NEWS

The LHCb Collaboration has found a new particle consisting of one strange quark and two charm quarks. With this finding, the Collaboration has discovered the final member of a family of doubly charmed baryons – particles made up of two charm quarks and one other quark – and closes a chapter of a story that stretches back more than sixty years. Quarks are basic building blocks of matter. There are

Swiss-based artist Marie Matusz and Indian artist Moonis Ahmad Shah have been selected for the latest edition of the Connect India dual residencyLaunched in 2021 by Arts at CERN and the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia, Connect has established itself as a key platform for artistic experimentation in connection with fundamental science. The programme continues its mission of fostering meaningful dia

After 12 years in operation, a record amount of data and thousands of scientific results, the LHC is taking a break. It will be transformed into the HiLumi LHC, a better-performing machineWritten by Corinne Pralavorio In the early hours of Sunday, 14 June, the experiments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) had their last hurrah. In the control rooms of ALICE, ATLAS, CMS and LHCb – the four major e

At the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), protons travel around the ring at almost the speed of light before colliding to release energy that transforms into many particles, including those containing beauty quarks. As reported in a recent paper,  the ALICE Collaboration has made a new measurement of the production of neutral beauty mesons, particles made of a beauty antiquark and a down quark. For the

The winners of the 13th edition of the Beamline for Schools (BL4S) competition have been selected. BL4S is a physics competition that was initiated by CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics, and is open to secondary school pupils from all around the world. Participants are invited to submit a proposal for a physics experiment to be undertaken at the beamline of a particle accelerator,

In a particle accelerator, radiofrequency (RF) systems are among the crucial components that make beam production possible. While magnets guide the particles around the ring, RF systems provide the beam with its longitudinal structure: they accelerate it, keep it captured in bunches, shape it, split it, rotate it and ensure synchronisation for transfer to the next machine.On 21 May, an eight-hour

While the heavy-ion run season is in full swing at the LHC, let’s look back at the low-energy run that took place on 29 and 30 April. In yet another demonstration of the versatility of CERN’s accelerator complex, the LHC briefly departed from its standard high-energy operation to perform a special low-energy run dedicated primarily to the needs of the LHCb experiment. Conducted at a beam energy of

Researchers at the AEgIS experiment have piloted a new method to delve into the heart of atoms. This proof-of-principle study, recently reported in Physical Review Research, shows how antiprotons – the antimatter counterparts of protons – could be used to probe the outer edges of a wider range of atomic nuclei. And with CERN’s recent world-first demonstration of antiproton transportation, this tec

Today, following more than two years of intense work of the European particle physics community under the auspices of the European Strategy Group, the CERN Council updated the European Strategy for Particle Physics [link to Resolution], which sets out an ambitious scientific vision for the field. The 2026 Strategy update offers a clear path to maintain European leadership in high-energy physics wh

The ATLAS Collaboration reports the first observation of the Bc*+ meson, an excited counterpart of a particle made up of a charm quark and a bottom antiquarkAt the Large Hadron Collider Physics conference this week, physicists from the ATLAS Collaboration reported the first observation of a new particle with properties consistent with the Bc*+ meson. This particle is an excited version of the Bc+

Alumni of the 1976 Summer Student Programme took a tour of the place where they first met 50 years agoOn 8 May 2026 a group of alumni of CERN’s Summer Student Programme reunited at the place where they first met 50 years ago.The group of four (left to right: Dave Eyre, Christian Gerke, Theo Oyevar and Claus Gössling) first came to CERN in 1976, when the Super Proton Synchrotron had just begun oper

Originally derived from a technology developed to explore the fundamental nature of the Universe, Medipix3 technology now powers a medical scanner that is on track to benefit an increased number of patients. MARS Bioimaging Ltd has received 510(k) clearance from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for its portable photon-counting CT scanner for upper-limb imaging, allowing the system to ente

View the video hereWhen you want to capture an important moment in your life, you often take a photo. You could write down the key details instead – who you were with, where you were, the time of day – but this information might not be as impactful as a picture of the event. Physicists like to record particle collisions in a similar way using so-called “event displays”, but producing these is a li

In a major milestone for the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE) in the US, approximately 4500 tonnes of steel beams will soon be moved 1.5 km underground to build the structural elements of two enormous detectors. CERN is playing a key role in DUNE, an international endeavour to explore the mysterious properties of neutrinos.On 7 May, CERN Director-General Mark Thomson attended an event a

Smart and fast decision making is key when dealing with the onslaught of collisions at the LHC. At the High-Luminosity LHC (HiLumi LHC), the ATLAS and CMS experiments are expected to process detector data at rates corresponding to roughly a quarter of the 2025 global internet traffic. All in real time, as part of the first stages of event selection.Each second, billions of protons crash into one a

On 20 April 2026, another important milestone was reached for the High-Luminosity Large Hadron Collider (HiLumi LHC) project, with the start of the electrical powering of the 95-metre-long test stand called the Inner Triplet String (IT String). Following its successful cryogenic cooldown to 1.9 K (‑271.3 °C) a few weeks ago, it will be powered up progressively, circuit by circuit, over the next fe

One of the biggest open questions in particle physics today is how the Higgs boson interacts with itself. This “self-coupling” could help explain the evolution of the early Universe and the mechanism that gives mass to elementary particles. To try to shed light on this fundamental interaction, the ATLAS Collaboration has recently studied one of the “golden” decay channels of a pair of Higgs bosons

Tens of kilometres above Earth’s surface, high-energy particles from outer space constantly strike the atmosphere, creating showers of energetic secondary particles that rain down from the sky. Approximately one of these particles passes through your head every second, but the “cosmic rays” that produce them are still not fully understood. In a recent paper , the ATLAS Collaboration describes how

GENEVA, UPTON, N.Y., and BATAVIA, Ill. — The Muon g-2 Collaborations at CERN — the European Organization for Nuclear Research — and two U.S. Department of Energy National Laboratories — Brookhaven National Laboratory and Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) — are the recipients of this year’s Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics . Over a period of more than 60 years, experiments a

The CMS Collaboration has probed deep inside quarks to search for potential building blocks within themAccording to our current understanding of the Universe, quarks are fundamental, point-like particles: basic building blocks that are not made up of smaller particles. A recent paper from the CMS Collaboration describes how it probed quarks to the scale of 10-20 metres to test this premise.At this