Real-Life Communication
If there's one career area in which communications is a fine
art form, it's in particle physics.
These scientists work on projects
worth over $100 million and collaborate with as many as 2,000 other people
on the same project. The project members come from countries and universities
around the world.
"It's really more like running a large industry
with one of these experiments," says Douglas Beder.
"Collaboration
between these people is intense."
In fact, did you realize that physicists
invented the World Wide Web?
"The people who invented the World Wide
Web on the Internet were the physicists at Geneva, Switzerland," explains
Beder. "They needed to be able to talk to each other from around the world
and transmit large volumes of data to each other. The most demanding needs
for communications came out of the elementary particle experiments at these
international centers."
In fact, within each group of these enormous
projects, you'll find people whose almost sole task is to make sure the
lines of communications are clear.
Besides using Internet services
such as e-mail and websites, physicists also use video conferencing, says
physicist Janis McKenna.
"In particle physics, we communicate a lot
over video conferencing. It goes over the telephone lines, with one phone
line for the audio and one for the video. Instead of flying over to Paris
to present something to your colleagues, they can ask you questions and you
can answer back, and it's just like being there," says McKenna.
Here
is a short history of CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics.
Read the text and answer the questions at the end.
European
scientists made great progress in physics research in the beginning of the
20th century. But their work was put on hold when the world went to war.
It
soon became clear that researchers could learn more by working together, but
that meant there had to be cooperation between countries. Thus, CERN, the
world's largest particle physics center, was established in the 1950s. It
was built near Geneva, Switzerland.
Twelve European countries came together
to found the new center: Germany, Belgium, Denmark, France, Greece, Italy,
Norway, The Netherlands, United Kingdom, Sweden, Switzerland and Yugoslavia.
CERN's
first accelerator went into operation in 1957. With it, scientists were able
to observe a pion decay into an electron and a neutrino. Over the years, developments
at CERN resulted in key advances in the physics field.
In 1990, Tim
Berners-Lee and CERN researcher Robert Cailliau proposed a way of linking
related pieces of information stored on computers. The new system was named
the World Wide Web -- and the rest is history.
Questions:
- Why was European physics research halted in the early 20th century?
- What are two major accomplishments of CERN researchers?
- Who founded CERN?