CERN

CERN is the European Organization for Nuclear Research (Organisation Europ?enne pour la Recherche Nucl?aire), the world's largest particle physics laboratory, situated on the border between France and Switzerland, just west of Geneva. It is also known for being the birthplace of the World Wide Web. The convention establishing it was signed on September 29, 1954. From the original 12 signatories of the CERN convention, membership has grown to the present 20 Member States.

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Its main function is to provide the particle accelerators needed for high energy physics research and numerous experiments have been constructed at CERN by international collaborations to make use of them. The main site at Meyrin also has a large computer centre containing very powerful data processing facilities primarily for experimental data analysis, and because of the need to make them available to researchers elsewhere, has historically been (and continues to be) a major wide area networking hub.

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CERN currently employs just under 3000 people full-time. Some 6500 scientists and engineers (representing 500 universities and 80 nationalities), about half of the world's particle physics community, work on experiments conducted at CERN.

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Members of the public are welcome to visit the 'Microcosm' exhibition centre during office hours, and guided visits to actual working detectors are also available at certain times in several languages.

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The laboratory's worldwide fame grew after it was used in the opening scenes of Dan Brown's worldwide bestselling novel 'Angels and Demons'.

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Particle physics: Particle physics is a branch of physics that studies the elementary constituents of matter and radiation, and the interactions between them. It is also called high energy physics, because many elementary particles do not occur under normal circumstances in nature, but can be created and detected dur...

Laboratory: A laboratory (often abbreviated lab) is a place where scientific research and experiments are conducted. A lab can hold space for one to thirty, or more, researchers depending on the size of the room and state mandated maximum occupancy limit....

France: The French Republic or France (: R?publique fran?aise or France) is a country whose metropolitan territory is located in Western Europe, and which is further made up of a collection of overseas islands and territories located in other continents....