Longest meets largest

The collaboration between the CERN and the ITER vacuum groups took another leap forward when both groups discussed the world's longest (27 km) environment and the world's largest vacuum environment (14,000 m³). The members of the ITER group were especially interested in the vacuum and cryogenic experience gained during the building and commissioning of CERN's new LHC machine. CERN is making an impressive recovery from its setback last year, and protons are again expected to circulate in the 27 km ring in November this year.

The ITER group visited some 5,000m² of CERN's vacuum facilities used during the LHC development and installation. This included the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experimental gallery—one of the large underground detectors of the LHC which will be used to detect the famous Higgs boson.