As the world’s most powerful particle accelerator at the European physics laboratory, Cern, was switched on, Maltese researcher Gianluca Valentino was on the front line of this historic event.
A computer scientist who obtained a PhD from the University of Malta, 25-year-old Dr Valentino has been working at the massive laboratory located in the Swiss-French border for five years.
Gianluca Valentino has been working at Cern for the past five years.“It is one of the most exciting and diverse places in the world to work. You can learn from and collaborate with world class scientists in the fields of physics, engineering and computing. The challenges are great but the rewards are greater,” he said.
He is involved in the Large Hadron Collider project, an €8 billion particle accelerator made up of a 27km ring of superconducting magnets.
The LHC allows scientists to reproduce the conditions that existed within a billionth of a second after the Big Bang as particles are collided at a rate of 40 million times per second.
In fact, the LHC was restarted last Sunday after two years of upgrades to massively increase its energy. Cern reported that the particle beams were successfully pushed around the LHC but it will be at least two months before the tests looking for the Big Bang theory start and at least a year before any results can be expected.
Dr Valentino has been working on the LHC collimation project since July 2010. A collimator is a device that narrows a beam of particles or waves. Just two years ago, he obtained his PhD for developing a fast technique to automatically align the 100 collimators to the LHC beam with the accuracy of less than the width of a human hair. This saved hundreds of hours in beam time in the experiments and the control software he developed is regularly used at the Cern control centre.
Working there means being on the front line of science and technology with access to the most sophisticated machines.
“At the moment, there is great anticipation as the final magnets are tested, the machine is closed and the beams start to circulate again after a successful upgrade period which lasted two years. The eyes of the world will be on Cern and its scientists,” he said.
In 2012, the accelerator made its landmark discovery of the long- theoretical Higgs boson. Referred to as the ‘God particle’, it is an elementary particle in the standard model of particle physics.
Dr Valentino pointed out that the Higgs boson had eluded physicists for so long due to the very high energy required to create it. Only one Higgs boson is produced per 10 billion particle collisions.
“The atmosphere at Cern is humming with excitement as scientists complete the final tests.”
He would like to continue working as a researcher in computer science at a university or a research institute such as Cern and encouraged other Maltese to give it a shot.
“If you are a hard-working individual with an aptitude for research and teamwork, don’t think twice. Leaving your family and friends behind might sound tough but working at Cern is a great experience. Also, the view of the Mont Blanc from the office is great!”