McGill.CA / Science / Department of Physics

A Rutherford Celebration event
2008/09 Anna I. McPherson Lectures

John Ellis

CERN


Public Lecture

Thursday, October 23rd 2008, 18:00
Strathcona Anatomy and Dentistry Building, Room M1

The LHC: the world's most powerful microscope and telescope

100 years after Rutherford, The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN will take the world to a new level in its understanding of the structure of matter and the workings of the universe, by recreating collisions that took place between particle of matter when the universe was a trillionth of a second old. It will reveal why particles have mass, and may reveal the nature of the dark matter that fills the universe, perhaps even the origin of matter itself.


Scientific Lecture

Friday, October 24th 2008, 15:30
Ernest Rutherford Physics Building, Keys Auditorium (room 112)

What may we expect from the LHC?

Beams have now been put into the LHC, and the first collisions are expected soon. What can be expected from the LHC in the coming months and years? 100 years after Rutherford, the LHC will probe the inner structure of matter and the nature of the fundamental interactions, and it may also cast light on many cosmological problems. Within the Standard Model of particle physics, the LHC's primary objective is the Higgs boson, which is thought to be responsible for the masses of the elementary particles. Beyond the Standard Model, the LHC may discover supersymmetry or extra space-time dimensions, and reveal the nature of dark matter.