François Englert (1932 – 2026)
It is with great sadness that we announce that Belgian theoretical physicist, François Englert, has passed away at the age of 93.
Read more: home.cern/francois-englert-1…
ALT François Englert during a visit to CERN in 2014 (Image: CERN)
Join us #AtCERN for a galactic journey where science and music collide 💫
Young pianists from Haute école de musique de Genève - Neuchâtel (HEM) will be playing pieces from inspirational composers, with stunning scientific films of subatomic particles, the solar system and the Universe as a background, produced by Emmy-nominated astronomer and filmmaker José Francisco Salgado.
This event will be co-created by CERN, the HEM and KV 265, a non-profit organisation whose mission is the communication of science through music and the visual arts.
📍CERN Science Gateway, Auditorium Sergio Marchionne
📆 31 March 2026, starting from 19h30
🔗Register here: indico.cern.ch/event/1606882…
Featured this #TeachingTuesday: teachers learning 👨🏫
Every year, CERN offers various professional development programmes for teachers. Last month, it was the turn of French teachers, who came to CERN to keep up-to-date with the latest developments in particle physics, and experience a dynamic research environment.
Organised with @CNRS_IN2P3 Nucléaire & Particules and @Sciences_Ecole.
Find out more: teacher-programmes.web.cern.…
‘Tis the season of heavy ions
Last Friday at 3.40 pm, a new #HeavyIon run began at the Large Hadron Colliderthe fourth of #LHCRun3. Usually at the end of each proton run, CERN physicists collide heavy ions to free quarks and recreate the conditions that existed in the early #Universe just after the Big Bang.
Find out more about the primordial state of matter studied in heavy-ion collisions at the LHC: youtube.com/watch?v=mBfJAcPO…
#ICYMI here’s a recap of #OpenScience Fair 2025 💫
This #PhotoOfTheWeek features the highlights of last week’s event, which took place at #CERNScienceGateway.
From 15 to 17 September, innovators, researchers, and policy leaders came together to explore how diverse forms of collaboration can accelerate discovery, enhance knowledge accessibility, and create a more transparent and equitable research ecosystem.
The autumn issue of #AcceleratingNews is out 🍂
In this issue, we take a look at the successful completion of the #LHC Injectors Upgrade, highlight the benefits for industry of collaborating with large-scale research projects, and deep dive into how the Particle Accelerator MasterClass project has been inspiring thousands of young people to get involved in #Physics, among other news.
Read the full issue: acceleratingnews.eu/issue-52
#ThrowbackThurdsday to June 1980 🏃♂️
That summer, Leon Van Hove (CERN’s Director General at that time) kicked off the traditional annual relay race, a tradition that still takes place to this day #AtCERN.
Twice Director of the Theory Division, Leon Van Hove oversaw the official unification of the two sites of the Laboratory – Prévessin and Meyrin – and led the early groundwork for what would become the Large Electron-Positron Collider (LEP), the largest electron-positron accelerator ever built.
Summer students #AtCERN 💻
Today’s #PhotoOfTheWeek features a lecture given by CERN’s Director General Fabiola Gianotti to the 2025 class of summer students in the audience.
The CERN Summer Student Programme offers STEM students pursuing bachelor’s or master’s degrees the unique opportunity to join in the day-to-day work of CERN’s experiments and attend lectures specially prepared for them by scientists from around the world.
Find out more: careers.cern/summer
Here we see the recently-inaugurated control room of the @CMSexperiment, where the physicists carry out the monitoring and supervision of the experiment’s operations around the clock.
The interior of this control room is twice as large as the previous one. Located next to the detector, this room was upgraded to support the ever-increasing demands of the experiment in preparation for #HiLumiLHC operations.
Find out more: cms.cern/news/cms-inaugurate…
#ThrowbackThursday to August 1970 🔙
Here we see the first large units of the magnetic shielding designed for the European hydrogen bubble chamber, arriving #AtCERN from the ‘Forges et Ateliers de la Loire’ (France).
The European hydrogen bubble chamber, also known as the Big European Bubble Chamber (BEBC), was a large particle detector that was used in particle physics research from 1973 until 1984.
The first images feature the first unit, a lower disc weighing 48 tons. Swipe to the last picture to see BEBC finalised. 👉
