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CERN

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Organization

The Resume

    (September 29, 1954- )
    European Organization for Nuclear Research
    Headquartered at Meyrin in the Canton of Geneva in Switzerland
    12 founding member states: Belgium, Denmark, France, West Germany, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, Yugoslavia
    Yugoslavia withdrew in 1961
    Later member states: Austria (1959), Spain (1983), Portugal (1986), Finland (1991), Poland (1991), Hungary (1992), Czech Republic (1993), Slovakia (1993), Bulgaria (1999), Israel (2014), Romania (2016), Serbia (2019)
    Meyrin site hosts a complex of six particle accelerators and a decelerator
    Has 2,500 scientific, technical, and administrative staffers (2016)
    Hosted 12,000 visiting scientists (2016)
    Conducts experiments in high-energy physics
    Notable achievements include the discovery of W and Z bosons (1983), the creation of antihydrogen atoms (1995) and the discovery of the Higgs boson (2012)

Why CERN might be annoying:

    According to John Titor, they were supposed to invent time travel in 2001; they are apparently running nearly two decades behind.
    They reported the detection of neutrinos that travelled faster than light, violating the theory of relativity (2011); on further investigation, the results turned out to be a mistake resulting from an incorrectly connected GPS synchronization cable.
    Paranoiacs think their Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will create black holes that will swallow the earth.
    The religiously paranoid think the LHC will open up a gateway to another dimension and unleash the End Times.

Why CERN might not be annoying:

    It was founded partly to stop a ‘brain drain’ of scientists from Europe to the US.
    Tim Berners-Lee developed the World Wide Web while working at CERN.
    The building of the LHC required the collaboration of 10,000 scientists from over 100 countries.
    They are trying to answer the fundamental questions in physics.

Credit: C. Fishel


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    In 2023, Out of 3 Votes: 66.67% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 1 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 8 Votes: 37.50% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 4 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2019, Out of 27 Votes: 44.44% Annoying