Particle Physics

The Amazon is the largest and best-known center of biodiversity on the planet, but its forests are being lost at unsustainably high rates. Ongoing research in the Ecuadorian Amazon since the mid-1990s has resulted in concrete environmental benefits for the region and is now supported by a new connection between Ecuador and the United States.

The hope was to build a tool that can probe the secrets of the material world. The dream is that such a tool will not just bring world-class science to the Middle East, but also unprecedented cooperation across a conflict-ridden region. In May 2017, that dream came true with SESAME's synchrotron.

Even if you are a researcher living in the most southern country in the world, you can still participate in groundbreaking global research. For example, the Science and Technology Center of Valparaíso in Chile plays a role in the ATLAS experiment at CERN in Switzerland.

Something the general public is unaware of is that several Swiss research groups were instrumental in proving the existence of the Higgs boson, and all of them rely on SWITCHlan to transfer data.

1200 researchers from all over the world visit the Brazilian city of Campinas near Sao Paolo every year, to work at the National Laboratory for Synchrotron Light, LNLS. Among other things, synchrotron light has been essential for the production of new drugs, fertilizers, cell analysis, the study of different types of soil and new sources of energy.

As a widespread organization with research establishments, production facilities and nuclear power plants in locations spread over the entire expanse of India, The Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) requires a robust communication fabric and high speed connectivity for access to global mega science projects like the Large Hadron Collider, CERN, and the Synchrotron Facility at Grenoble, France.

Latin America plays a vital role in the worldwide computing grid essential for processing the massive amounts of data generated from particle smashing experiments at the Large Hadron Collider that reveal information about the origins of the Universe.

"It's a very exciting time for physicists. The Higgs boson discovery is a milestone for the physics community, and for human understanding of the fundamental laws that govern the Universe. Australian research groups have been part of this for the best part of 25 years,” says Centre of Excellence for Particle Physics Director Prof Geoffrey Taylor.