Category: Ippog Witness Stories
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Accelerators to reduce pollution of maritime traffic
The accelerator community has a lot of examples of applications of accelerators used for the benefit of the society. One of the most unexpected applications is the pioneering use of compact modular linear accelerators for treating the exhaust gas of diesel engines of ships. This is done developing a non-invasive “green” method to reduce the…
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Positron Emission Tomography: can crystals used in particle detectors save lives?
The Positron Emission Tomography (PET) is explained as a medical imaging technique widely used in hospitals to detect anomalies in the body of patients (like cancer tumors) on a daily basis. The article explains how PET works and how knowledge of basic physics processes is used to visualize the physiological processes in biological systems. Different…
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Einstein’s Relativity in Action – the GPS Navigation System knows it
One unexpected real-life application of Einstein’s theory of relativity, used by almost everybody every day, is the GPS navigation system. Some details of how this works are given in this short story. Link to the story Authors: Lorenzo Galante, Thomas Naumann, Katharina Mueller and Yiota Foka
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Searching for hidden cavities inside the Sun pyramid in Mexico
A first-hand witness of the experience of the main author searching for hidden cavities inside the Sun pyramid in Mexico, in a collaboration of Mexican physics groups and archeologists. This is explained as an example of the many applications of muon tomography. Link to the story Author: Ruben Alfaro, representative of the HAWC experiment in…
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Muon Tomography – Invisible particles help to reveal invisible structures
Among the IPPOG Forum members, many experimentalists work with (or even developed) specialized muon detectors for the purposes of fundamental research. However, such devises find many direct applications for society spanning from scanning lories and controlling the nuclear fuel that was spent in power plants to exploring underground cavities. Link to the story Author: Despina…
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Medipix detectors, from colour X-ray imaging to education
Details on how it is possible to visualise the invisible particles of cosmic rays are given with the aim to get students acquainted with radiation. This is just one of the uses of the Medipix/Timepix family of detectors developed for fundamental research experiments at CERN. Details on many other applications spanning from medicine to art…
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Superconductivity – quantum mechanics at work
Super-conductivity is brought to the general public by emphasizing one of the most amazing applications: levitating trains like the Maglev in Shanghai. Article written by a witness of the discovery of high-temperature superconductors. The main author had the privilege to work on high temperature superconductivity at the University of Zurich at the time of the…
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Unraveling Cosmic Mysteries: the collaboration between ISS and CERN
CERN and NASA join forces in exploring the secrets of the universe, a challenging endeavour that results in practical benefits for society such as, for example, development of novel materials. Link to the story This article presents a bridge between the author’s two passions and areas of expertise: particle physics and space research. Author :…