🚌 Three-day visit for students of intake 2023/2024
The Department of Physics and Astronomy “Augusto Righi” of Bologna organised a visit to CERN in Geneva from 21 to 23 February. Almost one hundred students divided into three delegations took part: students of the master’s degree in Physics, students from Collegio Superiore and – of course – the IMAPP students of intake 2023/2024.
CERN is not only one of the world’s largest and most respected centres for scientific research, but also one of the main partners of our master. For IMAPP students, visiting the places where the most important experiments in particle physics take place, was a highly stimulating experience.
The visit started with the Synchrocyclotron, CERN’s first accelerator which came into operation in 1957 and closed in 1990, with a 3D projection system and an exhibition of the technical and scientific objects used at CERN in the 1950s and 60s.
Students visited also the ATLAS Visitor Centre, with a view on the control room of the ATLAS experiment, the largest particle experiment at CERN and one of two general-purpose detectors at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The guide explained them how the detector works and who are the physicist running it.
Second day started with the location of the Large Hadron Collider beauty experiment (LHCb), specialised in investigating the slight differences between matter and antimatter: visit to the run meeting room and the control room.
Then, the Compact Muon Solenoid experiment (CMS), one of the largest international scientific collaborations in history. It’s a general-purpose detector at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) built around a huge solenoid magnet. Together with the ATLAS experiment has proven the existence of the Higgs Boson in 2012.
The Visit Point of the CERN Data Center – heart of CERN’s entire scientific, administrative, and computing infrastructure – with an immersive experience of the day-to-day life, history and functioning of Information Technology (IT).
The second day ends with a visit to the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer (AMS-02), a particle-physics detector that looks for dark matter, antimatter and missing matter from a module attached to the outside of the International Space Station (ISS).
Last day of visits to the Globe of Science and Innovation – CERN’s famous landmark – and to the Science Getaway. Designed by Renzo Piano and open in 2023, “it is CERN’s new education and outreach center, where we take visitors on a unique journey building on the physical proximity to CERN, its accelerators, detectors, facilities and people”.