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Happy 50th Cern!

Posted by samzenpus on Wed Sep 29, 2004 07:47 PM
from the quantum-birthday-cake dept.
The Internet Science
Anonymous Coward writes "The facility that has earned three scientists Nobel prizes, provided the impetus for Berners-Lee's hypertext program (aka the WWW), oh and has also helped answer some fundamental questions regarding the universe has turned fifty today! And with the LHC in development, here's hoping for another 50!"
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Happy 50th Cern! 50 Comments More /

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  • Finally! (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I have Anonymous Coward's email address! I shall let him know how I feel about him.
  • "the universe has turned fifty today!"

    Happy Birthday?

  • And a happy fiftieth! *toast* Seriously though, this just rocks. :)

  • happy birthday and thanks for web (Score:5, Informative)

    by LucidBeast (601749) on Wednesday September 29 2004, @07:51PM (#10389924)
    http://www.hitmill.com/internet/web_history.asp [hitmill.com]

  • Hmmmm (Score:3, Funny)

    by mikeophile (647318) on Wednesday September 29 2004, @07:51PM (#10389930)
    "Today, the Geneva facility is at the forefront of developing the Grid, a "super-internet" which will enable physicists to handle the surge of data that will come out of the LHC."

    Is it me, or is that like a geeky sweet nothing in the ear?
  • Scientists believe this machine, due to come online in 2007, will enable them finally to understand why all the things we can see and touch have mass.

    No, the only thing that we can see (a photon of certain wavelength) does not actually have mass!!! BBC got it wrong... ;-)

    Paul B.

    • Re:About LHC... (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Ooh, nice try, but "see" has more meanings than those related to visual perception.
      "see" is a synonym for "comprehend", therefore the quote is utterly valid.
      The BBC are correct
        • that's a four-momentum, man.
          (I did make it small p unlike capital P later on, didn't I?)

          Ever heard about Lorentz vectors? (E, px, py, pz) with "funny" (1, -1, -1, -1) metric (flat space diagonal) meaning when you multiply them, or square in our case, it expands to E^2 - px^2 - py^2 - pz^2. The magnitude of four-vector is called "interval". Four-momenta of real massive particles have interval > 0 ("time-like"), photons have inteval=0 ("light-like"), events in time-space that cannot possibly be cause-ef

  • I bow to you (Score:5, Funny)

    by daishin (753851) on Wednesday September 29 2004, @07:55PM (#10389951) Homepage
    Ooo great persons who have contributed to the growth of porn.

    Im non-Anon!

  • CERN birthday gifts should be money (Score:5, Informative)

    by erick99 (743982) <homerun@gmail.com> on Wednesday September 29 2004, @07:55PM (#10389953) Homepage
    This article [physicstoday.org] in Physics Today discusses the huge budget that CERN operates within as well as some rather large cost overages. So, put some cash in that birthday card!
  • and the folks at fermilab celebrated with cake!

  • Cost of running Cern? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Lifix (791281) on Wednesday September 29 2004, @08:04PM (#10390016) Homepage
    Can humanity possibly put a price on knoledge? Is there a limit to the ammount of money we should spend to learn - to further our understanding of the world around us?


    /mod me off topic if you want

    • Re:Cost of running Cern? (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      knoledge is cheap.
      knowlege is priceless.
    • Everything can be given a price. Modern (developed) economies require knowledge to efficiently allocate resources, generate wealth, and ultimately compete.

      For example, the United States does not maintain it's position without extensive networks of specialization and "knowledge workers".

    • Of course, there is a limit and it's well known by scientits project leaders. Even if the price tag appears to be high, keep in mind research budgets still represent a fraction of the yearly expenditures of each participating country.

      And CERN is in its turn a fraction of these budgets. Of course, it's larger than my personnal budget, but at the scale of countries budgets, it's a small fraction.

      The day the humans will stop to be interested by the surrounding world they will commit a collective suicide. Ima

  • It's not "Cern" (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 29 2004, @08:08PM (#10390046)
    It's not "Cern", it's C.E.R.N., or at the very least CERN. And it's not "Noble" prizes, it's "Nobel" prizes. And Tim Berners-Lee created HTML, not the WWW (HTML is just one of the many languages used in the WWW, and it can be used outside the WWW, too). And I'm pretty sure the universe hasn't turned 50 today.

    • Re:It's not "Cern" (Score:5, Insightful)

      by bullitB (447519) on Wednesday September 29 2004, @08:52PM (#10390340)
      And Tim Berners-Lee created HTML, not the WWW (HTML is just one of the many languages used in the WWW, and it can be used outside the WWW, too)

      TBL invented both HTML and HTTP, in addition to the modern URL syntax, not to mention to the phrase "World Wide Web." Actually, what part of the WWW did he not invent?
    • It's common in British (and thus by extension, Continental use of the English language) syntax to spell out acronyms with only the first letter capitalized. Thus, "Cern", "Nato", etc.

    • Not to mention that it should be "Happy 50th, CERN!" - I was wondering in what sense it was the 50th CERN, and wasn't until I read the summary that I realised that CERN was being wished a happy birthday...

    • Re:It's not "Cern" (Score:5, Informative)

      by Matthias Wiesmann (221411) on Thursday September 30 2004, @02:47AM (#10392028) Homepage Journal
      First, nobody uses the acronym C.E.R.N. (I know, I work there). Second, CERN is not really an acronym anymore, as it stands for Conseil de Recherche Nucléaire Européen, and is the name of the council that founded the CERN and was disbanded in the fifties. Third as somebody else pointed out, rules for capitalization change depending on the country, so depending on the reference language (UK English, French, maybe Swiss French) it might be correct or not, in any case US English rules do not apply.

      The official name is, in French Organisation Européenne de Recherche Nucléaire (which would be OERN), and in English European Organization for Nuclear Research (which would be EONR). The name CERN simply stuck because it sounds nice and people are used to it, perhaps also because of the German word Kern that means nucleus. In the Geneva area many people believe that CERN stands for Centre de Recherche Nucléaire Européen (I learnt that at school), although this was never true.

      • I don't want to bother you, however you should have surf CERN's web before writing CERN's history [library.cern.ch].

        CERN is a perfectly valid acronym since 1954, when the steering committee decided to keep this handy acronym to designate the research center.

  • LHC (Score:5, Informative)

    by suckfish (129773) on Wednesday September 29 2004, @08:09PM (#10390054)
    Here's the LHC home page for those who want more than a fluffy news media article
    http://lhc-new-homepage.web.cern.ch/lhc-new-homepa ge/ [web.cern.ch]

  • How old is it? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Gothic_Walrus (692125) on Wednesday September 29 2004, @08:11PM (#10390062) Journal
    How long before the obligatory "It doesn't look a day over 35!" joke?

    If I wasn't making this comment, I'd mod down that moron ASAP...

    Come to think of it, this is the least useful post I've ever made on Slashdot. Should I be proud of that?

  • Yay (Score:3, Interesting)

    by back_pages (600753) <`ten.xoc' `ta' `segap_kcab'> on Wednesday September 29 2004, @08:31PM (#10390201) Journal
    Congrats on the 50th.

    Now if you'll indulge me in a gratuitous attempt at being insightful, I was recently contemplating that in the long run, mastering electromagnetic waves might have been the most disasterous technological breakthrough in history. Of course, we'll never know for sure until at least a few decades or centuries, but the significance of the telephone and semiconductor cannot be underestimated. How can we be so sure that they are Good Things?

    There's that quote about our technology surpassing our humanity, blah blah, and everyone always talks about cloning or flying cars or laser guns that kill without a bang (karma whore opportunity to link to the short story here). Rarely do people think about the present in that context and almost never to history. I think there is a good argument that the telephone was perhaps the first moment in history where technology played an active role in replacing a person's community. I could be full of crap (likely) but maybe THAT was the moment when our technology surpassed our humanity.

    Nothing else made it possible to import someone else's community into our own. It wasn't a night and day shift from postal service to IRC addicts and kids in rural states expressing violent rage somehow related to pop culture (and I'm trolling here about violence on TV creates violence in Colorado - bear with me). The miracle of communcations at the speed of electromagnetism made it possible to inject someone else's society, customs, culture, values, ethics, and attitude into our own, no matter how poorly those things fit.

    Before this stuff, if you wanted to disconnect yourself from your neighbors and your community, you were a freaking recluse - the town outcast, the weirdo who never left his house, the werewolf (karma whore opportunity to link to the hypothesis that werewolf stories grew out of society's earliest serial rapists/murderers), the drunkard, et cetera. Now you're just a normal guy/gal whose "community" consists of Jon Stewart (I'm guilty of that), CNN, Fox News if you must, Martha Stewart, Hollywood, The Sopranos, and so on. I grew up in a small town in the midwest but now I live in suburban D.C. and don't know the name of a single person in my apartment building.

    Are we so sure that the future is where our technology surpasses our humanity? Are we so sure that the "technological revolution" is such a GOOD thing? I'm not even whining about violence on TV or in the movies - I'm whining about the fact that all these great inventions make it SO EASY for me to replace the life that surrounds me with a life that's imported from 3,000 miles away.

    And this isn't some holier-than-thou rant, either. I'm just as guilty of living in the midst of all of this as anyone. I'm not suggesting some plan of action, either. I just wonder if, in The Big Book of Human History, there will be a chapter called, "Instantaneous Global Communication and the Five Hundred Years of Crap that Followed".

    • Your diatribe reads like the Unabomber's manifesto [panix.com]. I hope you don't live alone in the wilderness.
      • Then again...if everyone was seperated from everyone else...would there be violence?

        Sure - but that's not my point.

        Humanity, for all of it's strengths, is definitely something that should be improved upon, whether by technology or elsewise.

        But isn't that the question? Pasteurization - definitely good. Polio vaccination - definitely good. Separation of church and state - hell that's another debate but I think it's good.

        The internet (the REAL internet - the porn, viruses, scams, spams, 1337 5p3@k, g

  • Al Gore created the Internet, dammit! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 29 2004, @09:00PM (#10390401)
    provided the impetus for Berners-Lee's hypertext program (aka the WWW)

    No, it was Al Gore who "took the initiative in creating the Internet."

    PS - you can't say that's been debunked - that's an exact quote [google.com]

  • Web ?= positive invention (Score:5, Funny)

    by n0mad6 (668307) on Wednesday September 29 2004, @09:02PM (#10390416)
    Other particle physicists may be able to back me up on this, but trying to explain what we do to one's relatives/friends is not the easiest thing to do. What's even worse is when the inevitable question of "what is it good for?" comes up. So, usually, I give the usual bit about how many spin-off technologies result from HEP including things like, what else, but the WWW.

    I was rather taken aback when a few weeks ago, this response got me an earful of "The WEB!?? You guys are responsible for that PORN-FILLED WASTELAND!???"

    I guess I'll stick to saying, "I work in a lab."

    • Other particle physicists may be able to back me up on this, but trying to explain what we do to one's relatives/friends is not the easiest thing to do.

      Actually, I disagree. Explaining it in two sentences is next to impossible, but if somebody is willing to listen for ten minutes, I find it relatively easy.

      I also try to be honest, i.e. I avoid the usual "CP violation is studied to understand the excess of matter over antimatter in the universe" crap.

      What's even worse is when the inevitable question of "

  • Happy Birthday CERN (Score:5, Informative)

    by apetime (544206) <otsuki&gmail,com> on Wednesday September 29 2004, @10:20PM (#10390841)
    I was there a few weeks ago, visiting a friend who does research there, while travelling in Switzerland. It's definitely an interesting place (although it lacks the futuristic "aura" that I somehow expected). Near the main gate is a massive wooden sphere called the Innovation Globe. It's still in construction, but it looks like it will be a great and interesting facility (with public exhibits and theaters), and its organic look is a stark contrast to the mostly drab buildings inside.

    It was a sunday when I went, and not that crowded, and my friend took me through a short tour of the place. They have an educational area set up with a museum, and science exhibits for children, which was very cool. All sorts of modern artifacts from nuclear experiments are lying around courtyards. He showed me the server room, where (i think, my friend wasn't sure either) they had some of the first web servers, and where they are now doing the grid computing stuff.

    Another cool bit of CERN, especially for physics geeks, is all the streets are named after famous nuclear scientists. I passed by ones named for Einstein, Rutherford, and others. We didn't get to Feynman that day.

    Oh, and the food in the lunch room is not half-bad and cheap for Switzerland.

    CERN was a nice place to spend an afternoon, and I wish them another 50 great years.

    • Oh, and the food in the lunch room is not half-bad and cheap for Switzerland.

      Yes, maybe, but they have a very limited repertoir... (And I suppose you didn't go to Restaurant #3, at the Prevessin site, that's French cuisine at its worst...)

      (Reminds me of the heydays of the mad cow disease, when restaurant #1 put up signs assuring that all meat served was Swiss. Problem was only that Switzerland was #2 in number of mad cow disease cases. So now you know how the Mad Scientist enters the picture. And if you

  • You can help: LHC@Home (Score:5, Informative)

    by slaida1 (412260) on Wednesday September 29 2004, @10:42PM (#10390951)
    Go to http://lhcathome.cern.ch/ [lhcathome.cern.ch] and join. It's beta... whoops, beta testing ended just yesterday. I guess there's no more 5000 participant limit anymore, so why don't you give it a try. You can use BOINC [berkeley.edu] to calculate seti work units also.

    From the LHC@Home FAQ:
    "1.2 What does LHC@home do?

    LHC@home helps the construction of LHC. It simulates how the particles travel trough the 27 km long tunnel. With the help of the calculated information, the magnets that control the beam can be calibrated with greater precision."

  • Uncle CERN wants YOU! (Score:3, Informative)

    by l0b0 (803611) on Thursday September 30 2004, @03:38AM (#10392179) Homepage
    CERN is well worth a try for people who want some experience with working in other countries. AFAIK you need to be started on undergraduate studies in physics, engineering, or computing, and be good at English OR French. First time engagements are normally between two months and three years. The recruitment website [web.cern.ch] explains most of what you need to know. See you here!
    • it will never be over.
      the more we learn about nature, the more opportunities for speculation open up. I may be wrong on that but it certainly seems that particle physics didn't really make any progress since quantum theory was accepted in .. what? .. early on in 20th century? If there's any "deeper understanding" gained since it certainly didn't make it into the wild yet...

      • Re:Another 50 years of HEP... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by div_B (781086) on Wednesday September 29 2004, @08:21PM (#10390123)
        it will never be over. the more we learn about nature, the more opportunities for speculation open up.

        No, the more we learn about nature, the closer we come to the truth, which may or may not be open ended. Asserting that it will never be over assumes more knowledge than any of us have.

        I may be wrong on that but it certainly seems that particle physics didn't really make any progress since quantum theory was accepted in .. what? .. early on in 20th century? If there's any "deeper understanding" gained since it certainly didn't make it into the wild yet...

        Given that in this day and age that popular media still represent the electrons in an atom following exact orbits in the fashion of newtonian mechanics is a pretty good indication that very little of modern physics has made it 'into the wild'.
          • They may remain strict and intellectually elegant, like chess, and bear no relation to reality whatsoever. Not to mention that very few even come close to the beauty of classic (that is non-relativistic) quantum theory. In addition it seems that the approach to math involved is quite liberal, the habit that Dirac started with his delta, but that later was taken to some new heights...

            :) What was Dirac's quote about aiming for mathematical elegance above other things again? I can't seem to find it at the
    • Over in the sense that all that's left are questions like 'What is energy?'

      Just like the future of physics since 1894 lay in the seventh decimal place.

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