An internationally noted nuclear physicist – whose work with particle acceleration contributed to a 1983 Nobel Prize – will speak to the public in Surrey on Tuesday, Nov. 24.
Dr. Vinod Chohan of CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) will talk at 7 p.m. at Panorama Ridge Secondary School, 13220 64 Ave.
The Tanzanian-born specialist and engineer, currently visiting with a sister who lives in White Rock, is being presented by the school in partnership with the White Rock Rotary Club (Chohan will address the luncheon meeting earlier that day).
As part of the CERN team that led to the Higgs-Boson discovery of the W and Z bosons – elementary particles that play an important role in the principles involved in nuclear fission – Chohan was closely associated with Simon Van der Meer, who shared in the 1983 award.
He has also been part of CERN' s controversial 'Big Bang' experiment, using a Large Hadron Collider (LHC) to simulate the circumstances that physicists believe led to the formation of the universe – but which also raised fears that it would create black holes or a particle called a strangelet, theoretically capable of consuming the planet.
In his talk, Chohan will discuss CERN's rationale for its work, the current LHC project, and the conceptual ideas behind the progress of accelerators up to the present day.
The talk will be followed by a question period at around 8 p.m.