Podcast Extra: CERN

During a visit to Geneva in September 2016, the Awesome Astronomy
team stopped looking out into the universe for a while to delve
into the impossibly tiny world of subatomic particles and
fundamental forces that fuels the heartbeat of the European
Organization for Nuclear Research.


Dr Steven Goldfarb, an experimental particle physicist from the
University of Michigan, led a tour of the ATLAS Control Room, a
few metres above the largest and most advanced engineering
experiment the world has ever seen – the Large Hadron Collider.
Then we sat down to enjoy a light lunch and discuss the
ground-breaking work, detections and knowledge building that only
CERN can accomplish.


Naturally, we also delve into the big issues in astronomy today –
such as dark matter, the matter/antimatter imbalance and extra
dimensions, all of which are being explored by CERN.


So, for anyone who's excited by the frontiers of physics or
puzzled by what CERN is or does, we've recorded a special podcast
extra to shed some light on the impossibly complex and
tantalisingly exciting world of particle physics, right on the
very cutting edge.


This podcast extra should explain in simple terms:


What are the Large Hadron Collider and CERN

The International collaboration required

The significance of the Higgs Boson

Why gravity causes us so many problems

The frontiers of our understanding of the universe

The search for unified fundamental forces, extra dimensions
and exotic new matter



With special thanks to CERN and Dr Steve Goldfarb