The Greatest Labs of our Time

The Large Hadron Collider at CERN Lab. Image credit to The Telegraph

When we hear of great scientific and technological inventions and discoveries, do we actually take a moment to imagine the centres that served as the factory, the machine house for these ingenious, world-changing productions: works that weave their webs of applications into so many areas that have been vital to our continued smart adaptation to this our world (I mean the ability to bend the course of the process of natural selection to our desired trajectory)? These are great halls that house great men and women during their days of tireless labour and sleepless nights of waiting for Eureka moments.

It just occurred to me that these bedrocks of history making deserve some recognition (because most people are fairly or not even aware of them); and though there are so many, I have selected one for now because of the magnitude of its structure, the large number of science and tech experts  working in it and the unprecedented level of collaboration it has (in terms of funding, rapport with universities and other research centres, and political commitment), and of course the quality of basic and applied research works it has churned out and it's still producing.

And I'm talking about the largest particle Physics lab on the planet-the CERN Laboratory. Founded officially in 1954 (with origin dating back to 1949) after what was known as the CERN convention by 12 European countries under the auspices of the European Organisation Nuclear Research, the Lab is located at the border between France and Switzerland near Geneva. Its name CERN is derived from the acronym Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire or European Council for Nuclear Research, and it is sometimes referred to as the European Laboratory of Particle Physics.

In terms of collaboration, CERN Lab is run by 21 member European countries and observed by some non member countries from around the world, who all contribute to the funding of the lab's programmes; over 600 universities and institutes around the world use the lab's facilities; and about 10,000 scientists from over 113 countries come to CERN Lab for reseach.

CERN Lab currently employs about 2400 people. The lab majorly specializes in particle physics and has built some of the world's largest particle accelerators and detectors (gigantic machines used to accelerate subatomic particles like protons to near the speed of light and detect resultant particles from such collision).

ATLAS Particle Detector of the LHC. Image credit to CERN Lab

This great research lab has given birth to so many exceptional pieces of research. In 1989, the British scientist Sir Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web (www.) which on 30th April, 1993 was released to the public for free; and we all can agree how the web, free, has revolutionized every area of our human endeavour.

Though still in the experimental stages, physicists, biologists, doctors and other multidisciplinary experts are working at the CERN Lab to detail the biological effects of antiproton (a subatomic particle with all the properties of a proton but with opposite charge

Antiproton Cell Experiment. Image credit to CERN Lab

and magnetic field direction, and so when it collides with a proton, they both destroy each other, releasing only a burst of energy) in the hope of using it in cancer therapy. What I see here is the prospect of reducing damage to healthy cells due to the scattering of protons when it collides with the nuclei of atoms of cells in the current cancer radiotherapy; the potential of antiprotons colliding with cancer cells and being destroyed together with the nuclei of atoms of these cells, releasing only bursts of energy and no other particle which can damage nearby healthy cells is a great insight being brewed inside the CERN Lab.

And last year, Professor Peter Higgs was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics  with Professor Francois Englert for their over 50-year-old theoretical physics research on the Higgs Boson particle (the particle that gives all matter their mass). This Nobel Prize was awarded to them because of the confirmation of this particle's existence after 50 years it was proposed; and this confirmation was done at the CERN Laboratory. The Lab's particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (the world's largest and most powerful particle accelerator, spanning 27 km in length), worth $10 billion through its two detectors named ATLAS and CMS detected the particle; over 4000 scientists worked tirelessly to make this possible. I'm not a physicist but the existence of this particle and its confirmation holds untold potential for mankind which may not be in sight now: when protons were first discovered, nobody thought they would find applications in medicine, agriculture and so on. So, time will tell how great the real-world impact of this great fundamental scientific discovery will be.