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Serbia to begin negotiations on joining CERN

Belgrade/Geneva, 21 October 2008

Serbian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Science and Technological Development Bozidar Djelic said that Serbia will today begin negotiations on joining the European Organisation for Nuclear Research CERN.

Djelic attended the official inauguration of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) a gigantic particle accelerator at CERN, and added that negotiations will be started with CERN Director General Robert Aymar.

He said that it is a great honour for Serbia, not presently a CERN member, to be invited to attend the inauguration of the largest scientific experiment in the history of mankind.

The Deputy Prime Minister said that Serbia received the invitation owing to the presence of its physicists, who have worked on the project for more than two decades.

Djelic said that Serbian scientists from the Vinca Institute and experts from the Faculty of Physics are working on the project and some of the equipment being used in the accelerator was made by engineers at Zastava Alat.

Djelic said that the former Yugoslavia was one of 12 founding members of CERN, but later withdrew from the organisation. He added that Serbia is now returning to the world and will also return to CERN.

The LHC was inaugurated at a ceremony today at CERN. It is a scientific instrument designed to help scientists around the world find out more about the origins of the universe.

Two beams of subatomic particles called 'hadrons' – either protons or lead ions – will travel in opposite directions inside the circular accelerator, gaining energy with every lap. Physicists will use the LHC to recreate the conditions just after the Big Bang, by colliding the two beams head on at a very high energy. Teams of physicists from around the world will analyse the particles created in the collisions using special detectors, in a number of experiments. The LHC first became operational on September 10, 2008 but operations were halted a few days later due to a serious fault.

Some 7,000 scientists from all over the world are collaborating on the LHC project, including researchers from Serbia, and $9 billion has been invested in it.