* Astronomy

A leading scientist on the world's largest physics experiment at CERN in Switzerland, will deliver the annual Schrodinger Lecture at Imperial College London on Wednesday 21 November 2007 at 5.30pm.

The lecture given by Professor Tejinder Virdee, from Imperial's Department of Physics, on 'Discovering the Quantum Universe: the large Hadron Collider Project at CERN.'
Professor Virdee leads a 2,000 strong team of scientists from around the world on the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) particle detector experiment, one of the two general purpose experiments due to start collecting data when the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) particle accelerator is turned on next year.
Professor Virdee and his team are aiming to find new particles, detect mini black holes and solve some of the mysteries of the universe such as where mass comes from, how many dimensions there are and what constitutes dark matter.
The LHC will accelerate beams of particles around a 27km circular tunnel underneath the French/Swiss countryside. These particles will collide with each other with higher energies than in any previous experiment at the precise moment that they are passing through the CMS detector.
The high-energy conditions of these collisions will be similar to those that occurred in the first instants of the universe, immediately after the Big Bang. The collisions will create many new particles, which will fly away from the site of the collision in all directions. The different layers of the CMS detector will measure their energies and track their paths.
Professor Virdee and his colleagues hope to record the presence of particles that have never been seen before, including the Higgs-Boson particle which has been theorised but never recorded.
Professor Virdee's lecture will outline current progress towards the switch-on of the LHC, anticipated in May 2008. He will talk about the construction of the 12,500 tonne, 21-metre-long detector, the challenges the team have overcome in designing and building it, and the results he hopes to see when the machine begins to take data next year.

Attendance at the lecture is by ticket only. Anyone wishing to attend the lecture should register in advance by emailing amy.thompson@imperial.ac.uk

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