Duke of Edinburgh follows father’s 1960 visit to CERN

Image: CERN · home.cern Prince Edward, as Chancellor of the University of Bath, toured the CMS experimental cavern at CERN on Tuesday, 8 September with technical student Amandine Meertens from his university, echoing a 1960 visit to the laboratory by his father, Prince Philip. The Duke of Edinburgh’s tour included stops at LHC Points 4 and 5, and the CERN Science Gateway. Secondary school students from the University College London Academy also engaged with the Duke at the CERN Science Gateway, highlighting the organization’s commitment to education and outreach. As CERN Director-General Mark Thomson recalled at the event, the late Prince Philip signed the guest book during an informal visit. Duke of Edinburgh Tours CMS Experiment and LHC Tunnel Amandine Meertens, a technical student from the University of Bath, personally guided Prince Edward, the Duke of Edinburgh, through the CMS experimental cavern, a direct link between his chancellorship and the intricacies of particle physics research at CERN. This connection underscored the importance CERN places on fostering relationships with academic institutions and providing hands-on experience for students like Meertens, who are contributing to scientific endeavors. These locations house complex components essential for steering and colliding particle beams, offering a detailed glimpse into the LHC’s infrastructure.

The Science Gateway is an educational hub, translating complex physics concepts into accessible exhibits and interactive experiences for students of all ages, and the Duke’s conversation with secondary school students from the University College London Academy highlighted the importance of outreach programs in cultivating scientific curiosity. CERN’s active participation in the EU Quantum Flagship and its partnerships with companies like Qilimanjaro Quantum Tech and IBM Quantum demonstrate a broadening scope beyond traditional particle physics, extending into the rapidly developing field of quantum technology. CERN’s Quantum Technology Initiative applies quantum computing to LHC data analysis, using expertise in superconducting magnets developed for the collider to advance qubit development. “One previous notable signatory of the guest book is the late Prince Philip,” Thomson stated, drawing a line between the two royal visits and emphasizing CERN’s long-standing relationship with the British royal family. The organization, founded in 1954 and headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, continues to expand its research portfolio, recently collaborating with Macquarie University on chip development for its search for the universe’s origins and with the University of Liverpool on a 20-year beam technology project. CERN currently holds ten patent families and has published five papers in the last twelve months, reflecting its ongoing innovation and commitment to open science.

Prince Edward Follows Father’s 1960 Visit to CERN Prince Edward’s visit to CERN extended a familial connection to the laboratory begun over six decades prior; the late Prince Philip, former Duke of Edinburgh and father of Prince Edward, arrived by helicopter in April 1960. Recent collaborations, such as the one with Macquarie University to build chips for universe origin research and the University of Liverpool’s 20-year beam technology project, further solidify CERN’s position as a global leader in scientific exploration. Source: https://home.cern/the-duke-of-edinburgh-visits-cern/ More like thisPhysicsAtom counts reveal temperature in ultracold quantum gasesPhysicsJefferson Lab finds quantum hints of two new strange quark structuresTechnologyGoogle Research Shares 5 Visuals of Male Fruit Fly’s Neural NetworkPhysicsResearchers Map Baxter-Fendley Chain’s Entire Energy SpectrumStay currentSee today’s quantum computing news on Quantum Zeitgeist for the latest breakthroughs in qubits, hardware, algorithms, and industry deals. Tags: Ivy Delaney Ivy Delaney has been working with neural networks and machine learning since the mid-nineties, back when a couple of hidden layers and a long afternoon of training counted as ambitious. She has watched the field go from academic curiosity to the thing quietly running underneath everything, and she brings that long view to quantum computing.

For Quantum Zeitgeist she covers the ground where the two fields meet. That means quantum machine learning and the variational algorithms it leans on, and it also means the less glamorous but more interesting story of classical machine learning already doing real work inside quantum machines, decoding error-correcting codes, calibrating noisy hardware and learning the error models that simulators depend on. She writes about the hardware those algorithms have to run on too, and about the post-quantum cryptography scramble that the same hardware has set off. Her stories typically start with the paper, whether that is peer-reviewed work, conference proceedings or an arXiv preprint, with the source linked so you can hold a claim up against the research it came from. She is unimpressed by benchmarks that will not say what they beat, and by demonstrations that only work in the press release.