• Question: what does CERN and LHC stand for?

    Asked by cornfielddicks to Mario, Ben, Clare, Ezzy, Sam on 12 Mar 2012. This question was also asked by lambkhaliq, welshdragon4029, kavfaulkner, arusa, cd1998, wheatleypollington, lappingwheeler, ellenbmth, katiehoward, smeen7.
    • Photo: Mario Campanelli

      Mario Campanelli answered on 12 Mar 2012:

      Conseil Europeen pour la Recherche Nucleaire (European Council for Nuclear Research), but it is a 60-year old name that has nothing to do with reality… first of all, it is a laboratory and not a council, then we don’t do nuclear research any more, and finally now full membership has been opened to non-European states!
      LHC means Large Hadron Collider, and the name reflects better the real thing: we collide both protons and lead nuclei, so everything which is collided there are hadrons!

Comments