Description

Many of YOU have been informed of developments at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Geneva through the media. Not just developments but entanglements! The entanglements started with the question of why the taxpayer (two Euros per year for every Dutchman) should contribute to its own demise because of the creation of a black hole. The question even went to court. Rarely has a lawyer had to delve into such a matter.
And, on top of that, a week after the LHC started up in 2008, a faulty weld between two magnets brought the machine to its knees. That shortcoming was fixed after a year and the machine is now functioning entirely as expected.
For Histechnica, it might be interesting to delve into the history of this giant. And this history goes back to mid-19th century Ruhmkorff with his inductor. Via a number of resourceful (and no less colourful) researchers, we enter the modern era of cyclotron, cosmotron and storage rings.
Hand in hand with these technical developments, the theory behind the phenomena is also making great leaps: Einstein with his E = mc², and the birth of quantum mechanics, a zoo of elementary particles, of which the Higgs boson is the most publicised. And then the surprising
turn of the 1980s: the breakthrough of the realisation that the laws these accelerators establish between the building blocks of matter play a determining role in the development of the universe just after the Big Bang. A "marriage de raison" between the small and the big.
Beyond the purely scientific interest, there are numerous technical applications, particularly in the medical world

10.30 h Reception with coffee/tea
11.00 h Lecture by Drs C.P. Korthals Altes
11.45 h Break
12.15 h Continuation of lecture with concluding discussion
12.45 h End of meeting

Speaker(s)

Chris P. Korthals Altes: PhD (UvA 1969), Theoretical Physics. After several postdocs Directeur de Recherche at the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in Marseille. Various sabbaticals (CERN, Brookhaven). Now at the National Institute for Nuclear and High Energy Physics (NIKHEF) in Amsterdam.
Dr Korthals Altes is interested in the physics of elementary particles just after the Big Bang.

Location

Science Centre, Mijnbouwstraat 120, Delft

Organiser

History of Technology

Histechnica

Name and contact details for information

Further information from L.A. Hissink at the e-mail address below.

hissinkla@planet.nl