Talk:CERN

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Contents

[edit] Title of the LHC section

The title of the section called The accelerators of the Future: LHC, should be called something different, as it currently sounds like an advertisement. Calling it The Large Hadron Collider or similar should be fineButtc0 (talk) 23:51, 27 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Networking at CERN

Does CERN also deal with some networking standards? I assume this dates back to ARPNET. we may want to clarify this.

Normally no, but they did develop the initial World-Wide Web infrastructure, originally for internal documentation purposes. David.Monniaux 00:47, 30 May 2004 (UTC)

The line "It also has very impressive computer and wide-area networking facilities which are primarily used for experimental data analysis." baffles me. What, exactly, is the "it" specified in the first sentence? The accelerator complex? Or the CERN organization? Situated at the beginning of a section as this is, one should not use ambiguous pronouns. Evilweevil 13:11, 24 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I have modified the article to clarify this. --Jll 16:06, 10 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The Grid, which AFAIK is being developed mainly at CERN, definitely deserves a section in the article. However, I don't know the inside of the project, so some CERN IT department employee should probably step forward. PS: There is already a Grid computing article.

I'll get to this when i have a moment - i can probably even claim its work!

[edit] mirror of the original CERN "WWW homepage"

I recently picked this up from a now defunct site. The webmaster was giving away pages and I snagged this, what I think is the only surviving mirror of the original CERN WorldWideWeb Homepage. Is this not correct? humblefool®Wikipedia:Criteria_for_speedy_deletion/Proposal 4 July 2005 23:06 (UTC)

Unfortunately the site is down. Does anyone have the page? Or will the archives be lost forever? It's a pity to see the page disappear. Jorophose 21:58, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Name

There is a conflict regarding the actual name of the organization in this article. The beginning of the article says that CERN is the "European Organization for Nuclear Research," and later in the article it says, "European Center for Nuclear Research." The latter actually makes more sense, since in French, it actually fits the acronym.

I guess it's possible that the CERN people wanted to change it to "Organization," but didn't want to change the acronym to CORN. I will look into this...

The name at the top of the page is correct. There's a discussion of the name and acronym near the bottom of the article. The inconsistency in the middle was probably a well-meaning, but wrong, correction. I'll check and fix it if so. -- SCZenz 06:30, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] "West Area"

The article refers to "the main Meyrin site (also known as the West Area)...". This is incorrect. The main Meyrin site includes many buildings and facilities *including* the "West Area". The name "West Area" refers specifically to the experimental halls that receive particle beams from the west extraction zone of the SPS. The main buildings, the computer centre, the PS accelerator (and injectors), the old ISRs and so on are not part of the West Area. -- Ian 11:30, 17 January 2005 (UTC)

[edit] LHC Olympics

The LHC Olympics are in the news a lot - Should a reference go in the article? LHC Olympics --Zegoma beach 21:09, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

A link in the article would be appropriate—an actual text section might be more appropriate in the Large Hadron Collider article. I'm surprised to hear that the LHC Olympics are in the news a lot—I've heard of them because I have friends working on it, but my impression is that they're not all that exciting. -- SCZenz 00:17, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Pronunciation

Am I correct that "CERN" is pronounced "surn"? If yes, I think that should be added to the article. -- Felix Wiemann 20:01, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

That's how English-speakers pronounce it in my experience. French-speakers pronounce it the way it looks in French (the e sounds the same as in English "bear"). There's a funny story relating to this and the first time I tried to take a cab in Geneva, but this really isn't the place to tell it. -- SCZenz 20:17, 1 July 2006 (UTC)
OK, thanks. I added "surn" and "sèrn" at the beginning. If someone can spell this with IPA, please go ahead (even though I might not understand it anymore then ;-)). -- Felix Wiemann 22:43, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] 1,800mb per second

I am just writing this here so it doesn't get a revert. There was a short sentence in the article regarding how CERN must acheive triple this (600 mb per second) for it to work properly (the LHC) by 2007. I changed the "triple this" sentence to reflect an actual number, as ther was some minor discussion elsewhere with people wondering if it was triple it in terms of 600^3 or just 600 x 3. So, I checked it out, and it is indeed 1,800MB per second. Check my discussion page to chat about it. Sod Aries 16:44, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

I think tend to think "triple" was clear enough; not only is cubing a number with units meaningless, but I can't imagine that any significant fraction of readers would ever become confused on this point in the first place. -- SCZenz 16:50, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

"This accelerator will generate vast quantities of computer data, which CERN will stream to laboratories around the world for distributed processing (the GRID technology). In April 2005, a trial successfully streamed 600 MB per second to seven different sites across the world. If all the data generated by the LHC is to be analysed, then scientists must achieve 1,800 MB per second before 2008." ---It now is 2008, can the above quote be updated? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.13.90.118 (talk) 18:05, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

' Notice ot all! As of next year, Cern will not be alowing trips to see the particle accelerator as a new experamant is going to be taking place, and no doubtly for a number of years. just to let you no. Geo

[edit] ton and tonnes

Someone corrected the crane from lifting tonnes to tons, surly a belgium crane would lift metric tonnes? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by SteveTraylen (talk • contribs) 18:10, 24 December 2006 (UTC).

[edit] Another change to the name in first paragraph

User shandris has edited the first paragraph to say that CERN was "formerly" known as "Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire". I think that this is inappropriate for the following reasons:

1. The current organisation known as CERN was never known as the "Conseil". The "Conseil" was a different entity that was responsible for setting up the current organisation in 1952-1954 (see the "CERN Acronym" paragraph).

2. Even if the two were the same entity, it is more than 50 years since it was thus called.

3. The resulting initial sentence becomes quite hard to read.

I propose to revert the change.

Having said this, every few weeks or months someone comes along and decides that the first sentence must be wrong because the acronym does not appear to fit (despite there being clear comments in the HTML). Does anyone have any suggestions ? For example, what if thtere were a link from the first paragraph to the "CERN acronym" paragraph. --62.232.27.82 16:21, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

I think you're right; that addition kind of missed the nuances of the acronym. As for people who come through and change the first sentence, despite the HTML comments, I can't imagine anything but to revert. I fear a link at the start would make the intro cumbersome. -- SCZenz 14:35, 27 January 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Map is wrong

Sweden, Norway and Yugoslavia are greyed out, but should be blue. 81.93.102.185 14:49, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Already asked the orignal author to re-do it. See members.svg here. Cheers Khukri 15:11, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
Request Y Done FANSTAR 21:27, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Logo

Some (extremist) Christians say that the logo of CERN has a 666 hidden in it. I can see what they are talking about, but I'm sure that is unintentional. Does anyone have any background on the logo? Thanks!    DangerousNerd    talk    contribs    email   20:07, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Most probably the same lot that see devil worshipping in the Proctor & Gamble logo, or the fact they may have read it in Dan Brown's book and thought it must be real because he only writes about stuff based on facts. The CERN logo depicts the PS, SPS and LEP (now LHC) accelerators with the lines coming of each ring representing the injection lines from the smaller accelerator leading into the successive larger ones. Khukri 20:13, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
Thank you!   Dangerous  Nerd   18:25, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Complete re-write

I'm looking to do a complete re-write of this article, to bring it up to GA/FA status. Currently the article is very disjointed and doesn't flow, and am hopefully getting some other people at CERN to participate. If you're interested (at CERN or not) please let me know. Khukri 09:13, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

In principle, yes. It's not easy to get an article like this one to flow, though; CERN does a lot of different things, and has a lot of interesting facts associated with it. — SCZenz 21:54, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
I see you've done or had a good hand in alot of the periphery articles, but what I'd like to do is have an article more detailed on CERN itself expanding on it's history, and it's status etc. Then have a number of subarticles, asking the guys round here who work on some of them to de-stub them.
As a start point I've tried to list and find as many of the sub CERN pages and list them here so we can get an overview. Feel free to add anymore or like CNGS (added) that don't have articles but should. Khukri 09:32, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Maddox listed in 'In fiction' section

Is there any real justification in having this in the article? Aside from the fact that the satire article does not even have a citation; the fact that the worlds largest particle physics lab is mentioned somewhere in an article written by a moderately popular internet writer does not in my opinion add anything of value to the entry. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.142.19.181 (talk) 13:31, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Simple verb tense problem

I can't believe I have to bring this to the talk page, but I've been reverted twice now, by different users.

"The 1984 Nobel Prize in physics was awarded to Carlo Rubbia and Simon van der Meer for the developments that lead to the discoveries of the W and Z bosons."

Am I crazy to think it should be "led" instead of "lead"?

The sentence doesn't seem like part of a present tense styled timeline, which seems like the only excuse.

- Misha

216.254.12.114 23:33, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Hi Misha. I see you have changed "lead" to "led" again in the scientific achievements section. This has, as you observe, been reverted twice. I think the problem is one of US vs British spelling and convention. In British english "lead" can also be the past tense and is pronounced like "led". To UK eyes "led to the..." looks odd and (not to put too fine a point on it) American. The rest of the article uses UK/European spelling (centre, metre and so on) and so it is felt that "lead" would be more appropriate here. This is in line with the Wikipedia convention of having each article independantly adopt a consistent style on US/UK spelling.

Thanks. Ian 90.155.77.202 13:54, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Howdy Ian. I loved your polite and reasoned response to my annoying edits. I'm sure you would know better than I, but I can't find any evidence of this difference in my New Oxford Dictionary of English, or in a Google search. I am very willing to be convinced otherwise. At least one of us is bound to learn something new.

Thank you! Misha 216.254.12.114 00:13, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] A removed link

Khukri recently removed this link:

The Potential for Danger in Particle Collider Experiments

While this link may be worthy of deletion, the justification given in the edit summery did not refute or address the specific claims made at the linked page. That page actually took into consideration what Khukri said. I'm not sure that Khukri actually read the page.

– Misha

216.254.12.114 (talk) 10:16, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Hi there, What assumption did you base your reasoning on that I didn't read the article, edit summaries only have a finite space to leave a rationale. I did read it and though the piece does have some credible references the article itself draws too many conclusions, and is over dramatic to say the least. The conclusion is a narrative, and a subjective opinion. It is blatantly scare mongering, jumping from the topic of black holes to using terminology such as death in blood which is not scientific in the least, and it's my opinion this paper would struggle to be published by any credible journal.
Though personally I think the notion is ridiculous, credible arguments have been made on this subject, hence there is a paragraph on the subject within the LHC article and that will certainly not be deleted, no matter what my personal viewpoint is. Khukri 10:56, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
Hi there right back. Sorry for my late response. (In answer to your question, I do not believe I made any assumptions, nor did I reach any conclusions other than my own uncertainty.)
It is unfortunate that you didn't have adequate space to leave a fuller justification of the deletion. I still feel that your choice of edit summary was unfortunate. The rationale you did leave was the cosmic ray argument regularly used to allay fears of danger. The same cosmic ray argument was a prominent subject of criticism in the article. If you choose to criticize the article to justify deleting a link, you have to criticize the logic and facts in the article, not just repeat the argument that that article is "debunking". I hope that makes sense.
Thank you very much for your time,
– Misha
216.254.12.114 (talk) 17:17, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Problems with the introduction

I attempted to correct a few issues and was reverted by Khukri.

  1. The IPA citation, including the French pronunciation, only serves to further clutter a poor introductory sentence. There isn't really any ambiguity in how to pronounce the acronym, and telling us how to do so in French has no place in the English Wikipedia.
  2. Because this is an international facility, showing the original French "Organisation européenne pour la recherche nucléaire" may have a place somewhere in the article, but only serves to clutter the introductory sentence.
  3. The leap that the introductory paragraph should make at some point is how we get the acronym CERN. Thus, I proposed the following change:

The European Organization for Nuclear Research, commonly known as CERN (French: Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire) is the world's largest particle physics laboratory, situated in the northwest suburbs of Geneva on the border between France and Switzerland.

What are the issues with this change? --Benplowman (talk) 06:10, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Because your change is incorrect it is not known in French as "Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire" and hasn't been for quite a number of years in French it is "Organisation européenne pour la recherche nucléaire". See here. cheers Khukri 00:50, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Brief History of Time

I removed the line in the "Fiction" section that said CERN was mentioned in "A Brief History of Time" since:

- The book is not fiction

- CERN is probably mentioned in dozens or hundreds of science related non-fiction books and so a mention in Hawking's book is not notable.

90.202.177.15 (talk) 22:11, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Critical section

hasn't there been and isn't there a number of lawsuits to restrict the cerns program? Aren't there any critical views of this prodject that should be included? Did it take much longer then expected and cost much more then predicted? Don't get me wrong I would prefer that every article not have a critical section but that doesn't seem to be the wiki way... I just think it would be nice if this article had a "Concerns" section or something. I do see that there is an article about the LHC with a critical section, so maybe one isn't needed here, even though I believe it is the Cern that is getting sued not the LHC. I a may be confused though. Mantion (talk) 11:20, 16 May 2008 (UTC)