As the ashes of the second world war blew away and the cold war began to take shape, the European nations decided that, rather than slaughter one another, they would collaborate.
It was none other than J Robert Oppenheimer who warned European leaders that they were stuck between the superpowers of the cold war and that without combining their resources into a single bloc, they would be left behind in atomic science. So the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) was born, marking the first major scientific collaboration between European nations after history’s deadliest war.
CERN is perhaps best known as the home of the 17-mile-long Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world’s largest and highest-energy particle accelerator, which was used to discover the so-called ‘god particle’, the Higgs boson, in 2012. It is also the birthplace of the world-wide web. Today, physicists at the sprawling 620-hectare campus busy themselves investigating anti-matter and many other scientific intrigues that hold clues for cracking the secret codes of the universe.
But the unsung hero of the institution is engineering. The achievements of CERN are only possible because engineers have built and continually maintain scientific instruments of unimpeachably precise design, down to the micron (one-millionth of a metre).
“In many cases, we require technologies that do not exist, so we have to invent them,” says David Widegren, the head of engineering-information management at CERN. “It’s really an engineering organisation. If we have misaligned equipment, there’s no research, there are no discoveries, there are no Nobel prizes.”
Precision alignment to the nth degree
The LHC contains 100 million separate parts working synchronously to smash subatomic particles together at velocities close to the speed of light. All of those parts had to be designed using highly precise tools with practically no margin for error.
Hexagon, a Swedish metrology technology company, has been key to achieving such precision. CERN’s engineers use the firm’s BricsCAD software to design components and create accompanying documentation. Hexagon’s laser trackers ensure that the components in the instruments correspond exactly with the designs. Any misalignment could cause the instruments to stop working, so once they are installed, the trackers are used to verify the positioning of the millions of parts. Meanwhile, enterprise asset-database software by Hexagon enables engineers to monitor these components.
“Once we have manufactured our equipment and installed it, we have to make sure it is aligned and correctly positioned with a tolerance of, perhaps, 200 microns,” says Widegren.
Plotting the curves of technological evolution
Because installations such as CERN’s accelerators are large, expensive, complex and have life cycles of more than 50 years, engineers at the institute must build facilities that are useful for decades to come. But often it’s not only a matter of future-proofing facilities or instruments; the installations themselves are without precedent.
For instance, when the LHC was approved in 1995, its designers understood that developing the accelerator would require technologies that did not yet exist. To plot its eventual completion, physicists and engineers studied the curves of technological evolution to understand what they might realistically be able to design, Widegren explains.
“You need to devise specifications that are precise enough for what you want to build – but not too precise, because you don’t even know if the particles you’re looking for exist,” says Widegren.
This approach still guides their process. When developing novel technologies, CERN’s theoretical physicists create research plans, which are then picked up by particle physicists. The physicists then describe the plans to engineers, who craft the materials, components and instruments to make the experiments possible.
One generation innovating for the next
With LHC upgrades set for the 2040s and more research programmes planned up to 40 years from then, the time horizons for the engineering team’s work are “quite mind-blowing”, Widegren says.
“We basically go to the end of the century in planning. It’s one generation of engineers building them for the next to operate and maintain,” he explains.
Core to this mission is keeping strict documentation so that engineers in, say, 2059 are not baffled if something goes wrong with tech from 2025. Much of Widegren’s time is spent ensuring that these documents are stored safely and that their contents are articulated in universal standards that will be understood by future engineers. He must also continually update documentation for tools and systems from the pre-digital era, so those too are accessible now and in the future.
This is important work to ensure future generations can make the most out of these machines. For Widegren, the purpose is to improve humanity’s understanding of how the universe functions – even if those building the instruments today will never see the breakthroughs of tomorrow.
As the ashes of the second world war blew away and the cold war began to take shape, the European nations decided that, rather than slaughter one another, they would collaborate.
It was none other than J Robert Oppenheimer who warned European leaders that they were stuck between the superpowers of the cold war and that without combining their resources into a single bloc, they would be left behind in atomic science. So the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) was born, marking the first major scientific collaboration between European nations after history's deadliest war.
CERN is perhaps best known as the home of the 17-mile-long Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator, which was used to discover the so-called ‘god particle’, the Higgs boson, in 2012. It is also the birthplace of the world-wide web. Today, physicists at the sprawling 620-hectare campus busy themselves investigating anti-matter and many other scientific intrigues that hold clues for cracking the secret codes of the universe.
