What Can We Expect From CERN In 2013?

CERN is a European scientific, nuclear discovery facility. The goal of the facility is to discover how the universe works, what it is made of, and how the universe begin. The facility is also called the European Organization for Nuclear Research. Want to know where the acronym CERN comes from? It is derived from the French version of the name, the Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire.

CERN primarily works with particle accelerators and detectors. The accelerators boost particles to high energy and then the beams collide with each other or targets. The detectors then observe and record the results of the collisions.
In 2013, CERN will work with some of the research and data collected throughout 2012 and the past few years.

LHC Shutting Down 

The current star of CERN, the LHC (large Hadron Collider) will go offline in 2013. The facility is planning to have a series of three shutdowns for all accelerators at the facility to allow refurbishing and updating of the systems and machinery. The hope is to increase the energy output of the machine from 8 TeV to 14 TeV. The speed increase and upgrades are planned to reach new scientific discoveries and to prove or disprove existing theories in practice.
After the upgrade, the machine will use radiofrequency structures and a two-beam concept for fields that can reach up to 100 MV per meter.

Exploiting LHC discoveries

While the accelerators are shut down, the scientists and researchers will spend 2013 focused on uncovering the secrets of the findings created by LHC in the past few years. Other engineers and technicians will work on upgrading the equipment.
Current scientific studies only study the matter that we are made of, which is only 4 percent of the entire matter in the world. Other matter, dark matter and dark energy, make up the rest of the 96 percent of matter in the world. Current particle physic research is only capable of understanding 4 percent of the universe. Scientists will use 2013 to explore the data presented by the LHC and try to determine how it fits in with current particle research and how it fits into the unknown 96 percent of matter.

Improving all accelerators

The facility is also taking 2013 as a time to upgrade the other particle accelerators and detectors in the facility. It is hoped that by 2014 or 2015, all machines at the facility will perform faster, better, and use less energy.

CERN technology in the real world 

Although CERN is largely a theoretical facility, much of their findings also have practical uses. The detectors and sensors used to monitor the findings of particle accelerators are also used in the industrial world to measure the vibrations and energy production of manufacturing equipment. Using this technology in vibration sensors can help prevent machinery from breaking due to internal vibrations. When the energy of the machine reaches a too high velocity, the vibration sensor can shut down the machine or move the energy to a new location.
2013 will be an exciting year of discovery and study at CERN. With a reduced number of experiments, scientists can focus on discovering the meaning of past findings and help unlock a few additional mysteries of the universe.

Author Bio:

This is a guest post by Lindsey Mcmahon. She's main interests are Health and Technology. She suggests you have a look here if your looking for manufacturing sensors.