Home > Flat Carbon > One step closer to understanding the big bang (and our steel helped)

One step closer to understanding the big bang (and our steel helped)

Add a comment
Posted on March 30, 2010 by Mary Carey

On March 30, 2010 just after noon BST, CERN announced that they successfully implemented the first collision in the Hadron collider. This is big news for CERN, for Europe and also for science. But it’s also big news for us. Why? Because ArcelorMittal steel was used to help build the accelerator.

In 2008 CERN acquired a new particle accelerator: the LHC (Large Hadron Collider), which was then installed in a tunnel 27 km long, located 100 metres underground. When fully operational, trillions of protons, accelerated to 99.99% of the speed of light, make 11 245 laps of the accelerator per second and allow physicists to study the smallest known particles: the elementary building blocks of matter.

Thanks to close collaboration between ArcelorMittal’s R&D and techno commercial teams, our Group won the contract to supply steel for the accelerator by proposing a new high thickness steel which met CERN’s expectations perfectly.

Our understanding of the universe may be about to change with the aid of the LHC and the $10bn project has been described as the world’s largest scientific experiment.

Two beams of protons began 10 days ago to speed at high energy in opposite directions around the tunnel under the Swiss-French border at Geneva. The beams have been pushed to 3.5 trillion electron volts, the highest energy achieved by any physics accelerator. Scientists have now succeeded to force the two beams to cross, creating collisions and showers of particles. The first step towards the explanation of the big bang, and using ArcelorMittal steel!

Collaboration: Dieter Vandenhende, Flat Carbon Europe & Automotive Worldwide, ArcelorMittal 



To report abuse on the posts or the comments, please click here.



4 comments


  • April 1st, 2010 by Subhamoy Kar

    Dear Sir,

    Some information about the properties of special steel along with thickness and tonnage would be enlightening.

    Thanking you, in advance.

    Subhamoy Kar
    ArcelorMittal Design & Engineering Centre
    Kolkata



  • April 1st, 2010 by Dber

    You may be interested to learn that at least one ArcelorMittal Business Unit has a long and successfull experience with CERN since it already provided “magnetic steel plates” for the CERN accelerator the 1980′s ;
    that BU is the former Cockerill Sambre Group and the steel was produced in Liège



  • April 1st, 2010 by Kroepsel

    This good tradition of research and innovation coming from Arcelor should be continued and enforced. And extended to the Mittal scope.



  • April 1st, 2010 by Raquel

    Dear Subhamoy Kar,
    You can find more info on the steel used for the CERN here:
    http://www.arcelormittal.com/fce/repository/Update/EN_UpdateFCE_May09.pdf




Add a comment