IZMIR UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS IS AT CERN
A memorandum of understanding (MoU) has been signed between Izmir University of Economics (IUE) and Future Circular Collider (FCC) study group of CERN, the largest particle physics laboratory in the world. Izmir University of Economics is now one of the 129 institutions from 34 countries to contribute to the studies of CERN FCC study group.
Prof. Dr. Abbas Kenan Çiftçi, Head of IUE Department of Physics, and Dr. Michael Benedikt, Head of the Future Circular Collider study, signed the memorandum of understanding at the ceremony, which took place at CERN. According to the MoU, a team of academicians from Department of Physics, and other departments of Izmir University of Economics, and a group from Ege University, led by Prof. Dr. Çiftçi, will be using CERN labs and infrastructure, and conduct researches. Technology prototypes will be developed with industry-university collaboration.
Prof. Dr. Abbas Kenan Çiftçi reminded that he had been participating in CERN experiments and projects such as ATLAS, CLIC, LHeC as a researcher and project coordinator on particle physics and colliders since 2002. “I have joined the Future Circular Collider project in 2014. I am a member of FCC International Collaboration Board (ICB). PhD student Özgür Etişken, currently under my advisory, is designing the 2 thousand 736-meter section of the FCC project on CERN campus at Geneva, Switzerland. I will be establishing a group of academicians from IUE Department of Physics and other engineering departments, as well as academicians from Ege University. We will be representing Izmir and our country at CERN with the researches we conduct”.
What is CERN-FCC Project?
Founded in 1954 by 12 European countries, the CERN (European Council for Nuclear Research) laboratory is one of Europe's largest laboratory with 21 member states, 2 associate members, and 2 affiliates. It was established to compete with USA in particle physics and nuclear physics, and to reverse the brain drain that started after the Second World War.
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator, and remains the latest addition to CERN’s accelerator complex. The LHC consists of a 26.7-kilometre ring of superconducting magnets with a number of accelerating structures to boost the energy of the particles along the way. Seven detectors have been constructed at the LHC.
The designs for this collider have started in 1985. The first proton collisions started in 2010. Likewise, CERN started the designs studies for FCC on October 22, 2013. First electron and positron collisions are expected to start in 2030, and proton collisions are scheduled to start 4 years later.
Today’s particle physics theory predicted Higgs boson before it was discovered. However, this theory is only able to explain 5% of the universe. There are still speculations on powerful telescopes on earth and its orbit, the dark matter that makes up 22% of all matter/energy we fail to explain, and the 73% dark energy. FCC plans to explain all this.
