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CERN’s dedicated heavy-ion physics experiment, ALICE, is upgrading its Inner Tracking System and adding a forward calorimeter for the next phase of the LHC upgrade.
ALICE’s new subdetectors, Forward Calorimeter (left) and components of the Inner Tracking System 3 (right) (Image: ALICE Collaboration)
Two detector upgrades of ALICE, the dedicated heavy-ion physics experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), have recently been approved for installation during the next long shutdown of the LHC, which will take place from 2026 to 2028. The first one is an upgrade of the innermost three layers of the Inner Tracking System (ITS3), and the second is a new forward calorimeter (FoCal), optimised for photon detection in the forward direction of the ALICE detector.
High-energy collisions of heavy ions like lead nuclei at the LHC recreate quark–gluon plasma: the hottest and densest fluid ever studied in a laboratory. Besides studying the properties of quark–gluon plasma, the ALICE programme covers a broad array of topics involving strong interaction, such as determining the structure of nuclei and the interactions between unstable particles, as presented in A journey through the quark-gluon plasma and beyond.
Inner Tracking System (ITS3)
ALICE’s current Inner Tracking System, installed for the ongoing LHC run, is the world’s largest pixel detector to date, with 10 m2 of active silicon area and nearly 13 billion pixels. The new Inner Tracking System, ITS3, builds on the successful use of monolithic active pixel sensors and takes this concept to the next level.
“ALICE is like a high-resolution camera, capturing intricate details of particle interactions. ITS3 is all set to boost the pointing resolution of the tracks by a factor of 2 compared to the current ITS detector,” said Alex Kluge and Magnus Mager, the project leaders of ITS3. “This will strongly enhance the measurements of thermal radiation emitted by the quark–gluon plasma and provide insights into the interactions of charm and beauty quarks when they propagate through the plasma.”
The ITS3 sensors are 50 µm thick and as large as 26×10 cm2. To achieve this, a novel stitching technology was used to connect individual sensors together into a large structure. These sensors can now be bent around the beampipe in a truly cylindrical shape. The first layer will be placed only 2 mm from the beampipe and 19 mm from the interaction point. It can now be cooled by air instead of water and has a much lighter support structure, significantly reducing the materials and their effect on the particle trajectories seen in the detector.
Forward Calorimeter (FoCal)
The FoCal detector consists of an electromagnetic calorimeter (FoCal-E) and a hadronic calorimeter (FoCal-H). FoCal-E is a highly granular calorimeter composed of 18 layers of silicon pad sensors, each as small as 1×1 cm2, and two additional special layers with pixels of 30×30 μm2. FoCal-H is made of copper capillar tubes and scintillating fibres.
“By measuring inclusive photons and their correlations with neutral mesons, and the production of jets and charmonia, FoCal offers a unique possibility for a systematic exploration of QCD at small Bjorken-x. FoCal extends the scope of ALICE by adding new capabilities to explore the small-x parton structure of nucleons and nuclei,” said Constantin Loizides, project leader of FoCal at the ALICE collaboration.
The newly built FoCal prototypes have recently been tested with beams in the CERN accelerator complex, at the Proton Synchrotron and Super Proton Synchrotron, demonstrating their performance in line with expectations from detector simulations.
The ITS3 and FoCal projects have reached the important milestone of completing their Technical Design Reports, which were endorsed by the CERN review committees in March 2024. The construction phase of ITS3 and FoCal starts now, with the detectors due to be installed in early 2028 in order to be ready for data taking in 2029.
The latest searches conducted by the MoEDAL experiment at the Large Hadron Collider considerably shrink the theoretical arenas in which the hunt for magnetic monopoles can continue.
The MoEDAL detector (Image: CERN)
The late physicist Joseph Polchinski once said the existence of magnetic monopoles is “one of the safest bets that one can make about physics not yet seen”. In its quest for these particles, which have a magnetic charge and are predicted by several theories that extend the Standard Model, the MoEDAL collaboration at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has not yet proven Polchinski right, but its latest findings mark a significant stride forward. The results, reported in two papers posted on the arXiv preprint server, considerably narrow the search window for these hypothetical particles.
At the LHC, pairs of magnetic monopoles could be produced in interactions between protons or heavy ions. In collisions between protons, they could be formed from a single virtual photon (the Drell–Yan mechanism) or the fusion of two virtual photons (the photon-fusion mechanism). Pairs of magnetic monopoles could also be produced from the vacuum in the enormous magnetic fields created in near-miss heavy-ion collisions, through a process called the Schwinger mechanism.
Since it started taking data in 2012, MoEDAL has achieved several firsts, including conducting the first searches at the LHC for magnetic monopoles produced via the photon-fusion mechanism and through the Schwinger mechanism. In the first of its latest studies, the MoEDAL collaboration sought monopoles and high-electric-charge objects (HECOs) produced via the Drell–Yan and photon-fusion mechanisms. The search was based on proton–proton collision data collected during Run 2 of the LHC, using the full MoEDAL detector for the first time.
The full detector comprises two main systems sensitive to magnetic monopoles, HECOs and other highly ionising hypothetical particles. The first can permanently register the tracks of magnetic monopoles and HECOs, with no background signals from Standard Model particles. These tracks are measured using optical scanning microscopes at INFN Bologna. The second system consists of roughly a tonne of trapping volumes designed to capture magnetic monopoles. These trapping volumes – which make MoEDAL the only collider experiment in the world that can definitively and directly identify the magnetic charge of magnetic monopoles – are scanned at ETH Zurich using a special type of magnetometer called a SQUID to look for any trapped monopoles they may contain.
In their latest scanning of the trapping volumes, the MoEDAL team found no magnetic monopoles or HECOs, but it set bounds on the mass and production rate of these particles for different values of particle spin, an intrinsic form of angular momentum. For magnetic monopoles, the mass bounds were set for magnetic charges from 1 to 10 times the fundamental unit of magnetic charge, the Dirac charge (gD), and the existence of monopoles with masses as high as about 3.9 trillion electronvolts (TeV) was excluded. For HECOs, the mass limits were established for electric charges from 5e to 350e, where e is the electron charge, and the existence of HECOs with masses ranging up to 3.4 TeV was ruled out.
“MoEDAL’s search reach for both monopoles and HECOs allows the collaboration to survey a huge swathe of the theoretical ‘discovery space’ for these hypothetical particles,” says MoEDAL spokesperson James Pinfold.
In its second latest study, the MoEDAL team concentrated on the search for monopoles produced via the Schwinger mechanism in heavy-ion collision data taken during Run 1 of the LHC. In a unique endeavour, it scanned a decommissioned section of the CMS experiment beam pipe, instead of the MoEDAL detector’s trapping volumes, in search of trapped monopoles. Once again, the team found no monopoles, but it set the strongest-to-date mass limits on Schwinger monopoles with a charge between 2gD and 45gD, ruling out the existence of monopoles with masses of up to 80 GeV.
“The vital importance of the Schwinger mechanism is that the production of composite monopoles is not suppressed compared to that of elementary ones, as is the case with the Drell–Yan and photon-fusion processes,” explains Pinfold. “Thus, if monopoles are composite particles, this and our previous Schwinger-monopole search may have been the first-ever chances to observe them.”
The MoEDAL detector will soon be joined by the MoEDAL Apparatus for Penetrating Particles, MAPP for short, which will allow the experiment to cast an even broader net in the search for new particles.
Our mission Knowledge Transfer at CERN (CH) aims to engage with experts in science, technology and industry in order to create opportunities for the transfer of CERN’s technology and know-how. The ultimate goal is to accelerate innovation and maximize the global positive impact of CERN on society. This is done by promoting and transferring the technological and human capital developed at CERN. The CERN KT group promotes CERN as a centre of technological excellence, and promotes the positive impact of fundamental research organizations on society.
“Places like CERN contribute to the kind of knowledge that not only enriches humanity, but also provides the wellspring of ideas that become the technologies of the future.”
Below, you can see how CERN’s various areas of expertise translates into impact across industries beyond CERN. Read more about this at the from CERN technologies to society page.
CERN FASER is designed to study the interactions of high-energy neutrinos and search for new as-yet-undiscovered light and weakly interacting particles. Such particles are dominantly produced along the beam collision axis and may be long-lived particles, travelling hundreds of metres before decaying. The existence of such new particles is predicted by many models beyond the Standard Model that attempt to solve some of the biggest puzzles in physics, such as the nature of dark matter and the origin of neutrino masses.
New Collimateurs for HL-LHC.
These two new collimators have been developed at CERN for the future HL-LHC. These models will be installed at LHC interaction points 1 (ATLAS detector) and 5 (CMS detector) during Long Shutdown 3 (LS3). (Image: CERN)
The acronym CERN is also used to refer to the laboratory; in 2019, it had 2,660 scientific, technical, and administrative staff members, and hosted about 12,400 users from institutions in more than 70 countries. In 2016, CERN generated 49 petabytes of data.
CERN’s main function is to provide the particle accelerators and other infrastructure needed for high-energy physics research – consequently, numerous experiments have been constructed at CERN through international collaborations. CERN is the site of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s largest and highest-energy particle collider. The main site at Meyrin hosts a large computing facility, which is primarily used to store and analyze data from experiments, as well as simulate events. As researchers require remote access to these facilities, the lab has historically been a major wide area network hub. CERN is also the birthplace of the World Wide Web.
History
The convention establishing CERN was ratified on 29 September 1954 by 12 countries in Western Europe. The acronym CERN originally represented the French words for Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire (‘European Council for Nuclear Research’), which was a provisional council for building the laboratory, established by 12 European governments in 1952. During these early years, the council worked at the University of Copenhagen under the direction of Niels Bohr before moving to its present site near Geneva. The acronym was retained for the new laboratory after the provisional council was dissolved, even though the name changed to the current Organization Européenne pour la Recherche Nucléaire (‘European Organization for Nuclear Research’) in 1954. According to Lew Kowarski, a former director of CERN, when the name was changed, the abbreviation could have become the awkward OERN, and Werner Heisenberg said that this could “still be CERN even if the name is [not]”.
CERN’s first president was Sir Benjamin Lockspeiser. Edoardo Amaldi was the general secretary of CERN at its early stages when operations were still provisional, while the first Director-General (1954) was Felix Bloch.
The laboratory was originally devoted to the study of atomic nuclei, but was soon applied to higher-energy physics, concerned mainly with the study of interactions between subatomic particles. Therefore, the laboratory operated by CERN is commonly referred to as the European laboratory for particle physics (Laboratoire européen pour la physique des particules), which better describes the research being performed there.
Founding members
At the sixth session of the CERN Council, which took place in Paris from 29 June to 1 July 1953, the convention establishing the organization was signed, subject to ratification, by 12 states. The convention was gradually ratified by the 12 founding Member States: Belgium, Denmark, France, the Federal Republic of Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and Yugoslavia.
Scientific achievements
Several important achievements in particle physics have been made through experiments at CERN. They include:
• 1973: The discovery of neutral currents in the Gargamelle bubble chamber;
• 1983: The discovery of W and Z bosons in the UA1 and UA2 experiments;
• 1989: The determination of the number of light neutrino families at the Large Electron–Positron Collider (LEP) [below] operating on the Z boson peak;
• 1995: The first creation of antihydrogen atoms in the PS210 experiment;
• 1995–2005: Precision measurement of the Z lineshape, based predominantly on LEP data collected on the Z resonance from 1990 to 1995;
• 1999: The discovery of direct CP violation in the NA48 experiment;
• 2000: The Heavy Ion Programme discovered a new state of matter, the Quark Gluon Plasma.
• 2010: The isolation of 38 atoms of antihydrogen;
• 2011: Maintaining antihydrogen for over 15 minutes;
• 2012: A boson with mass around 125 GeV/c2 consistent with the long-sought Higgs boson.
Peter Higgs – University of Edinburgh [Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann] (SCT).
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In September 2011, CERN attracted media attention when the OPERA Collaboration reported the detection of possibly faster-than-light neutrinos. Further tests showed that the results were flawed due to an incorrectly connected GPS synchronization cable.
The 1984 Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded to Carlo Rubbia and Simon van der Meer for the developments that resulted in the discoveries of the W and Z bosons.
The 1992 Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded to CERN staff researcher Georges Charpak “for his invention and development of particle detectors, in particular the multiwire proportional chamber”.
The 2013 Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded to François Englert and Peter Higgs for the theoretical description of the Higgs mechanism in the year after the Higgs boson was found by CERN experiments.
CERN pioneered the introduction of Internet technology, beginning in the early 1980s. This played an influential role in the adoption of the TCP/IP in Europe.
The World Wide Web began as a project at CERN initiated by Tim Berners-Lee in 1989.
This stemmed from his earlier work on a database named ENQUIRE. Robert Cailliau became involved in 1990.
Berners-Lee and Cailliau were jointly honoured by the Association for Computing Machinery in 1995 for their contributions to the development of the World Wide Web. A copy of the original first webpage, created by Berners-Lee, is still published on the World Wide Web Consortium’s website as a historical document.
Based on the concept of hypertext, the project was designed to facilitate the sharing of information between researchers. The first website was activated in 1991. On 30 April 1993, CERN announced that the World Wide Web would be free to anyone.
It became the dominant way through which most users interact with the Internet.
More recently, CERN has become a facility for the development of “grid computing”, hosting projects including the Enabling Grids for E-sciencE (EGEE) and LHC Computing Grid. It also hosts the CERN Internet Exchange Point (CIXP), one of the two main internet exchange points in Switzerland.
As of 2022, CERN employs ten times more engineers and technicians than research physicists.
Particle accelerators
Current complex
CERN operates a network of seven accelerators and two decelerators, and some additional small accelerators. Each machine in the chain increases the energy of particle beams before delivering them to experiments or to the next more powerful accelerator (the decelerators naturally decrease the energy of particle beams before delivering them to experiments or further accelerators/decelerators).
Before an experiment is able to use the network of accelerators, it must be approved by the various Scientific Committees of CERN. As of 2022 active machines are the LHC accelerator and:
• The LINAC 3 linear accelerator generating low energy particles. It provides heavy ions at 4.2 MeV/u for injection into the Low Energy Ion Ring (LEIR).
• The Low Energy Ion Ring (LEIR) accelerates the ions from the ion linear accelerator LINAC 3, before transferring them to the Proton Synchrotron (PS). This accelerator was commissioned in 2005, after having been reconfigured from the previous Low Energy Antiproton Ring (LEAR).
• The Linac4 linear accelerator accelerates negative hydrogen ions to an energy of 160 MeV. The ions are then injected to the Proton Synchrotron Booster (PSB) where both electrons are then stripped from each of the hydrogen ions and thus only the nucleus containing one proton remains. The protons are then used in experiments or accelerated further in other CERN accelerators. Linac4 serves as the source of all proton beams for CERN experiments.
• The Proton Synchrotron Booster increases the energy of particles generated by the proton linear accelerator before they are transferred to the other accelerators.
• The 28 GeV Proton Synchrotron (PS), built during 1954–1959 and still operating as a feeder to the more powerful SPS and to many of CERN’s experiments.
• The Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS), a circular accelerator with a diameter of 2 kilometres built in a tunnel, which started operation in 1976. It was designed to deliver an energy of 300 GeV and was gradually upgraded to 450 GeV. As well as having its own beamlines for fixed-target experiments (currently COMPASS and NA62), it has been operated as a proton–antiproton collider (the SppS collider), and for accelerating high energy electrons and positrons which were injected into the Large Electron–Positron Collider (LEP). Since 2008, it has been used to inject protons and heavy ions into the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).
• The On-Line Isotope Mass Separator (ISOLDE), which is used to study unstable nuclei. The radioactive ions are produced by the impact of protons at an energy of 1.0–1.4 GeV from the Proton Synchrotron Booster. It was first commissioned in 1967 and was rebuilt with major upgrades in 1974 and 1992.
• The Antiproton Decelerator (AD), which reduces the velocity of antiprotons to about 10% of the speed of light for research of antimatter. The AD machine was reconfigured from the previous Antiproton Collector (AC) machine.
• The Extra Low Energy Antiproton ring (ELENA), which takes antiprotons from AD and decelerates them into low energies (speeds) for use in antimatter experiments.
• The AWAKE experiment, which is a proof-of-principle plasma wakefield accelerator.
• The CERN Linear Electron Accelerator for Research (CLEAR) accelerator research and development facility.
Many activities at CERN currently involve operating the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and the experiments for it. The LHC represents a large-scale, worldwide scientific cooperation project.
The LHC tunnel is located 100 metres underground, in the region between Geneva International Airport and the nearby Jura mountains. The majority of its length is on the French side of the border. It uses the 27 km circumference circular tunnel previously occupied by the Large Electron–Positron Collider (LEP), which was shut down in November 2000. CERN’s existing PS/SPS accelerator complexes are used to pre-accelerate protons and lead ions which are then injected into the LHC.
Eight experiments (CMS, ATLAS, LHCb, MoEDAL, TOTEM, LHCf, FASER and ALICE) are located along the collider; each of them studies particle collisions from a different aspect, and with different technologies.
Construction for these experiments required an extraordinary engineering effort. For example, a special crane was rented from Belgium to lower pieces of the CMS detector into its cavern, since each piece weighed nearly 2,000 tons. The first of the approximately 5,000 magnets necessary for construction was lowered down a special shaft at 13:00 GMT on 7 March 2005.
The LHC has begun to generate vast quantities of data, which CERN streams to laboratories around the world for distributed processing (making use of a specialized grid infrastructure, the LHC Computing Grid).
During April 2005, a trial successfully streamed 600 MB/s to seven different sites across the world.
The initial particle beams were injected into the LHC August 2008. The first beam was circulated through the entire LHC on 10 September 2008, but the system failed 10 days later because of a faulty magnet connection, and it was stopped for repairs on 19 September 2008.
The LHC resumed operation on 20 November 2009 by successfully circulating two beams, each with an energy of 3.5 teraelectronvolts (TeV).
The challenge for the engineers was then to line up the two beams so that they smashed into each other. This is like “firing two needles across the Atlantic and getting them to hit each other” according to Steve Myers, director for accelerators and technology.
On 30 March 2010, the LHC successfully collided two proton beams with 3.5 TeV of energy per proton, resulting in a 7 TeV collision energy. However, this was just the start of what was needed for the expected discovery of the Higgs boson. When the 7 TeV experimental period ended, the LHC revved to 8 TeV (4 TeV per proton) starting March 2012, and soon began particle collisions at that energy. In July 2012, CERN scientists announced the discovery of a new sub-atomic particle that was later confirmed to be the Higgs boson.
In March 2013, CERN announced that the measurements performed on the newly found particle allowed it to conclude that it was a Higgs boson. In early 2013, the LHC was deactivated for a two-year maintenance period, to strengthen the electrical connections between magnets inside the accelerator and for other upgrades.
On 5 April 2015, after two years of maintenance and consolidation, the LHC restarted for a second run. The first ramp to the record-breaking energy of 6.5 TeV was performed on 10 April 2015. In 2016, the design collision rate was exceeded for the first time. A second two-year period of shutdown begun at the end of 2018.
Accelerators under construction
As of October 2019, the construction is on-going to upgrade the LHC’s luminosity in a project called High Luminosity LHC (HL–LHC).
This project should see the LHC accelerator upgraded by 2026 to an order of magnitude higher luminosity.
As part of the HL–LHC upgrade project, also other CERN accelerators and their subsystems are receiving upgrades. Among other work, the LINAC 2 linear accelerator injector was decommissioned and replaced by a new injector accelerator, the LINAC4.
Decommissioned accelerators
• The original linear accelerator LINAC 1. Operated 1959–1992.
• The LINAC 2 linear accelerator injector. Accelerated protons to 50 MeV for injection into the Proton Synchrotron Booster (PSB). Operated 1978–2018.
• The 600 MeV Synchro-Cyclotron (SC) which started operation in 1957 and was shut down in 1991. Was made into a public exhibition in 2012–2013.
• The Intersecting Storage Rings (ISR), an early collider built from 1966 to 1971 and operated until 1984.
• The Super Proton–Antiproton Synchrotron (SppS), operated 1981–1991. A modification of Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) to operate as a proton-antiproton collider.
• The Large Electron–Positron Collider (LEP), which operated 1989–2000 and was the largest machine of its kind, housed in a 27 km-long circular tunnel which now houses the Large Hadron Collider.
• The LEP Pre-Injector (LPI) accelerator complex, consisting of two accelerators, a linear accelerator called LEP Injector Linac (LIL; itself consisting of two back-to-back linear accelerators called LIL V and LIL W) and a circular accelerator called Electron Positron Accumulator (EPA). The purpose of these accelerators was to inject positron and electron beams into the CERN accelerator complex (more precisely, to the Proton Synchrotron), to be delivered to LEP after many stages of acceleration. Operational 1987–2001; after the shutdown of LEP and the completion of experiments that were directly fed by the LPI, the LPI facility was adapted to be used for the CLIC Test Facility 3 (CTF3).
• The Low Energy Antiproton Ring (LEAR) was commissioned in 1982. LEAR assembled the first pieces of true antimatter, in 1995, consisting of nine atoms of antihydrogen. It was closed in 1996, and superseded by the Antiproton Decelerator. The LEAR apparatus itself was reconfigured into the Low Energy Ion Ring (LEIR) ion booster.
• The Antiproton Accumulator (AA), built 1979–1980, operations ended in 1997 and the machine was dismantled. Stored antiprotons produced by the Proton Synchrotron (PS) for use in other experiments and accelerators (for example the ISR, SppS and LEAR). For later half of its working life operated in tandem with Antiproton Collector (AC), to form the Antiproton Accumulation Complex (AAC).
• The Antiproton Collector (AC), built 1986–1987, operations ended in 1997 and the machine was converted into the Antiproton Decelerator (AD), which is the successor machine for Low Energy Antiproton Ring (LEAR). Operated in tandem with Antiproton Accumulator (AA) and the pair formed the Antiproton Accumulation Complex (AAC), whose purpose was to store antiprotons produced by the Proton Synchrotron (PS) for use in other experiments and accelerators, like the Low Energy Antiproton Ring (LEAR) and Super Proton–Antiproton Synchrotron (SppS).
• The Compact Linear Collider Test Facility 3 (CTF3), which studied feasibility for the future normal conducting linear collider project (the CLIC collider). In operation 2001–2016. One of its beamlines has been converted, from 2017 on, into the new CERN Linear Electron Accelerator for Research (CLEAR) facility.
Possible future accelerators
CERN, in collaboration with groups worldwide, is investigating two main concepts for future accelerators: A linear electron-positron collider with a new acceleration concept to increase the energy (CLIC) and a larger version of the LHC, a project currently named Future Circular Collider.
The smaller accelerators are on the main Meyrin site (also known as the West Area), which was originally built in Switzerland alongside the French border, but has been extended to span the border since 1965. The French side is under Swiss jurisdiction and there is no obvious border within the site, apart from a line of marker stones.
The SPS and LEP/LHC tunnels are almost entirely outside the main site, and are mostly buried under French farmland and invisible from the surface. However, they have surface sites at various points around them, either as the location of buildings associated with experiments or other facilities needed to operate the colliders such as cryogenic plants and access shafts. The experiments are located at the same underground level as the tunnels at these sites.
Three of these experimental sites are in France, with ATLAS in Switzerland, although some of the ancillary cryogenic and access sites are in Switzerland. The largest of the experimental sites is the Prévessin site, also known as the North Area, which is the target station for non-collider experiments on the SPS accelerator. Other sites are the ones which were used for the UA1, UA2 and the LEP experiments (the latter are used by LHC experiments).
Outside of the LEP and LHC experiments, most are officially named and numbered after the site where they were located. For example, NA32 was an experiment looking at the production of so-called “charmed” particles and located at the Prévessin (North Area) site while WA22 used the Big European Bubble Chamber (BEBC) at the Meyrin (West Area) site to examine neutrino interactions. The UA1 and UA2 experiments were considered to be in the Underground Area, i.e. situated underground at sites on the SPS accelerator.
Most of the roads on the CERN Meyrin and Prévessin sites are named after famous physicists, such as Wolfgang Pauli, who pushed for CERN’s creation. Other notable names are Richard Feynman, Albert Einstein, and Bohr.
Participation and funding
Member states and budget
Since its foundation by 12 members in 1954, CERN regularly accepted new members. All new members have remained in the organization continuously since their accession, except Spain and Yugoslavia. Spain first joined CERN in 1961, withdrew in 1969, and rejoined in 1983. Yugoslavia was a founding member of CERN but quit in 1961. Of the 23 members, Israel joined CERN as a full member on 6 January 2014, becoming the first (and currently only) non-European full member.
The budget contributions of member states are computed based on their GDP.
Enlargement
Associate Members, Candidates:
• Turkey signed an association agreement on 12 May 2014 and became an associate member on 6 May 2015.
• Pakistan signed an association agreement on 19 December 2014 and became an associate member on 31 July 2015.
• Cyprus signed an association agreement on 5 October 2012 and became an associate member in the pre-stage to membership on 1 April 2016.
• Ukraine signed an association agreement on 3 October 2013. The agreement was ratified on 5 October 2016.
• India signed an association agreement on 21 November 2016. The agreement was ratified on 16 January 2017.
• Slovenia was approved for admission as an Associate Member state in the pre-stage to membership on 16 December 2016. The agreement was ratified on 4 July 2017.
• Lithuania was approved for admission as an Associate Member state on 16 June 2017. The association agreement was signed on 27 June 2017 and ratified on 8 January 2018.
• Croatia was approved for admission as an Associate Member state on 28 February 2019. The agreement was ratified on 10 October 2019.
• Estonia was approved for admission as an Associate Member in the pre-stage to membership state on 19 June 2020. The agreement was ratified on 1 February 2021.
• Latvia and CERN signed an associate membership agreement on 14 April 2021. Latvia was formally admitted as an Associate Member on 2 August 2021.
International relations
Three countries have observer status:
• Japan – since 1995
• Russia – since 1993 (suspended as of March 2022)
• United States – since 1997
Also observers are the following international organizations:
• UNESCO – since 1954
• European Commission – since 1985
• JINR – since 2014 (suspended as of March 2022)
Non-Member States (with dates of Co-operation Agreements) currently involved in CERN programmes are:
• Albania – October 2014
• Algeria – 2008
• Argentina – 11 March 1992
• Armenia – 25 March 1994
• Australia – 1 November 1991
• Azerbaijan – 3 December 1997
• Bangladesh – 2014
• Belarus – 28 June 1994 (suspended as of March 2022)
• Bolivia – 2007
• Bosnia & Herzegovina – 16 February 2021
• Brazil – 19 February 1990 & October 2006
• Canada – 11 October 1996
• Chile – 10 October 1991
• China – 12 July 1991, 14 August 1997 & 17 February 2004
• Colombia – 15 May 1993
• Costa Rica – February 2014
• Ecuador – 1999
• Egypt – 16 January 2006
• Georgia – 11 October 1996
• Iceland – 11 September 1996
• Iran – 5 July 2001
• Jordan – 12 June 2003 MoU with Jordan and SESAME, in preparation of a cooperation agreement signed in 2004.
• Kazakhstan – June 2018
• Lebanon – 2015
• Malta – 10 January 2008
• Mexico – 20 February 1998
• Mongolia – 2014
• Montenegro – 12 October 1990
• Morocco – 14 April 1997
• Nepal – 19 September 2017
• New Zealand – 4 December 2003
• North Macedonia – 27 April 2009
• Palestine – December 2015
• Paraguay – January 2019
• Peru – 23 February 1993
• Philippines – 2018
• Qatar – 2016
• Republic of Korea (South Korea) – 25 October 2006
• Saudi Arabia – 2006
• South Africa – 4 July 1992
• Sri Lanka – February 2017
• Thailand – 2018
• Tunisia – May 2014
• United Arab Emirates – 2006
• Vietnam – 2008
CERN also has scientific contacts with the following other countries:
• Bahrain
• Cuba
• Ghana
• Honduras
• Hong Kong
• Indonesia
• Ireland
• Kuwait
• Luxemburg
• Madagascar
• Malaysia
• Mauritius
• Morocco
• Mozambique
• Oman
• Rwanda
• Singapore
• Sudan
• Taiwan
• Tanzania
• Uzbekistan
• Zambia
International research institutions, such as CERN, can aid in science diplomacy.
Associated institutions
A large number of institutes around the world are associated to CERN through current collaboration agreements and/or historical links. The list below contains organizations represented as observers to the CERN Council, organizations to which CERN is an observer and organizations based on the CERN model:
• European Molecular Biology Laboratory, organization based on the CERN model
• European Space Research Organization (since 1975 ESA), organization based on the CERN model
• European Southern Observatory, organization based on the CERN model
• JINR, observer to CERN Council, CERN is represented in the JINR Council. JINR is currently suspended, due to the CERN Council Resolution of 25 March 2022.
• SESAME, CERN is an observer to the SESAME Council
• UNESCO, observer to CERN Council
.cern
.cern is a top-level domain for CERN. It was registered on 13 August 2014. On 20 October 2015 CERN moved its main Website to https://home.cern.
Open Science
The Open Science movement focuses on making scientific research openly accessible and on creating knowledge through open tools and processes. Open access, open data, open source software and hardware, open licenses, digital preservation and reproducible research are primary components of open science and areas in which CERN has been working towards since its formation.
CERN has developed a number of policies and official documents that enable and promote open science, starting with CERN’s founding convention in 1953 which indicated that all its results are to be published or made generally available. Since then, CERN published its open access policy in 2014, which ensures that all publications by CERN authors will be published with gold open access and most recently an open data policy that was endorsed by the four main LHC collaborations (ALICE, ATLAS, CMS and LHCb).
The open data policy complements the open access policy, addressing the public release of scientific data collected by LHC experiments after a suitable embargo period. Prior to this open data policy, guidelines for data preservation, access and reuse were implemented by each collaboration individually through their own policies which are updated when necessary.
The European Strategy for Particle Physics, a document mandated by the CERN Council that forms the cornerstone of Europe’s decision-making for the future of particle physics, was last updated in 2020 and affirmed the organization’s role within the open science landscape by stating: “The particle physics community should work with the relevant authorities to help shape the emerging consensus on open science to be adopted for publicly-funded research, and should then implement a policy of open science for the field”.
Beyond the policy level, CERN has established a variety of services and tools to enable and guide open science at CERN, and in particle physics more generally. On the publishing side, CERN has initiated and operates a global cooperative project, the Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics, SCOAP3, to convert scientific articles in high-energy physics to open access. Currently, the SCOAP3 partnership represents 3000+ libraries from 44 countries and 3 intergovernmental organizations who have worked collectively to convert research articles in high-energy physics across 11 leading journals in the discipline to open access.
Public-facing results can be served by various CERN-based services depending on their use case: the CERN Open Data portal, Zenodo, the CERN Document Server, INSPIRE and HEPData are the core services used by the researchers and community at CERN, as well as the wider high-energy physics community for the publication of their documents, data, software, multimedia, etc.
CERN’s efforts towards preservation and reproducible research are best represented by a suite of services addressing the entire physics analysis lifecycle (such as data, software and computing environment). CERN Analysis Preservation helps researchers to preserve and document the various components of their physics analyses; REANA (Reusable Analyses) enables the instantiating of preserved research data analyses on the cloud.
All of the above mentioned services are built using open source software and strive towards compliance with best effort principles where appropriate and where possible, such as the FAIR principles, the FORCE11 guidelines and Plan S, while at the same time taking into account relevant activities carried out by the European Commission.
Public exhibits
The Globe of Science and Innovation, which opened in late 2005, is open to the public. It is used four times a week for special exhibits.
The Microcosm museum previously hosted another on-site exhibition on particle physics and CERN history. It closed permanently on 18 September 2022, in preparation for the installation of the exhibitions in Science Gateway.
CERN also provides daily tours to certain facilities such as the Synchro-cyclotron (CERNs first particle accelerator) and the superconducting magnet workshop.
In 2004, a two-meter statue of the Nataraja, the dancing form of the Hindu god Shiva, was unveiled at CERN. The statue, symbolizing Shiva’s cosmic dance of creation and destruction, was presented by the Indian government to celebrate the research center’s long association with India. A special plaque next to the statue explains the metaphor of Shiva’s cosmic dance with quotations from physicist Fritjof Capra:
Hundreds of years ago, Indian artists created visual images of dancing Shivas in a beautiful series of bronzes. In our time, physicists have used the most advanced technology to portray the patterns of the cosmic dance. The metaphor of the cosmic dance thus unifies ancient mythology, religious art and modern physics.
Arts at CERN
CERN launched its Cultural Policy for engaging with the arts in 2011. The initiative provided the essential framework and foundations for establishing Arts at CERN, the arts programme of the Laboratory.
Since 2012, Arts at CERN has fostered creative dialogue between art and physics through residencies, art commissions, exhibitions and events. Artists across all creative disciplines have been invited to CERN to experience how fundamental science pursues the big questions about our universe.
Even before the arts programme officially started, several highly regarded artists visited the Laboratory, drawn to physics and fundamental science. As early as 1972, James Lee Byars was the first artist to visit the Laboratory and the only one, so far, to feature on the cover of the CERN Courier. Mariko Mori, Gianni Motti, Cerith Wyn Evans, John Berger and Anselm Kiefer are among the artists who came to CERN in the years that followed.
The programmes of Arts at CERN are structured according to their values and vision to create bridges between cultures. Each programme is designed and formed in collaboration with cultural institutions, other partner laboratories, countries, cities and artistic communities eager to connect with CERN’s research, support their activities, and contribute to a global network of art and science.
They comprise research-led artistic residencies that take place on-site or remotely. More than 200 artists from 80 countries have participated in the residencies to expand their creative practices at the Laboratory, benefiting from the involvement of 400 physicists, engineers and CERN staff. Between 500 and 800 applications are received every year. The programmes comprise Collide, the international residency programme organised in partnership with a city; Connect, a programme of residencies to foster experimentation in art and science at CERN and in scientific organizations worldwide in collaboration with Pro Helvetia, and Guest Artists, a short stay for artists to stay to engage with CERN’s research and community.
In popular culture
• The band Les Horribles Cernettes was founded by women from CERN. The name was chosen so to have the same initials as the LHC.
• The science journalist Katherine McAlpine made a rap video called Large Hadron Rap about CERN’s Large Hadron Collider with some of the facility’s staff.
• Particle Fever, a 2013 documentary, explores CERN throughout the inside and depicts the events surrounding the 2012 discovery of the Higgs Boson [ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Lx109jdGCc ].
• John Titor, a self-proclaimed time traveler, alleged that CERN would invent time travel in 2001.
• CERN is depicted in the visual novel/anime series Steins;Gate as SERN, a shadowy organization that has been researching time travel in order to restructure and control the world.
• In Robert J. Sawyer’s 1999 science fiction novel Flashforward, as CERN’s Large Hadron Collider accelerator is performing a run to search for the Higgs boson the entire human race sees themselves twenty-one years and six months in the future.
• A number of conspiracy theories feature CERN, accusing the organization of partaking in occult rituals and secret experiments involving opening portals into Hell or other dimensions, shifting the world into an alternative timeline and causing earthquakes.
• In Dan Brown’s 2000 mystery-thriller novel Angels & Demons and 2009 film of the same name, a canister of antimatter is stolen from CERN.
• CERN is depicted in a 2009 episode of South Park (Season 13, Episode 6), Pinewood Derby. Randy Marsh, the father of one of the main characters, breaks into the “Hadron Particle Super Collider in Switzerland” and steals a “superconducting bending magnet created for use in tests with particle acceleration” to use in his son Stan’s Pinewood Derby racer.
• In the 2010 season 3 episode 15 of the TV situation comedy The Big Bang Theory, The Large Hadron Collision, Leonard and Raj travel to CERN to attend a conference and see the LHC.
• The 2012 student film Decay, which centers on the idea of the Large Hadron Collider transforming people into zombies, was filmed on location in CERN’s maintenance tunnels.
• The Compact Muon Solenoid at CERN was used as the basis for the Megadeth’s Super Collider album cover.
• CERN forms part of the back story of the massively multiplayer augmented reality game Ingress, and in the 2018 Japanese anime television series Ingress: The Animation, based on Niantic’s augmented reality mobile game of the same name.
• In 2015, Sarah Charley, US communications manager for LHC experiments at CERN with graduate students Jesse Heilman of the University of California-Riverside, and Tom Perry and Laser Seymour Kaplan of the University of Wisconsin-Madison created a parody video based on Collide, a song by American artist Howie Day. The lyrics were changed to be from the perspective of a proton in the Large Hadron Collider. After seeing the parody, Day re-recorded the song with the new lyrics, and released a new version of Collide in February 2017 with a video created during his visit to CERN.
• In 2015, Ryoji Ikeda created an art installation called Supersymmetry based on his experience as a resident artist at CERN.
• The television series Mr. Robot features a secretive, underground project apparatus that resembles the ATLAS experiment.
• Parallels, a Disney+ television series released in March 2022, includes a particle-physics laboratory at the French-Swiss border called “ERN”. Various accelerators and facilities at CERN are referenced during the show, including ATLAS, CMS, the Antiproton Decelerator, and the FCC.
4.25.24
Rhonda Zurn
College of Science and Engineering
rzurn@umn.edu
Astronomers and astrophysicists could use these alerts and information to understand how neutron stars behave and study nuclear interactions between neutron stars and black holes colliding.
Alerts can now be sent less than 30 seconds after detection.
Researchers at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities College of Science and Engineering co-led a new study by an international team that will improve the detection of gravitational waves—ripples in space and time.
The research aims to send alerts to astronomers and astrophysicists within 30 seconds after the detection, helping to improve the understanding of neutron stars and black holes and how heavy elements, including gold and uranium, are produced.
Gravitational waves interact with spacetime by compressing it in one direction while stretching it in the perpendicular direction. That is why current state-of-the-art gravitational wave detectors are L-shaped and measure the relative lengths of the laser using interferometry, a measurement method which looks at the interference patterns produced by the combination of two light sources. Detecting gravitational waves requires measuring the length of the laser to precise measurements: equivalent to measuring the distance to the nearest star, around four light years away, down to the width of a human hair.
This research is part of the LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) Collaboration, a network of gravitational wave interferometers across the world.
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In the latest simulation campaign, data was used from previous observation periods and simulated gravitational wave signals were added to show the performance of the software and equipment upgrades. The software can detect the shape of signals, track how the signal behaves, and estimate what masses are included in the event, like neutron stars or black holes. Neutron stars are the smallest, most dense stars known to exist and are formed when massive stars explode in supernovas.
Once this software detects a gravitational wave signal, it sends out alerts to subscribers, which usually include astronomers or astrophysicists, to communicate where the signal was located in the sky. With the upgrades in this observing period, scientists are able to send alerts faster, under 30 seconds, after the detection of a gravitational wave.
“With this software, we can detect the gravitational wave from neutron star collisions that is normally too faint to see unless we know exactly where to look,” said Andrew Toivonen, a Ph.D. student in the University of Minnesota Twin Cities School of Physics and Astronomy. “Detecting the gravitational waves first will help locate the collision and help astronomers and astrophysicists to complete further research.”
Astronomers and astrophysicists could use this information to understand how neutron stars behave, study nuclear reactions between neutron stars and black holes colliding, and how heavy elements, including gold and uranium, are produced.
This is the fourth observing run using the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), and it will observe through February 2025. In between the last three observing periods, scientists have made improvements to the detection of signals. After this observing run ends, researchers will continue to look at the data and make further improvements with the goal of sending out alerts even faster.
The multi-institutional paper included Michael Coughlin, Assistant Professor for the School of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Minnesota in addition to Toivonen.
LIGO is funded by the National Science Foundation, and operated by Caltech and MIT. More than 1,200 scientists and some 100 institutions from around the world participate in the effort through the LIGO Scientific Collaboration.
The College of Science and Engineering is one of the colleges of the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. On July 1, 2010, the college was officially renamed from the Institute of Technology (IT). It was created in 1935 by bringing together the University’s programs in engineering, mining, architecture, and chemistry. Today, CSE contains 12 departments and 24 research centers that focus on engineering, the physical sciences, and mathematics.
Departments
Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics
Biomedical Engineering
Chemical Engineering and Materials Science
Chemistry
Civil, Environmental, and GeoEngineering
Computer Science and Engineering
Earth Sciences (formerly called Geology and Geophysics)
Electrical and Computer Engineering
Industrial and Systems Engineering
Mathematics
Mechanical Engineering
Physics and Astronomy
Additionally, CSE pairs with other departments at the University to offer degree-granting programs in:
Bioproducts and Biosystems Engineering, with CFANS (formerly two departments: Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering, and Bio-based Products)
Statistics
And two other CSE units grant advanced degrees:
Technological Leadership Institute (formerly Center for the Development of Technological Leadership)
History of Science and Technology
Research centers
BioTechnology Institute
Characterization Facility
Charles Babbage Institute – CBI website
Digital Technology Center
William I. Fine Theoretical Physics Institute
Industrial Partnership for Research in Interfacial and Materials Engineering
Institute for Mathematics and its Applications
Minnesota Nano Center
NSF Engineering Research Center for Compact and Efficient Fluid Power
NSF Materials Research Science and Engineering Center
NSF Multi-Axial Subassemblage Testing (MAST) System
NSF National Center for Earth-surface Dynamics (NCED)
The Polar Geospatial Center
Center for Transportation Studies
University of Minnesota Supercomputing Institute
GroupLens Center for Social and Human-Centered Computing
Educational centers
History of Science and Technology
School of Mathematics Center for (K-12) Educational Programs
Technological Leadership Institute
UNITE Distributed Learning
The University of Minnesota-Twin Cities is a public research university in Minneapolis and Saint Paul, MN. The Twin Cities campus comprises locations in Minneapolis and St. Paul approximately 3 miles (4.8 km) apart, and the St. Paul location is in neighboring Falcon Heights. The Twin Cities campus is the oldest and largest in The University of Minnesota system and has the sixth-largest main campus student body in the United States, with over 52,000 students. It is the flagship institution of the University of Minnesota System, and is organized into 19 colleges, schools, and other major academic units.
The Minnesota Territorial Legislature drafted a charter for The University of Minnesota as a territorial university in 1851, seven years before Minnesota became a state. Today, the university is classified among “R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity”. The University of Minnesota is a member of The Association of American Universities and is ranked very highly in research activity, with over $900 million in annual research and development expenditures. In 2001, the University of Minnesota was included in a list of Public Ivy universities, which includes publicly funded universities thought to provide a quality of education comparable to that of the Ivy League.
University of Minnesota faculty, alumni, and researchers have won Nobel Prizes and Pulitzer Prizes. Among its alumni, the university counts Rhodes Scholars, Marshall Scholars, Truman Scholars, and Fulbright recipients. The University of Minnesota also has Guggenheim Fellowship, Carnegie Fellowship, and MacArthur Fellowship holders, as well as past and present graduates and faculty belonging to The American Academy of Arts and Sciences , The National Academy of Sciences , The National Academy of Medicine, and The National Academy of Engineering. Notable University of Minnesota alumni include two vice presidents of the United States, Hubert Humphrey and Walter Mondale, and Bob Dylan, who received the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature.
The Minnesota Golden Gophers compete in 21 intercollegiate sports in the NCAA Division I Big Ten Conference and have won 29 national championships. As of Minnesota’s current and former students have won many Olympic medals.
The University of Minnesota was founded in Minneapolis in 1851 as a college preparatory school, seven years prior to Minnesota’s statehood. It struggled in its early years and relied on donations to stay open from donors including South Carolina Governor William Aiken Jr.
In 1867, the university received land grant status through the Morrill Act of 1862.
An 1876 donation from flour miller John S. Pillsbury is generally credited with saving the school. Since then, Pillsbury has become known as “The Father of the University.” Pillsbury Hall is named in his honor.
Academics
The university is organized into 19 colleges, schools, and other major academic units:
Center for Allied Health Programs
College of Biological Sciences
College of Continuing and Professional Studies
School of Dentistry
College of Design
College of Education and Human Development
College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences
Graduate School
Law School
College of Liberal Arts
Carlson School of Management
Medical School
School of Nursing
College of Pharmacy
Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs
School of Public Health
College of Science and Engineering
College of Veterinary Medicine
Institutes and centers
Six university-wide interdisciplinary centers and institutes work across collegiate lines:
Center for Cognitive Sciences
Consortium on Law and Values in Health, Environment, and the Life Sciences
Institute for Advanced Study, University of Minnesota
Institute for Translational Neuroscience
Institute on the Environment
Minnesota Population Center
The University of Minnesota has been ranked very highly in the world by The Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), which assesses academic and research performance. The same ranking by subject placed The University of Minnesota’s Ecology program, its management program, its Biotechnology program, Mechanical Engineering and Medical Technology programs, Law and Psychology programs, and Veterinary Sciences program very highly in the world. The Center for World University Rankings (CWUR) has ranked Minnesota very highly in the world in the United States. The Nature Index, which assesses the institutions that dominate high quality research output, ranked Minnesota very in the world based on research publication data. U.S. News and World Report ranked Minnesota as very high among global universities for. The Times Higher Education World University Rankings placed Minnesota very high worldwide, based primarily on teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook.
The University of Minnesota was ranked very highly in the United States by The Academic Ranking of World Universities, and in the United States in Washington Monthly’s National University Rankings. The University of Minnesota’s undergraduate program was ranked very highly among national universities by U.S. News and World Report, and very high in the nation among public colleges and universities. The same publication ranked The University of Minnesota’s graduate Carlson School of Management very high in the nation among business schools, and for its information systems graduate program. Other graduate schools ranked highly by U.S. News and World Report include The University of Minnesota Law School, The University of Minnesota Medical School for family medicine and primary care, The University of Minnesota College of Pharmacy, The Hubert H. Humphrey School of Public Affairs, The University of Minnesota College of Education and Human Development for education psychology and special education, and The University of Minnesota School of Public Health.
The Center for Measuring University Performance ranked The University of Minnesota very high in the nation in terms of total research, endowment assets, annual giving, and the number of National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine memberships, its number of faculty awards, and its number of National Merit Scholars. Minnesota is listed as a “Public Ivy” in 2001 Greenes’ Guides The Public Ivies: America’s Flagship Public Universities.
Media
Print
The Minnesota Daily has been published twice a week during the normal school season since the fall semester 2016. It is printed weekly during the summer. The Daily is operated by an autonomous organization run entirely by students. It was first published on May 1, 1900. Besides everyday news coverage, the paper has also published special issues, such as the Grapevine Awards, Ski-U-Mah, the Bar & Beer Guide, Sex-U-Mah, and others.
A long-defunct but fondly remembered humor magazine, Ski-U-Mah, was published from about 1930 to 1950. It launched the career of novelist and scriptwriter Max Shulman.
A relative newcomer to the university’s print media community is The Wake Student Magazine, a weekly that covers UMN-related stories and provides a forum for student expression. It was founded in November 2001 in an effort to diversify campus media and achieved student group status in February 2002. Students from many disciplines do all of the reporting, writing, editing, illustration, photography, layout, and business management for the publication. The magazine was founded by James DeLong and Chris Ruen. The Wake has been named the nation’s best campus publication by The Independent Press Association.
Additionally, The Wake publishes Liminal, a literary journal begun in 2005. Liminal was created in the absence of an undergraduate literary journal and continues to bring poetry and prose to the university community.
The Wake has faced a number of challenges during its existence, due in part to the reliance on student fees funding. In April 2004, after the Student Services Fees Committee had initially declined to fund it, the needed $60,000 in funding was restored, allowing the magazine to continue publishing. It faced further challenges in 2005, when its request for additional funding to publish weekly was denied and then partially restored.
In 2005 conservatives on campus began formulating a new monthly magazine named The Minnesota Republic. The first issue was released in February 2006, and funding by student service fees started in September 2006.
Radio
The campus radio station, KUOM “Radio K,” broadcasts an eclectic variety of independent music during the day on 770 kHz AM. Its 5,000-watt signal has a range of 80 miles (130 km), but shuts down at dusk because of Federal Communications Commission regulations. In 2003, the station added a low-power (8-watt) signal on 106.5 MHz FM overnight and on weekends. In 2005, a 10-watt translator began broadcasting from Falcon Heights on 100.7 FM at all times. Radio K also streams its content at http://www.radiok.org. With roots in experimental transmissions that began before World War I, the station received the first AM broadcast license in the state on January 13, 1922, and began broadcasting as WLB, changing to the KUOM call sign about two decades later. The station had an educational format until 1993, when it merged with a smaller campus-only music station to become what is now known as Radio K. A small group of full-time employees are joined by over 20 part-time student employees who oversee the station. Most of the on-air talent consists of student volunteers.
Television
Some television programs made on campus have been broadcast on local PBS station KTCI channel 17. Several episodes of Great Conversations have been made since 2002, featuring one-on-one discussions between University faculty and experts brought in from around the world. Tech Talk was a show meant to help people who feel intimidated by modern technology, including cellular phones and computers.
What macroworld emerges from string theory depends on how six small spatial dimensions are bundled up.
Kouzou Sakai for Quanta Magazine
String theory captured the hearts and minds of many physicists decades ago because of a beautiful simplicity. Zoom in far enough on a patch of space, the theory says, and you won’t see a menagerie of particles or jittery quantum fields. There will only be identical strands of energy, vibrating and merging and separating. By the late 1980s, physicists found that these “strings” can cavort in just a handful of ways, raising the tantalizing possibility that physicists could trace the path from dancing strings to the elementary particles of our world. The deepest rumblings of the strings would produce gravitons, hypothetical particles believed to form the gravitational fabric of space-time. Other vibrations would give rise to electrons, quarks and neutrinos. String theory was dubbed a “theory of everything.”
“People thought it was just a matter of time until you could compute everything there was to know,” said Anthony Ashmore, a string theorist at Sorbonne University in Paris.
But as physicists studied string theory, they uncovered a hideous complexity.
When they zoomed out from the austere world of strings, every step toward our rich world of particles and forces introduced an exploding number of possibilities. For mathematical consistency, strings need to wriggle through 10-dimensional space-time. But our world has four dimensions (three of space and one of time), leading string theorists to conclude that the missing six dimensions are tiny — coiled into microscopic shapes resembling loofahs. These imperceptible 6D shapes come in trillions upon trillions of varieties. On those loofahs, strings merge into the familiar ripples of quantum fields, and the formation of these fields could also come about in multitudinous ways. Our universe, then, would consist of the aspects of the fields that spill out from the loofahs into our giant four-dimensional world.
String theorists sought to determine whether the loofahs and fields of string theory can underlie the portfolio of elementary particles found in the real universe. But not only are there an overwhelming number of possibilities to consider — 10^500 especially plausible microscopic configurations, according to one tally — no one could figure out how to zoom out from a specific configuration of dimensions and strings to see what macroworld of particles would emerge.
“Does string theory make unique predictions? Is it really physics? The jury is just still out,” said Lara Anderson, a physicist at Virginia Tech who has spent much of her career trying to link strings with particles.
Now, a fresh generation of researchers has brought a new tool to bear on the old problem: neural networks, the computer programs powering advances in artificial intelligence. In recent months, two teams of physicists and computer scientists have used neural networks to calculate precisely for the first time what sort of macroscopic world would emerge from a specific microscopic world of strings. This long-sought milestone reinvigorates a quest that largely stalled decades ago: the effort to determine whether string theory can actually describe our world.
“We aren’t at the point of saying these are the rules for our universe,” Anderson said. “But it’s a big step in the right direction.”
The Twisted World of Strings
The crucial feature that determines what macroworld emerges from string theory is the arrangement of the six small spatial dimensions.
The simplest such arrangements are intricate 6D shapes called Calabi-Yau manifolds — the objects that resemble loofahs. Named after the late Eugenio Calabi, the mathematician who conjectured their existence in the 1950s, and Shing-Tung Yau, who in the 1970s set out to prove Calabi wrong but ended up doing the opposite, Calabi-Yau manifolds are 6D spaces with two characteristics that make them attractive to physicists.
First, they can host quantum fields with a symmetry known as supersymmetry, and supersymmetric fields are much simpler to study than more irregular fields. Experiments at the Large Hadron Collider have shown that the macroscopic laws of physics are not supersymmetric. But the nature of the microworld beyond the Standard Model remains unknown. Most string theorists work under the assumption that the universe at that scale is supersymmetric, with some citing physical motivations for believing so while others do so out of mathematical necessity.
Second, Calabi-Yau manifolds are “Ricci-flat.” According to Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, the presence of matter or energy bends space-time, causing so-called Ricci curvature. Calabi-Yau manifolds lack this kind of curvature, though they can (and do) curve in other ways unrelated to their matter and energy contents. To understand Ricci flatness, consider a doughnut, which is a low-dimensional Calabi-Yau manifold. You can unroll a doughnut and represent it on a flat screen on which moving off the right side teleports you to the left side and likewise with top and bottom.
Six-dimensional shapes called Calabi-Yau manifolds (3D slices of which are shown here) come in increasingly complicated varieties. In string theory, a microscopic manifold lies at every point in our 4D universe and determines the laws of physics we experience. O. Knill and E. Slavkovsky
The general game plan for string theory, then, boils down to searching for the specific manifold that would describe the microstructure of space-time in our universe. One way to search is by picking a plausible 6D doughnut and working out whether it matches the particles we see.
The first step is to work out the right class of 6D doughnuts. Countable features of Calabi-Yau manifolds, such as the number of holes they have, determine the countable features of our world, such as how many distinct matter particles exist. (Our universe has 12.) So researchers start by searching for Calabi-Yau manifolds with the right assortment of countable features to explain the known particles.
Researchers have made steady progress on this step, and over the last couple of years a United Kingdom-based collaboration in particular has refined the art of doughnut selection to a science. Using insight gathered from an assortment of computational techniques in 2019 and 2020, the group identified a handful of formulas that spit out classes of Calabi-Yau manifolds producing what they call “broad brush” versions of the Standard Model containing the right number of matter particles. These theories tend to produce long-distance forces we don’t see. Still, with these tools, the U.K. physicists have mostly automated what were once daunting calculations.
“The efficacy of these methods is absolutely staggering,” said Andrei Constantin, a physicist at the University of Oxford who led the discovery of the formulas. These formulas “reduce the time needed for the analysis of string theory models from several months of computational efforts to a split second.”
The second step is harder. String theorists aim to narrow the search beyond the class of Calabi-Yaus and identify one particular manifold. They seek to specify exactly how big it is and the precise location of every curve and dimple. These geometric details are supposed to determine all the remaining features of the macroworld, including precisely how strongly particles interact and exactly what their masses are.
Completing this second step requires knowing the manifold’s metric — a function that can take in any two points on the shape and tell you the distance between them. A familiar metric is the Pythagorean theorem, which encodes the geometry of a 2D plane. But as you move to higher-dimensional, curvy space-times, metrics become richer and more complicated descriptions of the geometry. Physicists solved Einstein’s equations to get the metric for a single rotating black hole in our 4D world, but 6D spaces have been out of their league. “It’s one of the saddest things as a physicist that you come across,” said Toby Wiseman, a physicist at Imperial College London. “Mathematics, clever as it is, is quite limited when it comes to actually writing down solutions to equations.”
As a postdoc at Harvard University in the early 2000s, Wiseman heard whispers of the “mythical” metrics of Calabi-Yau manifolds. Yau’s proof that these functions exist helped win him the Fields Medal (the top prize in mathematics), but no one had ever calculated one. At the time, Wiseman was using computers to approximate the metric of space-times surrounding exotic black holes. Perhaps, he speculated, computers could also solve for the metrics of Calabi-Yau space-times.
“Everyone said, ‘Oh, no, you couldn’t possibly do that,’” Wiseman said. “So me and a brilliant guy, Matthew Headrick, a string theorist, we sat down and showed it could be done.”
Pixelated Manifolds
Wiseman and Headrick (who works at Brandeis University) knew that a Calabi-Yau metric had to solve Einstein’s equations for empty space. A metric satisfying this condition guaranteed that a space-time was Ricci-flat. Wiseman and Headrick picked four dimensions as a proving ground. Leveraging a numerical technique sometimes taught in high school calculus classes, they showed in 2005 that a 4D Calabi-Yau metric could indeed be approximated. It might not be perfectly flat at every point, but it came extremely close, like a doughnut with a few imperceptible dents.
Around the same time, Simon Donaldson, a prominent mathematician also at Imperial, was also studying Calabi-Yau metrics for mathematical reasons, and he soon worked up another algorithm for approximating metrics. String theorists including Anderson started trying to calculate specific metrics in these ways, but the procedures took a long time and produced overly bumpy doughnuts, which would mess up attempts to make precise particle predictions.
Attempts to complete step 2 died out for nearly a decade. But as researchers focused on step 1 and on solving other problems in string theory, a powerful new technology for approximating functions swept computer science — neural networks, which adjust huge grids of numbers until their values can stand in for some unknown function.
Neural networks found functions that could identify objects in images, translate speech into other languages, and even master humanity’s most complicated board games. When researchers at the artificial intelligence company DeepMind created the AlphaGo algorithm, which in 2016 bested a top human Go player, the physicist Fabian Ruehle took notice.
“I thought, if this thing can outperform the world champion in Go, maybe it can outperform mathematicians, or at least physicists like me,” said Ruehle, who is now at Northeastern University.
Ruehle and collaborators took up the old problem of approximating Calabi-Yau metrics. Anderson and others also revitalized their earlier attempts to overcome step 2. The physicists found that neural networks provided the speed and flexibility that earlier techniques had lacked. The algorithms were able to guess a metric, check the curvature at many thousands of points in 6D space, and repeatedly adjust the guess until the curvature vanished all over the manifold. All the researchers had to do was tweak freely available machine learning packages; by 2020, multiple groups had released custom packages for computing Calabi-Yau metrics.
With the ability to obtain metrics, physicists could finally contemplate the finer features of the large-scale universes corresponding to each manifold. “The first thing I did after I had it, I calculated masses of particles,” Ruehle said.
From Strings to Quarks
In 2021, Ruehle, collaborating with Ashmore, cranked out the masses of exotic heavy particles that depend only on the curves of the Calabi-Yau. But these hypothetical particles would be far too massive to detect. To calculate the masses of familiar particles like electrons — a goal string theorists have chased for decades — the machine learners would have to do more.
Lightweight matter particles acquire their mass through interactions with the Higgs field, a field of energy that extends throughout space. The more a given particle takes notice of the Higgs field, the heavier it is. How strongly each particle interacts with the Higgs is labeled by a quantity called its Yukawa coupling. And in string theory, Yukawa couplings depend on two things. One is the metric of the Calabi-Yau manifold, which is like the shape of the doughnut. The other is the way quantum fields (arising as collections of strings) spread out over the manifold. These quantum fields are a bit like sprinkles; their arrangement is related to the doughnut’s shape but also somewhat independent.
Ruehle and other physicists had released software packages that could get the doughnut shape. The last step was to get the sprinkles — and neural networks proved capable of that task, too. Two teams put all the pieces together earlier this year.
An international collaboration led by Challenger Mishra of the University of Cambridge first used a homegrown neural network to calculate the metric — the geometry of the doughnut itself. Then they harnessed additional original algorithms to compute the way the quantum fields overlap as they curve around the manifold, like the doughnut’s sprinkles. Importantly, they worked in a context where the geometry of the fields and that of the manifold are tightly linked, a setup in which the Yukawa couplings could be calculated in an alternative way, although this had never been done before. When the group calculated the couplings in both manners, the results matched. Moreover, the couplings they found hinted at a separation between particle masses — a mysterious feature of the Standard Model.
“People have been wanting to do this since before I was born in the ’80s,” Mishra said.
A group led by string theory veterans Burt Ovrut of the University of Pennsylvania and Andre Lukas of Oxford went further. They too started with Ruehle’s metric-calculating software, which Lukas had helped develop. Building on that foundation, they added an array of 11 neural networks to handle the different types of sprinkles. These networks allowed them to calculate an assortment of fields that could take on a richer variety of shapes, creating a more realistic setting that can’t be studied with any other techniques. This army of machines learned the metric and the arrangement of the fields, calculated the Yukawa couplings, and spit out the masses of three types of quarks. It did all this for six differently shaped Calabi-Yau manifolds. “This is the first time anybody has been able to calculate them to that degree of accuracy,” Anderson said.
None of those Calabi-Yaus underlies our universe, because two of the quarks have identical masses, while the six varieties in our world come in three tiers of masses. Rather, the results represent a proof of principle that machine learning algorithms can take physicists from a Calabi-Yau manifold all the way to specific particle masses.
“Until now, any such calculations would have been unthinkable,” said Constantin, a member of the group based at Oxford.
Numbers Game
The neural networks choke on doughnuts with more than a handful of holes, and researchers would eventually like to study manifolds with hundreds. And so far, the researchers have considered only rather simple quantum fields. To go all the way to the Standard Model, Ashmore said, “you might need a more sophisticated neural network.”
Bigger challenges loom on the horizon. Attempting to find our particle physics in the solutions of string theory — if it’s in there at all — is a numbers game. The more sprinkle-laden doughnuts you can check, the more likely you are to find a match. After decades of effort, string theorists can finally check doughnuts and compare them with reality: the masses and couplings of the elementary particles we observe. But even the most optimistic theorists recognize that the odds of finding a match by blind luck are cosmically low. The number of Calabi-Yau doughnuts alone may be infinite. “You need to learn how to game the system,” Ruehle said.
One approach is to check thousands of Calabi-Yau manifolds and try to suss out any patterns that could steer the search. By stretching and squeezing the manifolds in different ways, for instance, physicists might develop an intuitive sense of what shapes lead to what particles. “What you really hope is that you have some strong reasoning after looking at particular models,” Ashmore said, “and you stumble into the right model for our world.”
Lukas and colleagues at Oxford plan to start that exploration, prodding their most promising doughnuts and fiddling more with the sprinkles as they try to find a manifold that produces a realistic population of quarks. Constantin believes that they will find a manifold reproducing the masses of the rest of the known particles in a matter of years.
Other string theorists, however, think it’s premature to start scrutinizing individual manifolds. Thomas Van Riet of KU Leuven is a string theorist pursuing the “swampland” research program, which seeks to identify features shared by all mathematically consistent string theory solutions — such as the extreme weakness of gravity relative to the other forces. He and his colleagues aspire to rule out broad swaths of string solutions — that is, possible universes — before they even start to think about specific doughnuts and sprinkles.
“It’s good that people do this machine learning business, because I’m sure we will need it at some point,” Van Riet said. But first “we need to think about the underlying principles, the patterns. What they’re asking about is the details.”
Plenty of physicists have moved on from string theory to pursue other theories of quantum gravity. And the recent machine learning developments are unlikely to bring them back. Renate Loll, a physicist at Radboud University in the Netherlands, said that to truly impress, string theorists will need to predict — and confirm — new physical phenomena beyond the Standard Model. “It is a needle-in-a-haystack search, and I am not sure what we would learn from it even if there was convincing, quantitative evidence that it is possible” to reproduce the Standard Model, she said. “To make it interesting, there should be some new physical predictions.”
New predictions are indeed the ultimate goal of many of the machine learners. They hope that string theory will prove rather rigid, in the sense that doughnuts matching our universe will have commonalities. These doughnuts might, for instance, all contain a kind of novel particle that could serve as a target for experiments. For now, though, that’s purely aspirational, and it might not pan out.
“String theory is spectacular. Many string theorists are wonderful. But the track record for qualitatively correct statements about the universe is really garbage,” said Nima Arkani-Hamed, a theoretical physicist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey.
Ultimately, the question of what string theory predicts remains open. Now that string theorists are leveraging the power of neural networks to connect the 6D microworlds of strings with the 4D macroworlds of particles, they stand a better chance of someday answering it.
“Without a doubt, there are loads of string theories that have nothing to do with nature,” Anderson said. “The question is: Are there any that do have something to do with it? The answer might be no, but I think it’s really interesting to try to push the theory to decide.”
Formerly known as Simons Science News, Quanta Magazine is an editorially independent online publication launched by the Simons Foundation to enhance public understanding of science. Why Quanta? Albert Einstein called photons “quanta of light.” Our goal is to “illuminate science.” At Quanta Magazine, scientific accuracy is every bit as important as telling a good story. All of our articles are meticulously researched, reported, edited, copy-edited and fact-checked.
Hunting for life on other planets is hard; it’s like trying to spot an ant on the other end of a football field. The closest potential host, Venus, is 25 million miles away. Beyond our Solar System, exoplanets that have piqued astronomers’ interest are light-years away.
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Key Takeaways
-Scientists hunting for life in the cosmos commonly look for biosignatures – elements, molecules, or substances that might have been made by life. But there’s growing doubt that biosignatures will ever constitute concrete evidence of extraterrestrials.
-In a recent paper, researchers contend that we should be looking for “gaiasignatures” — signs that life is “actively reorganizing the structure and behavior of a planet’s observable features.”
-They also argue that we need to alter our definition of an “Earthlike” planet, basing it on dynamic processes rather than physical features. This might help us find life as we don’t know it.
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To search for life from these sizable distances, scientists look for biosignatures: elements, molecules, or substances that might have been made by life. These include oxygen and methane, among other compounds. But there’s growing doubt that biosignatures will ever constitute concrete evidence of extraterrestrials. After all, as philosopher of science Peter Vickers at Durham University notes, our knowledge of exoplanet chemistry and geology is almost as lacking as our conceptions of aliens. From so far away, how could we ever be sure that any potential biosignature didn’t come from non-life?
Gaiasignatures
Amid this uncertainty, Dr. Michael L. Wong, an astrobiologist and planetary scientist at the Carnegie Institution for Science, has proposed a new way of thinking about the search for life beyond Earth. In a recently published paper, he and a multidisciplinary team of colleagues outline the notion of “gaiasignatures.”
The name is a nod to the Gaia hypothesis [The Gaia hypothesis was formulated by the chemist James Lovelock and co-developed by the microbiologist Lynn Margulis in the 1970s], the idea that “living organisms interact with their inorganic surroundings on Earth to form a […] complex system” that serves to perpetuate life as we know it. Along this line, Wong and his co-authors contend that we should be looking for “signs of a global biosphere actively reorganizing the structure and behavior of a planet’s observable features.”
How could astronomers and astrobiologists see such signs?
“One intriguing and potentially viable route toward identifying Gaiasignatures is through a holistic evaluation of planetary atmospheric chemical networks,” the authors suggest. “Another is through measuring the statistical complexity of global features in reflected‐light time‐series data. Yet another approach is to identify signs of atmospheric seasonality.”
But Wong admits that it will be very unlikely to conclusively witness any gaiasignatures with current telescopes. Dirk Schulze-Makuch, a professor of planetary habitability and astrobiology at the Technical University Berlin, agrees.
“I don’t see getting this information anytime soon,” he told Big Think via email. “We are lucky if we can detect the main gases of exoplanets.”
Expanding the search
While we wait for improved astronomical tools to spot potential gaiasignatures, astronomers are hard at work identifying “Earthlike” planets: potential candidates to host life as we know it. Here, Wong and his colleagues also seek to shake up conventional thinking. Currently, astronomers tend to consider planets “Earthlike” if they have a similar radius, mass, and surface temperature to Earth. Ideally, they also orbit in a “habitable” zone around a star, where liquid water might be stable on the surface of a planet.
Wong thinks this definition is too narrow. Instead, he and his colleagues argue we should be looking for planets that have “coupled, emergent, dynamically persistent processes.” Magnetic dynamos, mantle convection, tectonic regimes, deep volatile cycles, and climate feedbacks are examples. Their justification for searching for processes rather than physical features is that these moving parts can roil life into existence. The more of them, the better.
Such a definition of “Earthlike” would greatly broaden the planets that might be considered. Schulze-Makuch noted that Jupiter could potentially be included.
Wong admits that the newly proposed definition of “Earthlike” might be overly broad, but it’s offered as a counter to the current, narrow paradigm. It might even push astrobiologists to look for life on planets that previously might have been ignored.
“Our paper is meant to excite discussion,” he told Big Think, humbly adding that it’s “not the final say.”
“We are so full of ignorance in the astrobiological community. I hope the paper pushes us into a place where we are uncomfortable, where progress can be made.”
Although Wong doesn’t deny that — at the moment — it’s more empirical to search for life similar to that which we know on Earth, he says we shouldn’t be afraid to look for life as we don’t know it.
“I hope we take a mindset where we are willing to look for weird life in weird places,” he said. “The only thing cooler than finding Earth 2.0 is finding something entirely different.”
4.26.24
Nya Wynn
Photos by Monica Moriak and courtesy of Frank Linam
Students in the Seyfferth Lab, including doctoral student Frank Linam (right), harvest rice from the paddies grown on the UD Newark Farm.
Doctoral student Frank Linam explores how wet soil conditions in flooded rice paddies affect the way roots take in nutrients and filter out toxins.
More than 3 billion people around the world eat rice as a regular part of their diet — and this grain can hold its own. When submerged in flooded soils, many plants can’t breathe and are too stressed to grow, but rice can survive and even thrive.
Frank Linam, a plant and soil sciences doctoral student at the University of Delaware, is studying how the wet soil conditions in flooded rice paddies affect the way the roots take in nutrients and filter out toxins.
“The flooded soil in rice fields is really unique compared to other crops, which makes it a really fun area to study,” said Linam, who recently received the Donald and Joy Sparks Fellowship in Plant Science.
In wet soils, rice can survive in low oxygen environments by forming tube-like structures in its roots that allow the plant to bring oxygen to the roots. The introduction of oxygen into the flooded soil causes new minerals to form, most notably iron oxide minerals, creating an iron plaque layer.
“The iron plaque layer essentially acts as a filter for the plant, allowing nutrients to get in while stopping possible contaminants,” said Angelia Seyfferth, professor of biogeochemistry and plant-soil interactions and Linam’s advisor.
There is a caveat to this idea, though: Many researchers in the field speculated that since the iron plaque layer collects toxins, like arsenic, right next to the plant, it could potentially become a source of that toxin for the plant.
Seyfferth explained that arsenic is similar to some essential nutrients for rice. It can change its form in certain environments and can mimic phosphorus — a mineral that’s vital for plant growth.
“We were wondering, if while the plant is trying to access phosphorus that might be on that plaque layer, is it accidentally getting some arsenic?” Seyfferth said.
Linam found that the plaque successfully holds onto the arsenic in various environments and soil types so that it doesn’t make it into the roots.
“His work suggests that the plaque layer is actually a really good thing for preventing how much arsenic ultimately gets transported to the grain that we then eat, so it’s good news,” Seyfferth said.
Linam’s research on the kinds of toxins in rice and how much can invade just one grain will be key to understanding how much toxins can be introduced to the human diet through eating this food.
“I came to UD originally because Dr. Seyfferth’s research was so interesting,” Linam said. “The way that rice is able to take up the nutrients from the soil through its roots is really different. Something really interesting that we’re figuring out now is how different soil textures affect the oxygenation around the roots.”
Linam explained that as the oxygen is leaking out of the rice roots to form the plaque layer, the roots are taking in water, which brings new nutrients and toxins to the roots.
“We’re trying to figure out the relative rate of oxygen entering soil versus water entering the plant in different soil textures, and we study all that out in the rice paddies on the [UD Newark Farm] as well as the greenhouse and the lab,” Linam said.
The Seyfferth Lab specifically designed and built these experimental paddy rice plots for research and outreach. The real advantage to the fields, though, is that they’re so close in proximity to their lab, meaning they can easily gather lots of data over time.
Linam’s research has taken him far beyond their experimental rice paddies on the UD Newark Farm, leading him to conferences in Arkansas, Scotland and China.
At the the 15th International Conference on Biogeochemistry of Trace Elements in China, Linam presented his research through a prestigious U.S. Department of Agriculture predoctoral fellowship.
“It’s great to go there and see what people in more applied areas are doing,” Linam said. “Being able to travel to these different conferences and meet people from different countries is really cool.”
Seyfferth said sharing research is an integral part of being a scientist, especially in Linam’s discipline. Getting information out to growers and sharing data can make a huge impact in the ever-changing agriculture industry.
“One of the unique things about [Linam] and one of the talents of a successful scientist is having the ability to talk on a high level to other experts, but also translate that information to the common person so that they understand what you’re doing and why it’s important,” Seyfferth said.
After his doctoral studies, Linam plans on continuing his work with rice roots and their interactions with the soil through postdoctoral studies. He hopes to eventually work in academia long-term.
Some of the mechanisms Linam wants to further delve into are the ways that rice roots can exude different molecules that in turn make it easier for the roots to take in the essential nutrients that reside in the soil.
Once Linam’s research can reach extension agents and rice producers, real progress can be made in the cultivation and conservation of rice for the billions of people who eat the grain every day.
“One thing I want to keep doing in the future is looking at more specific mechanisms of how the roots interact with the soil,” Linam said. “No one knows a lot about things happening below ground, so being able to look at differences across genotypes or species and how their roots grow can increase our efficiency of plant production and conservation.”
The University of Delaware is a public land-grant research university located in Newark, Delaware. University of Delaware (US) is the largest university in Delaware. It offers three associate’s programs, 148 bachelor’s programs, 121 master’s programs (with 13 joint degrees), and 55 doctoral programs across its eight colleges. The main campus is in Newark, with satellite campuses in Dover, the Wilmington area, Lewes, and Georgetown. It is considered a large institution with approximately 18,200 undergraduate and 4,200 graduate students. It is a privately governed university which receives public funding for being a land-grant, sea-grant, and space-grant state-supported research institution.
The University of Delaware is classified among “R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity”. It is recognized with the Community Engagement Classification by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.
The University of Delaware is one of only four schools in North America with a major in art conservation. In 1923, it was the first American university to offer a study-abroad program.
The University of Delaware traces its origins to a “Free School,” founded in New London, Pennsylvania in 1743. The school moved to Newark, Delaware by 1765, becoming the Newark Academy. The academy trustees secured a charter for Newark College in 1833 and the academy became part of the college, which changed its name to Delaware College in 1843. While it is not considered one of the colonial colleges because it was not a chartered institution of higher education during the colonial era, its original class of ten students included George Read, Thomas McKean, and James Smith, all three of whom went on to sign the Declaration of Independence. Read also later signed the United States Constitution.
Science, Technology and Advanced Research (STAR) Campus
On October 23, 2009, The University of Delaware signed an agreement with Chrysler to purchase a shuttered vehicle assembly plant adjacent to the university for $24.25 million as part of Chrysler’s bankruptcy restructuring plan. The university has developed the 272-acre (1.10 km^2) site into the Science, Technology and Advanced Research (STAR) Campus. The site is the new home of University of Delaware’s College of Health Sciences, which includes teaching and research laboratories and several public health clinics. The STAR Campus also includes research facilities for University of Delaware’s vehicle-to-grid technology, as well as Delaware Technology Park, SevOne, CareNow, Independent Prosthetics and Orthotics, and the East Coast headquarters of Bloom Energy. The University of Delaware opened the Ammon Pinozzotto Biopharmaceutical Innovation Center, which will become the new home of the UD-led National Institute for Innovation in Manufacturing Biopharmaceuticals. Also, Chemours recently opened its global research and development facility, known as the Discovery Hub, on the STAR Campus in 2020. The new Newark Regional Transportation Center on the STAR Campus will serve passengers of Amtrak and regional rail.
Academics
The university is organized into nine colleges:
Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics
College of Agriculture and Natural Resources
College of Arts and Sciences
College of Earth, Ocean and Environment
College of Education and Human Development
College of Engineering
College of Health Sciences
Graduate College
Honors College
There are also five schools:
Joseph R. Biden, Jr. School of Public Policy and Administration (part of the College of Arts & Sciences)
School of Education (part of the College of Education & Human Development)
School of Marine Science and Policy (part of the College of Earth, Ocean and Environment)
School of Nursing (part of the College of Health Sciences)
School of Music (part of the College of Arts & Sciences)
4.2.24
Written By:
Christine Billau, U-M Biological Station
Contact
Jim Erickson
734-647-1842
ericksn@umich.edu
John Lenters, senior research specialist at the U-M Biological Station, left, and Resident Biologist Adam Schubel both won the trophy for the annual staff contest to guess the spring ice-out date on Douglas Lake, which occurred on March 16 this year. Image credit: U-M Biological Station
The earliest “ice-out” ever recorded on Douglas Lake at the University of Michigan Biological Station occurred last month, setting another record for the mild winter in northern Michigan.
The ice-out, declared on March 16 this year, comes after the latest-recorded Douglas Lake “ice-in” occurred on Jan. 6—making this the shortest season of lake ice cover recorded at the U-M Biological Station, at 70 days.
For 93 years, scientists at the Biological Station, the 10,000-acre research and teaching campus nestled along Douglas Lake near Pellston in the northern Lower Peninsula, have made the calls based on their observations of the lake.
The Douglas Lake ice-out date is when consensus determines that 75% of ice cover is gone from South Fishtail Bay, the deepest part of the south end of the lake. The ice-in date is when 75% of the bay is covered in ice.
The historic field station, founded in 1909, has maintained statistics on ice-out dates for Douglas Lake dating back to 1931.
Previously, the record for earliest ice-out was March 20, 2012.
Last year’s ice-out date on Douglas Lake was April 13, 2023. Ten years ago, ice-out was declared on April 29, 2014. In 1996, it was May 4. Fifty years ago, it was April 21, 1974. In 1931, ice-out was declared on April 12.
Graph shows Douglas Lake “ice on,” “ice off” and duration data from the University of Michigan Biological Station near Pellston. The graph only includes years for which the station has both ice-on and ice-off dates. Ice on is trending about two days later per decade and ice-off is about 1.5 days earlier per decade. Over the station’s 91-year period of record, which includes both ice-on and ice-off dates, the lake has lost a full month of ice duration — about 32 days. Image credit: U-M Biological Station
Adam Schubel, the Biological Station’s resident biologist, said winter weather has been “variable or noisy” during his eight years there.
When he returned from a family vacation in mid-March, Schubel was surprised to see that he’d have to again move up the annual staff contest to guess the spring ice-out date.
“Historically the deadline for our contest was March 25, but we’ve moved it up earlier each of the past three years,” Schubel said. “The variability is what makes it a riveting contest.”
In the long term, there’s only a slight trend toward earlier ice-out—about one day per decade. But in the short term, this year’s ice-out was 45 days earlier than it was just six years ago.
“We had close to our latest ever recorded ice-out in 2018, which was on May 1,” Schubel said.
On March 13, three days before declaring ice-out on Douglas Lake this year, Schubel had to hop over a liquid gap at the beach to lightly tread out to the historic ice thickness measuring site, where he measured an ice thickness of 5.5 inches.
“It was melting remarkably fast,” he said. “Temperature was the primary driver. Wind seemed to be a major factor near the end, when the ice sheet had broken up.”
Schubel and John Lenters, senior research specialist at the Biological Station, both won the 2024 trophy three days later.
“Interestingly, the bay iced in on Dec. 1, 2023, and then melted less than two weeks later on Dec. 10. Then it iced in for the season on Jan. 6, 2024,” Schubel said. “It’s done something like this the past two years. One thing I note from my observations is that waterfowl seem to appear on open water immediately, whenever it appears, as if they’re just monitoring lakes, waiting for them to thaw.”
Lenters studies changing winters in Michigan. He has a long-term interest in understanding the effects of changing lake temperature and ice cover on Great Lakes evaporation.
“It’s been a very warm winter throughout much of the Midwest this year, which is what we typically expect to see during an El Niño,” Lenters said. “But this year broke a lot of records, and it was even warmer than past strong El Niños such as 1997-98 and 2015-16. So what we saw this year was a combination of El Niño with the long-term warming effects of climate change. Sort of a double whammy.”
The U-M Biological Station has been home to scientific discovery since its founding in 1909. Its core mission is to advance environmental field research, engage students in scientific discovery and provide information needed to understand and sustain ecosystems from local to global scales.
In the station’s cross-disciplinary, interactive community, students, faculty and researchers from around the globe come together to learn about and from the natural world and to seek solutions to the critical environmental challenges of our time.
The University of Michigan is a public research university located in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States. Originally, founded in 1817 in Detroit as the “Catholepistemiad”, or “University of Michigania”, 20 years before the Michigan Territory officially became a state, the University of Michigan is the state’s oldest university. The university moved to Ann Arbor in 1837 onto 40 acres (16 ha) of what is now known as Central Campus. Since its establishment in Ann Arbor, the university campus has expanded to include more than 584 major buildings with a combined area of more than 34 million gross square feet (781 acres or 3.16 km²), and has two satellite campuses located in Flint and Dearborn. The University was one of the founding members of the Association of American Universities.
Considered one of the foremost research universities in the United States, the university has very high research activity and its comprehensive graduate program offers doctoral degrees in the humanities, social sciences, and STEM fields (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) as well as professional degrees in business, medicine, law, pharmacy, nursing, social work and dentistry. Michigan’s body of living alumni comprises more than 500,000. Besides academic life, Michigan’s athletic teams compete in Division I of the NCAA and are collectively known as the Wolverines. They are members of the Big Ten Conference.
MacArthur “genius award” winners (alumni winners and faculty winners), Nobel Prize winners, Turing Award winners, Fields Medalists and Mitchell Scholars have been affiliated with the university. Its alumni include heads of state or government, including President of the United States Gerald Ford; cabinet-level officials; and living billionaires. It also has many alumni who are Fulbright Scholars and MacArthur Fellows.
Research
Michigan is one of the founding members (in the year 1900) of the Association of American Universities. With over 6,200 faculty members, many of whom are members of the National Academy and hold an endowed chair in their discipline, the university manages one of the largest annual collegiate research budgets of any university in the United States. U-M has a technology transfer office, which is the university conduit between laboratory research and corporate commercialization interests.
In 2009, the university signed an agreement to purchase a facility formerly owned by Pfizer. The acquisition includes over 170 acres (0.69 km^2) of property, and 30 major buildings comprising roughly 1,600,000 square feet (150,000 m^2) of wet laboratory space, and 400,000 square feet (37,000 m^2) of administrative space. At the time of the agreement, the university’s intentions for the space were not set, but the expectation was that the new space would allow the university to ramp up its research and ultimately employ in excess of 2,000 people.
The university is also a major contributor to the medical field with the EKG and the gastroscope. The university’s 13,000-acre (53 km^2) biological station in the Northern Lower Peninsula of Michigan is one of only 47 Biosphere Reserves in the United States.
In the mid-1960s U-M researchers worked with IBM to develop a new virtual memory architectural model that became part of IBM’s Model 360/67 mainframe computer (the 360/67 was initially dubbed the 360/65M where the “M” stood for Michigan). The Michigan Terminal System (MTS), an early time-sharing computer operating system developed at U-M, was the first system outside of IBM to use the 360/67’s virtual memory features.
U-M is home to the National Election Studies and the University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index. The Correlates of War project, also located at U-M, is an accumulation of scientific knowledge about war. The university is also home to major research centers in optics, reconfigurable manufacturing systems, wireless integrated microsystems, and social sciences. The University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute and the Life Sciences Institute are located at the university. The Institute for Social Research (ISR), the nation’s longest-standing laboratory for interdisciplinary research in the social sciences, is home to the Survey Research Center, Research Center for Group Dynamics, Center for Political Studies, Population Studies Center, and Inter-Consortium for Political and Social Research. Undergraduate students are able to participate in various research projects through the Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program (UROP) as well as the UROP/Creative-Programs.
The U-M library system comprises nineteen individual libraries with twenty-four separate collections—roughly 13.3 million volumes. U-M was the original home of the JSTOR database, which contains about 750,000 digitized pages from the entire pre-1990 backfile of ten journals of history and economics, and has initiated a book digitization program in collaboration with Google. The University of Michigan Press is also a part of the U-M library system.
In the late 1960s U-M, together with Michigan State University and Wayne State University, founded the Merit Network, one of the first university computer networks. The Merit Network was then and remains today administratively hosted by U-M. Another major contribution took place in 1987 when a proposal submitted by the Merit Network together with its partners IBM, MCI, and the State of Michigan won a national competition to upgrade and expand the National Science Foundation Network (NSFNET) backbone from 56,000 to 1.5 million, and later to 45 million bits per second. In 2006, U-M joined with Michigan State University and Wayne State University to create the the University Research Corridor. This effort was undertaken to highlight the capabilities of the state’s three leading research institutions and drive the transformation of Michigan’s economy. The three universities are electronically interconnected via the Michigan LambdaRail (MiLR, pronounced ‘MY-lar’), a high-speed data network providing 10 Gbit/s connections between the three university campuses and other national and international network connection points in Chicago.
A suite of three electron microscopes, including one of the highest resolution microscopes in the world, now calls Monash home, helping scientists push the frontiers in materials science to solve complex worldwide challenges.
The cutting-edge instruments, worth more than a combined $20 million, were unveiled today by Dr Carina Garland MP, Member for Chisholm, at the Monash Centre for Electron Microscopy (MCEM) at the University’s Clayton campus.
(L-R) Jacek Jasieniak, Carina Garland MP, Joanne Etheridge.
The technology underpins the development of vital materials needed for high-speed computer chips, better batteries, more efficient solar panels, biodegradable plastics, communication devices, lighter, stronger metals for energy-efficient aircraft alloys, and green technologies, such as cleaner mineral extraction.
“Almost everything we use in our daily lives – from toothpaste and cars, to mobile phones – is made from materials engineered with the help of electron microscopes,” said Science Director of MCEM and Australian Laureate Professor in the School of Physics and Astronomy, Professor Joanne Etheridge.
The new instruments have already revealed how next generation, high-efficiency solar cell materials degrade at the atomic scale in order to develop solutions that last much longer, and the origin of the ultra-high-strength properties of a new titanium alloy designed for additive manufacturing.
Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research Infrastructure), Professor Jacek Jasieniak, said MCEM is a leading research facility, renowned worldwide.
“These are revolutionary instruments and a powerful new addition to our world-class Monash research platforms. We look forward to the new scientific discoveries they will enable,” Professor Jasieniak said.
“The MCEM fosters innovation, bringing world-leading scientists and engineers, industry and government to the heart of the Monash Technology Precinct to co-develop solutions with positive and lasting impact.”
In a keynote address, special guest, distinguished scientist and CEO of the Diamond Light Source (the UK Synchrotron), Professor Gianluigi Botton FRSC, highlighted the international significance of this research capability for solving key global challenges.
About the Monash Centre for Electron Microscopy
The MCEM is a leading international research centre in electron microscopy that combines cutting-edge technology with specialist expertise in the development of methods to determine atomic structures. The MCEM is a node of Microscopy Australia funded by the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Scheme (NCRIS).
Monash University (AU) is an Australian public research university based in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1958, it is the second oldest university in the State of Victoria. Monash is a member of Australia’s Group of Eight and the ASAIHL, and is the only Australian member of the influential M8 Alliance of Academic Health Centers, Universities and National Academies. Monash is one of two Australian universities to be ranked in The École des Mines de Paris (Mines ParisTech) ranking on the basis of the number of alumni listed among CEOs in the 500 largest worldwide companies. Monash is in the top 20% in teaching, top 10% in international outlook, top 20% in industry income and top 10% in research in the world.
Monash enrolls approximately 47,000 undergraduate and 20,000 graduate students. It also has more applicants than any university in the state of Victoria.
Monash is home to major research facilities, including the Australian Synchrotron, the Monash Science Technology Research and Innovation Precinct (STRIP), the Australian Stem Cell Centre, 100 research centres and 17 co-operative research centres. Monash total research revenue is over $2.1 billion, with external research income around $282 million.
The university has a number of centres, five of which are in Victoria (Clayton, Caulfield, Berwick, Peninsula, and Parkville), one in Malaysia. Monash also has a research and teaching centre in Prato, Italy, a graduate research school in Mumbai, India and a graduate school in Jiangsu Province, China. Since December 2011, Monash has had a global alliance with The University of Warwick (UK). Monash University courses are also delivered at other locations, including South Africa.
The Clayton campus contains the Robert Blackwood Hall, named after the university’s founding Chancellor Sir Robert Blackwood and designed by Sir Roy Grounds.
Study Focuses on an Ancient Group of Marine Invertebrates That Includes Soft Corals, Pushes Back the Previous Oldest Dated Example of Trait by Nearly 300 Million Years.
Media Only
Ryan Lavery
202-633-0826
laveryr@si.edu
Jack Tamisiea
202-633-0218
tamisieaj@si.edu
Randall Kremer
202-360-8770
kremerr@si.edu
The splendid deep-sea coral Iridogorgia sp. Deep-sea octocorals that are known to be bioluminescent. Credit: NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research.
Bioluminescence first evolved in animals at least 540 million years ago in a group of marine invertebrates called octocorals, according to the results of a new study from scientists with the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History.
The results, published today, April 23, in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, push back the previous record for the luminous trait’s oldest dated emergence in animals by nearly 300 million years, and could one day help scientists decode why the ability to produce light evolved in the first place.
Bioluminescence—the ability of living things to produce light via chemical reactions—has independently evolved at least 94 times in nature and is involved in a huge range of behaviors including camouflage, courtship, communication and hunting. Until now, the earliest dated origin of bioluminescence in animals was thought to be around 267 million years ago in small marine crustaceans called ostracods.
But for a trait that is literally illuminating, bioluminescence’s origins have remained shadowy.
“Nobody quite knows why it first evolved in animals,” said Andrea Quattrini, the museum’s curator of corals and senior author on the study.
But for Quattrini and lead author Danielle DeLeo, a museum research associate and former postdoctoral fellow, to eventually tackle the larger question of why bioluminescence evolved, they needed to know when the ability first appeared in animals.
In search of the trait’s earliest origins, the researchers decided to peer back into the evolutionary history of the octocorals, an evolutionarily ancient and frequently bioluminescent group of animals that includes soft corals, sea fans and sea pens. Like hard corals, octocorals are tiny colonial polyps that secrete a framework that becomes their refuge, but unlike their stony relatives, that structure is usually soft. Octocorals that glow typically only do so when bumped or otherwise disturbed, leaving the precise function of their ability to produce light a bit mysterious.
“We wanted to figure out the timing of the origin of bioluminescence, and octocorals are one of the oldest groups of animals on the planet known to bioluminesce,” DeLeo said. “So, the question was when did they develop this ability?”
Not coincidentally, Quattrini and Catherine McFadden with Harvey Mudd College had completed an extremely detailed, well-supported evolutionary tree of the octocorals in 2022. Quattrini and her collaborators created this map of evolutionary relationships, or phylogeny, using genetic data from 185 species of octocorals.
With this evolutionary tree grounded in genetic evidence, DeLeo and Quattrini then situated two octocoral fossils of known ages within the tree according to their physical features. The scientists were able to use the fossils’ ages and their respective positions in the octocoral evolutionary tree to date to figure out roughly when octocoral lineages split apart to become two or more branches. Next, the team mapped out the branches of the phylogeny that featured living bioluminescent species.
With the evolutionary tree dated and the branches that contained luminous species labeled, the team then used a series of statistical techniques to perform an analysis called ancestral state reconstruction.
“If we know these species of octocorals living today are bioluminescent, we can use statistics to infer whether their ancestors were highly probable to be bioluminescent or not,” Quattrini said. “The more living species with the shared trait, the higher the probability that as you move back in time that those ancestors likely had that trait as well.”
The researchers used numerous different statistical methods for their ancestral state reconstruction, but all arrived at the same result: Some 540 million years ago, the common ancestor of all octocorals were very likely bioluminescent. That is 273 million years earlier than the glowing ostracod crustaceans that previously held the title of earliest evolution of bioluminescence in animals.
DeLeo and Quattrini said that the octocorals’ thousands of living representatives and relatively high incidence of bioluminescence suggests the trait has played a role in the group’s evolutionary success. While this further begs the question of what exactly octocorals are using bioluminescence for, the researchers said the fact that it has been retained for so long highlights how important this form of communication has become for their fitness and survival.
Now that the researchers know the common ancestor of all octocorals likely already had the ability to produce its own light, they are interested in a more thorough accounting of which of the group’s more than 3,000 living species can still light up and which have lost the trait. This could help zero in on a set of ecological circumstances that correlate with the ability to bioluminesce and potentially illuminate its function.
To this end, DeLeo said she and some of her co-authors are working on creating a genetic test to determine if an octocoral species has functional copies of the genes underlying luciferase, an enzyme involved in bioluminescence. For species of unknown luminosity, such a test would enable researchers to get an answer one way or the other more rapidly and more easily.
Aside from shedding light on the origins of bioluminescence, this study also offers evolutionary context and insight that can inform monitoring and management of these corals today. Octocorals are threatened by climate change and resource-extraction activities, particularly fishing, oil and gas extraction and spills, and more recently by marine mineral mining.
This research supports the museum’s Ocean Science Center, which aims to advance and share knowledge of the ocean with the world. DeLeo and Quattrini said there is still much more to learn before scientists can understand why the ability to produce light first evolved, and though their results place its origins deep in evolutionary time, the possibility remains that future studies will discover that bioluminescence is even more ancient.
This study includes authors affiliated with Florida International University, the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, Nagoya University, Harvey Mudd College and University of California, Santa Cruz.
The research was supported by the Smithsonian, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, Japan Science and Technology Agency and the U.S. National Science Foundatio
Smithsonian magazine and smithsonian.com place a Smithsonian lens on the world, looking at the topics and subject matters researched, studied and exhibited by the Smithsonian Institution — science, history, art, popular culture and innovation — and chronicling them every day for our diverse readership. The Smithsonian Institution is a trust instrumentality of the United States composed as a group of museums and research centers. It was founded on August 10, 1846, “for the increase and diffusion of knowledge”. The institution is named after its founding donor, British scientist James Smithson. It was originally organized as the “United States National Museum”, but that name ceased to exist as an administrative entity in 1967.
Termed “the nation’s attic” for its eclectic holdings of 154 million items, the Institution’s 19 museums, 21 libraries, nine research centers, and zoo include historical and architectural landmarks, mostly located in the District of Columbia. Additional facilities are located in Maryland, New York, and Virginia. More than 200 institutions and museums in 45 states, Puerto Rico, and Panama are Smithsonian Affiliates.
The Institution’s 30 million annual visitors are admitted without charge. Its annual budget is around $1.2 billion, with two-thirds coming from annual federal appropriations. Other funding comes from the Institution’s endowment, private and corporate contributions, membership dues, and earned retail, concession, and licensing revenue. Institution publications include Smithsonian and Air & Space magazines.
Research centers and programs
The following is a list of Smithsonian research centers, with their affiliated museum in parentheses:
Archives of American Art
California State Railroad Museum
Carrie Bow Marine Field Station (Natural History Museum)
Center for Earth and Planetary Studies (Air and Space Museum)
Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage
Marine Station at Fort Pierce (Natural History Museum)
Smithsonian Migratory Bird Center (National Zoo)
Museum Conservation Institute
Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center
Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and the associated Harvard–Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute (National Zoo)
Smithsonian Environmental Research Center
Smithsonian Institution Archives
Smithsonian Libraries
Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press
Smithsonian Latino Center
Smithsonian Provenance Research Initiative (SPRI)
Smithsonian Science Education Center
Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (Panamá)
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
Also of note is the Smithsonian Museum Support Center (MSC), located in Silver Hill, Maryland (Suitland), which is the principal off-site conservation and collections facility for multiple Smithsonian museums, primarily the National Museum of Natural History. The MSC was dedicated in May 1983. The MSC covers 4.5 acres (1.8 ha) of land, with over 500,000 square feet (46,000 m^2) of space, making it one of the largest set of structures in the Smithsonian. It has over 12 miles (19 km) of cabinets, and more than 31 million objects.
4.22.24
Katie L Bethea
betheakl@ornl.gov,
757.817.2832
Researchers relied on support from ORNL’s Quantum Computing User Program to simulate a key quantum state at one of the largest scales reported. The findings could mark a step toward improving quantum simulations. Credit: Getty Images
Researchers simulated a key quantum state at one of the largest scales reported, with support from the Quantum Computing User Program, or QCUP, at the Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
The techniques used by the team could help develop quantum simulation capabilities for the next generation of quantum computers.
The study [Nature Physics] used Quantinuum’s H1-1 computer to model a quantum version of a classical mathematical model that tracks how a disease spreads.
Quantinuum System Model H1-1. Quantinuum
Time on the computer was provided by QCUP, part of the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility, which awards time on privately owned quantum processors around the country to support research projects.
The model used quantum bits, or qubits, to simulate the transition between active states, such as infection, and inactive states, such as death or recovery.
“The goal of this study was to work toward building capabilities on a quantum computer to solve this problem and others like it that are hard to calculate on conventional computers,” said Andrew Potter, a co-author of the study and assistant professor of physics at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. “This experiment models trying to steer a quantum system toward a particular state, while competing with the quantum fluctuations away from this state. There’s a transition point where these competing effects exactly balance. That point separates a phase where the steering succeeds and where it fails.”
The farther the system moves out of equilibrium, the more likely classical versions of the model will break down because of the size and complexity of the equations. The research team sought to use quantum computing to model those dynamics.
Classical computers store information in bits equal to either 0 or 1. In other words, a classical bit, like a light switch, exists in one of two states: on or off. That binary dynamic doesn’t necessarily fit modeling transitional states such as those studied in the disease model.
Quantum computing uses the laws of quantum mechanics to store information in qubits, the quantum equivalent of bits. Qubits can exist in more than one state simultaneously via quantum superposition, which allows qubits to carry more information than classical bits.
In quantum superposition, a qubit can exist in two states at the same time, similar to a spinning coin — neither heads nor tails for the coin, neither one frequency nor the other for the qubit. Measuring the value of the qubit determines the probability of measuring either of the two possible values, similar to stopping the coin on heads or tails. That dynamic allows for a wider range of possible values that could be used to study complex questions like transitional states.
Researchers hope those possibilities will drive a quantum revolution that sees quantum computers surpass classical machines in speed and power. But the qubits used by current quantum machines tend to degrade easily. That decay causes high error rates that can muddle results from any model larger than a test problem.
Potter and his colleagues obtained time via QCUP on the Quantinuum computer, which uses trapped ions as qubits. They measured circuits, or quantum gates, throughout the run and used a technique known as qubit recycling to eliminate degraded qubits.
“We used the quantum processor to simulate a system where active qubits have the ability to activate neighboring qubits or become inactive,” Potter said. “By monitoring the system in real time at each step and testing as we go, we could detect the likelihood that performing a quantum gate on a qubit could affect the state of a qubit and, if not, remove it from the calculation. This way we avoid the chance for errors to creep in.”
The team determined they could use their approach on 20 qubits to hold errors down and simulate a quantum system nearly four times that size. They estimated at 70 qubits their approach could equal or surpass a classical computer’s capabilities.
“This is the first time the approach has been used for a system this size,” Potter said.
Next steps include applying qubit recycling to quantum problems, such as simulating properties of materials and calculating their lowest energy states, or quantum ground states.
Support for this research came from the DOE Office of Science’s Advanced Scientific Computing Research program and from the National Science Foundation.
The Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF) was established at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in 2004 with the mission of accelerating scientific discovery and engineering progress by providing outstanding computing and data management resources to high-priority research and development projects.
ORNL’s supercomputing program has grown from humble beginnings to deliver some of the most powerful systems in the world. On the way, it has helped researchers deliver practical breakthroughs and new scientific knowledge in climate, materials, nuclear science, and a wide range of other disciplines.
The OLCF delivered on that original promise in 2008, when its Cray XT “Jaguar” system ran the first scientific applications to exceed 1,000 trillion calculations a second (1 petaflop). Since then, the OLCF has continued to expand the limits of computing power, unveiling Titan in 2013, which was capable of 27 petaflops.
Titan was one of the first hybrid architecture systems—a combination of graphics processing units (GPUs), and the more conventional central processing units (CPUs) that have served as number crunchers in computers for decades. The parallel structure of GPUs makes them uniquely suited to process an enormous number of simple computations quickly, while CPUs are capable of tackling more sophisticated computational algorithms. The complimentary combination of CPUs and GPUs allow Titan to reach its peak performance.
With a peak performance of 200,000 trillion calculations per second—or 200 petaflops, Summit is eight times more powerful than ORNL’s previous top-ranked system, Titan. For certain scientific applications, Summit will also be capable of more than three billion billion mixed precision calculations per second, or 3.3 exaops. Summit will provide unprecedented computing power for research in energy, advanced materials and artificial intelligence (AI), among other domains, enabling scientific discoveries that were previously impractical or impossible.
OLCF also boasts the exascale Frontier supercomputer
The OLCF gives the world’s most advanced computational researchers an opportunity to tackle problems that would be unthinkable on other systems. The facility welcomes investigators from universities, government agencies, and industry who are prepared to perform breakthrough research in climate, materials, alternative energy sources and energy storage, chemistry, nuclear physics, astrophysics, quantum mechanics, and the gamut of scientific inquiry. Because it is a unique resource, the OLCF focuses on the most ambitious research projects—projects that provide important new knowledge or enable important new technologies.
Established in 1942, DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory is the largest science and energy national laboratory in the Department of Energy system (by size) and third largest by annual budget. It is located in the Roane County section of Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Its scientific programs focus on materials, neutron science, energy, high-performance computing, systems biology and national security, sometimes in partnership with the state of Tennessee, universities and other industries.
It hosts the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences, the BioEnergy Science Center, and the Consortium for Advanced Simulation of Light Water Nuclear Reactors.
ORNL is managed by UT-Battelle for the Department of Energy’s Office of Science. DOE’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time.
Areas of research
ORNL conducts research and development activities that span a wide range of scientific disciplines. Many research areas have a significant overlap with each other; researchers often work in two or more of the fields listed here. The laboratory’s major research areas are described briefly below.
Chemical sciences – ORNL conducts both fundamental and applied research in a number of areas, including catalysis, surface science and interfacial chemistry; molecular transformations and fuel chemistry; heavy element chemistry and radioactive materials characterization; aqueous solution chemistry and geochemistry; mass spectrometry and laser spectroscopy; separations chemistry; materials chemistry including synthesis and characterization of polymers and other soft materials; chemical biosciences; and neutron science. Electron microscopy – ORNL’s electron microscopy program investigates key issues in condensed matter, materials, chemical and nanosciences. Nuclear medicine – The laboratory’s nuclear medicine research is focused on the development of improved reactor production and processing methods to provide medical radioisotopes, the development of new radionuclide generator systems, the design and evaluation of new radiopharmaceuticals for applications in nuclear medicine and oncology. Physics – Physics research at ORNL is focused primarily on studies of the fundamental properties of matter at the atomic, nuclear, and subnuclear levels and the development of experimental devices in support of these studies. Population – ORNL provides federal, state and international organizations with a gridded population database, called Landscan, for estimating ambient population. LandScan is a raster image, or grid, of population counts, which provides human population estimates every 30 x 30 arc seconds, which translates roughly to population estimates for 1 kilometer square windows or grid cells at the equator, with cell width decreasing at higher latitudes. Though many population datasets exist, LandScan is the best spatial population dataset, which also covers the globe. Updated annually (although data releases are generally one year behind the current year) offers continuous, updated values of population, based on the most recent information. Landscan data are accessible through GIS applications and a USAID public domain application called Population Explorer.
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