by site scientists.

I wish a year full of success and with new discoveries!" - João Pereira.

"Hello teacher, the virtual visit was very interesting, now I understand what happen in there and what scientists do, how do they do it and the level to acquire such performance in science and technology. It was important to see the detector and jobs possibilities to students. Thank you so much for this opportunity" -  Tiago Carvalho

Acknowledgements:

CERN: Angelos Alexopoulos, André David, José Silva, Pedro Silva, Noemi Beni and Zoltan Zsillasi.

School’s pilot teachers: Cristina Pinho, Marília Peres, Miguel Neta, Álvaro Folhas and José Gonçalves.

ODS support: Rosa Doran and José Gonçalves.

Schools: To our students, teachers, directors and IT technicians.

On the web:

CERN event - https://indico.cern.ch/event/365946/ (with video)

Portal do Astrónomo - http://www.portaldoastronomo.org/noticia.php?id=969

Miguel Neta - http://www.miguelneta.pt/atividades/81-cms-virtual-visit-2015

Escola Sec. Adolfo Portela - http://www.esap.edu.pt/informacoes/735-201503-visitacern

Eufisica - http://blog.eufisica.com/2015/02/visita-virtual-ao-cms-no-cern.html

How does an atom-smashing particle accelerator work? - Don Lincoln

HST2012, CERN - Day 12

Rolf Landua and ME holding the antimatter bottle.

During this day we had two lectures and we continued into work group

The first lecture was the continuation about Accelerators. We leaved the technical details and we got into the Physics: energy, number of events, luminosity, etc.

It was emphasized that in the LHC does not circulate a steady stream of protons, they are sent in bunches and compressed by existing dipoles and quadrupoles in the accelerator. The curvature and focal power we use in optics is applied here at the LHC in terms of the strength of the different magnets. The magnetic field created at the LHC is 8.33 T, in the Earth is situated between 24 mT and 66 mT. There are approximately 6000 magnets in the LHC.

The second lecture was about Antimatter, performed by Rolf Landua based on the movie Angels and Demons. Basically, we tried to respond to seven questions related to the subject: What is it? Where is it created? How is it created? What is the mystery behind this? How to study it? Can be used as energy source or a bomb? There antimatter in our day-to-day?

Antimatter is real and is composed of antiparticles. For example, the hydrogen atom is formed by a proton and an electron, in the version of the antimatter, antihydrogen consists of a positron and antiproton. Antimatter is created in the LHC, the LHCb is the detector for those particles. 

To create antiprotons, LHC collide protons with cores of Iridium, copper, etc. .. Antiprotons are created, retarded and maintained as "prisoners" in a combination of electric and magnetic fields. Thus the material before the resulting annihilation is captured by the detector. 

This annihilation is one of the great mysteries of the Big Bang that scientists try to answer (the conversion of antimatter to matter in this dominance). 

This antimatter can not be used as energy or weapon because it requires a lot of energy to produce it. To have an idea, we use the following example: Let's try to create 0.5 g of antimatter. Therefore, it is necessary 22 kton (kilo ton) of TNT (approximately the same as Hiroshima's bomb) to produce a half gram of matter and antimatter. The energy associated with 0.5 g of antimatter is  4,5 x 10¹³ J. The total energy required (efficiency ~10^-9 %) would be  4,5 x 10²² J. Even with the CERN discount given by the French electricity company [1 kWh = 3.6 x 106 J = 0.1 €], the cost would be  1 x 10⁸ €  and would take one billion years deliver it.

Finally, it should be noted that antimatter is used in the body, where a proton is replaced by a positron in the glucose molecule to be detected by PET (Positron Emission Tomography) used in medicine. The next step for the scientists will be create a therapy using positrons.

 About the work we are developing in groups I will talk about later.