A total of 43 manufacturers from Europe alone have supplied lifting gear to CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research), which is located astride the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva, not far from the foothills of the Alps (about an hour by car in fact).
Put simply, CERN aims to recreate the conditions just after the Big Bang to understand why the universe is like it is today. Over a thousand dipole magnets guide the particles around the 27km ring. Several hundred quadrupole magnets focus the particle beams, squeezing them so that more particles collide when the beams cross.
CERN was the subject of a special television documentary on BBC Two last week. ‘Horizon: The Six Billion Dollar Experiment’ looked forward to the big day in November.
Ingo Ruehl oversees the transport and materials handling team at CERN Ingo Ruehl oversees the transport and materials handling team at CERN
