Latest CERN Stories

Physicists working at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) announced on Wednesday that they had successfully trapped and stored antimatter atoms for the first time ever.Scientists from the Geneva, Switzerland-based research organization, in association with the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California at Berkeley, trapped a substance known as antihydrogen--the antimatter equivalent of hydrogen.The international...

Discovery may challenge physics fundamentalsIn the movie Angels and Demons, scientists have solved one of the most perplexing scientific problems: the capture and storage of antimatter. In real life, trapping atomic antimatter has never been accomplished, until now.A team made up of researchers from the University of Calgary, institutions across Canada and around the world have discovered how to trap atomic antimatter and the results of their discovery is published in the journal...

Scientists working at the CERN research center in Geneva, Switzerland say their "Big Bang" project should show the first proof of the existence of dimensions beyond the four known -- length, width, height and time -- as early as next year. In the past eight months of results from experiments in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the scientists have gathered preliminary findings that could prove by the end of 2011 whether or not the mysterious Higgs boson really exists. A spokesman for one of...

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has taken new steps by smashing together lead ions instead of protons to create a "mini-Big Bang."Scientists working at the particle smasher achieved the feat on November 7. Experts working with the LHC created temperatures a million times hotter than the center of the sun. The LHC lies under the French-Swiss border near Geneva in a 16-mile long circular tunnel. The world's highest-energy particle accelerator has been colliding protons in search for...

Researchers working at the world's highest-energy particle accelerator on the Franco-Swiss border are nearly set to create the Big Bang on a miniature scale. Since 2009, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has been smashing protons together, trying to shed light on the essential nature of matter. But for the upcoming experiments, planned for early November and running for four weeks, the team will have the accelerator collide lead ions instead. The collider, managed by the European Organization...

Scientists investigating the origins of the universe are hoping the vast underground Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN near Geneva, Switzerland, will lead to new discoveries that could completely change existing views of how the cosmos works."Parallel universes, unknown forms of matter, extra dimensions... These are not the stuff of cheap science fiction but very concrete physics theories that scientists are trying to confirm with the LHC and other experiments," Reuters quoted the...

Scientists working at the world's largest atom smasher said Tuesday the they believe they have discovered a new phenomenon while trying to unravel the universe's deepest secrets. One of the detectors in the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) experiment indicated that "some of the particles are intimately linked in a way not seen before in proton collisions," the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) said on its website. Physicist Guido Tonelli told his fellow scientists at a seminar that...

Europe's particle research center CERN said Friday that budget cuts are forcing the center to shut down its accelerators for a year in 2012, but its flagship "Big Bang" machine will remain unaffected. CERN said that its high-profile drive to study the origins of the cosmos would continue as planned as it announced the trimmed-down budget. The center said that it would delay upgrades to the Large Hadron Collider's beam intensity by a year, meaning scientists will have to wait until...

A massive particle detector that will search the reaches of outer space for antimatter and other clues about the origins of the universe began the initial steps towards its voyage to the International Space Station on Wednesday.The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) loaded the $2 billion Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer onto a giant C5 Galaxy U.S. Air Force transport plane at the Geneva airport, which will take off Thursday for Kennedy Space Center in Florida."The AMS left the...

The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) staff warned Wednesday that major budget cuts at the world's biggest atom smasher over the next five years are set to slow down its quest to unlock the deepest secrets of the universe. Spokesman James Gillies told AFP that Rolf Heuer, the director-general of CERN, presented a proposal for $433 million in savings in 2011-2015 to its 20 member states at a meeting in Geneva, France. "It will have an impact on the speed to which we get...