Physics Comment Magazine March 2018 Issue Physics Comment March 2018_v1.3 | Page 27

Wits students contribute to the upgrade of the high-tech software and
hardware at the CERN ATLAS detector
Report by Professor Bruce Mellado, University of the Witwatersrand
In 2012, the world was astonished
by the announcement of the
discovery of the Higgs boson at the
Centre for Nuclear Research
(CERN) in Switzerland. That
announcement
completed
physicists understanding of what
we know of the part of our world
that we can see and feel, namely
normal matter.
The discovery of the Higgs boson,
however, inspired the worlds’
physicists into a whole new world
of study, searching for the answers
to the mysteries of the things in
our universe that we cannot see.
“Normal matter, in other words,
the things that we can see and feel
around us compris es only about
4% of what is actually in the
universe.
While we know that there is a lot of
matter and energy out there we do
not really know what it is and how it
is related to the known matter.” says
Professor Bruce Mellado, the
National Contact Physicist of South
Africa at the ATLAS experiment at
CERN from the School of Physics at
the University of the Witwatersrand.
The Department of Science and
Technology funds the South Africa
CERN (SA-CERN) consortium.
This avenue is essential for South
African students and researchers to
access this leading global research
infrastructure.
This includes theoreticians and
experimentalists together with a
group of 35 students from a wide
variety of historical and financial
backgrounds that are highly
involved in the search for new
bosons. These students from Wits
University
spend
significant
amount of time at CERN, where
some of them play an active role in
the upcoming upgrading of the
ATLAS particle detectors that is
situated in the Large Hadron
Collider (LHC). The LHC will be
upgraded in 2023-2024 to increase
its sensitivity in order to enhance
the potential for new discoveries.
Wits is the single largest contributor “The LHC is the largest particle
from South Africa to CERN.
accelerator in the world, and it is
used to accelerate two high energy
Ntabiseng Lekalakala working on electronics at CERN.
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