Elisabetta Barberio has been chasing dark matter as a researcher for 10 years.

She moved into the field after working at Switzerland’s Large Hadron Collider, and helping with research to confirm the existence of the Higgs Boson particle.

As the director of the University of Melbourne’s particle physics research centre, she was part of the team that pushed for Stawell as the location for SABRE.

Professor Barberio said she and her colleague, Swinburne astronomer Jeremy Mould, scoured the country for a suitable site for the project.

The Stawell experiment, known as SABRE, which stands for Sodium-iodide with Active Background REjection, is DAMA/Libra’s southern hemisphere twin, aimed at verifying its results.

The tightly controlled experiment works by using specially grown sodium iodide crystals, which are highly pure and suspended in a soup of chemicals.

Brief flashes of light are emitted when sub-atomic particles travelling through the universe hit the nuclei — or middles — of atoms within the crystals.

ATLAS is one of two general-purpose detectors at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). It investigates a wide range of physics, from the search for the Higgs boson to extra dimensions and particles that could make up dark matter. Although it has the same scientific goals as the CMS experiment, it uses different technical solutions and a different magnet-system design.

Earlier participation by Australian physicists in UA2 and NOMAD has been followed up by substantial involvement in ATLAS. This is led by a group of high-energy physicists at the University of Melbourne and the University of Sydney, which also participate in the BELLE experiment at KEK in Japan. Australia participates in the Silicon Tracker of ATLAS, ISOLDE, nTOF and has also prepared a Tier-2 centre for the ATLAS Grid computing.

The Centre of Excellence for Particle Physics at the Terascale coordinated high-energy physics research at the Terascale across Australia, creating new research groups at the Universities of Adelaide and Sydney and augmenting groups at Melbourne and Monash. Funding for the Centre was substantial and greatly enhanced international linkages, including with CERN.

The particle accelerator test system was sent from the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Switzerland. Dubbed the ‘MelBOX’, the new system is one of two X-BOX3 test systems at CERN. X-BOX3 is the third version of CERN’s high-frequency (X-band) test system. It was developed as part of the CLIC program to build a compact linear collider.

A research team led by Dr Suzie Sheehy will investigate how to use the MelBOX to make particle accelerators smaller, cheaper and more reliable.

Particle accelerators are used in high-energy particle colliders to find out what happens when subatomic particles hit each other. The same technology can be used to make miniature particle accelerators with industrial and medical applications. For example, they are used in X-ray scanning devices in ports and airports. And they are part of the equipment used in all radiotherapy treatments.

The MelBOX, which weighs around 7 tonnes, was unloaded from two trucks by crane. Dr Sheehy has a crane operator license so that she can move equipment, but this time she and Dr Matteo Volpi supervised rigging company Millennium Rigging to do the job.

CERN sent the equipment as part of an agreement coordinated by Professor Geoffrey Taylor in 2019. This continues the University’s longstanding relationship with CERN. In 2010, the University entered into an agreement to take part in the CLIC program. Associate Professor Roger Rassool signed the agreement with CERN on behalf of the Australian Collaboration for Accelerator Science. This collaboration involves the University of Melbourne, the Australian National University, the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation and the Australian Synchrotron.

Senior researcher Dr Matteo Volpi used the X-BOX3 in his research at CERN, where he was based for several years. With help from his CERN colleagues, he packed up the system – including the components, around 1 kilometre of cables, and the computer that controls the equipment. He even brought the keyboard and mouse, so he could replicate the original set-up as closely as possible.

The equipment left CERN in September 2020 and arrived at the University in January 2021. It was delivered to a laboratory in the basement of the David Caro Building, which houses the School of Physics. This area of the building is radiation-shielded by walls made of metre-thick concrete.

The MelBOX is expected to be operational by the end of 2021.

On 16 September 2020, a container filled with pallets, boxes and electronic racks left CERN’s Meyrin site to embark on a two-month sea journey to the other side of the world. On 17 November, at precisely 3.12 p.m. local time, its ship docked at Port Melbourne, from where, following customs clearance earlier this year, the container and its contents were transported to a new home: the University of Melbourne.

The container held the components of the southern hemisphere’s first X-band radio-frequency test facility; “X-band” refers to the ultra-high frequency at which the device operates. The device, half of the CERN facility known as XBOX-3, will soon be a part of the “X-Lab” at the University of Melbourne. Its journey resulted from an agreement signed between CERN and the Australian Collaboration for Accelerator Science in 2010.

XBOX-3 and its two predecessors were built at CERN in the context of the Compact Linear Collider (CLIC) study that envisions building a linear electron–positron collider with a collision energy of 380 GeV. They were built to develop the technology to accelerate particles to a high velocity over a relatively small distance. Such accelerators are described as possessing a high acceleration gradient. In addition to aiding the development of the next generation of particle accelerators, the technology of high-gradient acceleration is also useful for medical applications, such as radiotherapy, and in synchrotron light sources.

In 2015, CERN decided that half of XBOX-3 would eventually be sent to Australia to help its nascent accelerator community. “Having the only X-band facility this side of the equator is a huge boost to the growing accelerator-physics community in Australia. It will allow us to train specialists, do novel research and create exciting industry-engagement opportunities based on the many applications of accelerators,” says Suzie Sheehy, group leader of the Accelerator Physics Group at the University of Melbourne. “The Melbourne X-Lab team, which includes senior researchers, PhD students and support staff, is grateful for CERN’s contribution to our project.”

The device will be renamed MelBOX, in light of its new home, and will come online in its new avatar this year.

Australian scientists are using a massive X-ray machine to map the molecular structure of COVID-19 to help find a vaccine for the virus.

Experts at the Australian Synchrotron in Melbourne – which is about the size of a football field – capture atomic-scale 3D pictures of coronavirus.

The images are being shared with researchers across the world, who hope to use the information to develop drugs that bind to the virus and stop it growing.

Physicist Amelia Brennan knows more than most about the stuff that holds the universe together.

She recently returned to Melbourne after a stint at CERN – the European Organisation for Nuclear Research in Geneva – where the sub-atomic Higgs boson or “God particle” was discovered in 2013.

Despite the discovery, hailed as a major scientific breakthrough, Ms Brennan said she and her CERN colleagues could still only account for 25 per cent of the matter in the universe.

But the mysteries of astrophysics are clearly part of the attraction.

“We don’t know about what makes up the majority of the matter in the universe,” she said.

“We should want to know. Why should we be satisfied with what we know so far?”

Ms Brennan is one of a growing number of Australians who have contributed to the groundbreaking work at CERN.

Despite the contributions of Mr Taylor, Ms Brennan and others at CERN, Australia is not a member nation.

At around $7 million a year, the cost of becoming one does not come cheap.

But CERN physicist Professor Emmanuel Tsesmelis believes such a move could be lucrative for Australia.

“[Australia has] contributed already to the scientific program, they’ve contributed to the engineering aspects and technology,” Professor Tsesmelis said.

“There is an industrial base there to actually profit.”

The Large Hadron Collider is currently being upgraded to double its power.

CERN’s director-general, Rolf Heuer, concluded the conference by reviewing the future for high-energy-physics accelerators, stating how the LHC results will guide the way at the energy frontier. The current plans for CERN include a long shutdown in 2013–2014 to increase the centre-of-mass energy, possibly to the design value of 14 TeV. This will be followed by two other shutdowns: one in 2018, for upgrades to the injector and the LHC to go to the ultimate luminosity; and one in 2022 for new focusing magnets and crab cavities for high luminosity with levelling, with the humble goal of accumulating about 3000 fb^–1 by 2030.

Numerous other plans are in the air, such as a linear collider, where Heuer stressed the importance for the international community to join forces on a single project. “We need to have accelerator laboratories in all regions of the globe planned in an international context, and maintain excellent communication and outreach to show the benefits of basic science to society,” he stressed.

In 2010, the University entered into an agreement to take part in the CLIC program. Associate Professor Roger Rassool signed the agreement with CERN on behalf of the Australian Collaboration for Accelerator Science. This collaboration involves the University of Melbourne, the Australian National University, the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation and the Australian Synchrotron.

Just after 6pm today, Wednesday 10 September, the Large Hadron Collider will start up. Twenty years in the making, the A$6 billion machine will smash particles together in an attempt to recreate the conditions of the early universe fractions of a second after the Big Bang.

It’s the result of a collaboration between scientists from eighty five countries.

“Australian physicists have been involved from the beginning,” says Cathy Foley, President of the Australian Institute of Physics.

“A team lead by Geoff Taylor from the University of Melbourne and Kevin Varvell from the University of Sydney have contributed to ATLAS – one of six machines at the LHC that will attempt to detect the strange particles created,” she says.  “They have designed detectors and shielding, developed software to model the behaviour of the detector, and software that triggers the collection of information. They’ve been supported by the Australian Government through the Australian Research Council.”

The collider is housed in a circular tunnel 27 kilometres long, at a depth of between 50 and 175 metres below the ground. As the particles smash together they will ‘break apart’ into smaller, more fundamental components, giving physicists a fleeting chance to observe those particles, some of which will never have been seen before.

The University of Melbourne will host the only Australian satellite link for the ‘switch on’ of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the Melbourne Museum. The event is part of a major world-wide broadcast organised by the laboratory CERN in Switzerland, involving live video hook-ups and world-feeds from participating institutions in 10 time zones worldwide. 

University of Sydney – Build your own Big Bang: CERN’s Large Hadron Collider turns on.

At 5.30 pm AEST next Wednesday 10th September, scientists will hit the big green button on the world’s largest experiment, the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. The huge energies given to tiny particles in this experiment will take us closer to the Big Bang than we have ever been before and propel us towards answering questions of Life, The Universe and Everything.

ANSTO’s Australian Synchrotron is a light source facility (in contrast to a collider), which uses particle accelerators to produce a beam of high energy electrons that are boosted to nearly the speed of light and directed into a storage ring where they circulate for many hours or even days at a time. As the path of these electrons are deflected in the storage ring by either bending magnets or insertion devices, they emit synchrotron light. The light is channelled to experimental endstations containing specialised equipment, enabling a range of research applications including high resolution imagery that is not possible under normal laboratory conditions.

ANSTO’s Australian Synchrotron supports the research needs of Australia’s major universities and research centres, and businesses ranging from small-to-medium enterprises to multinational companies. During 2014-15 the Australian Synchrotron supported more than 4,300 researcher visits and close to 1,000 experiments in areas such as medicine, agriculture, environment, defence, transport, advanced manufacturing and mining.

In 2015, the Australian Government announced a ten-year, A$520 million investment in operations through ANSTO, Australia’s Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation .

In 2020, it was used to help map the molecular structure of the COVID-19 virus, during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

In 2007, the collaboration between CERN and Australia was enlarged through the Australian Synchrotron concluding an agreement with CERN concerning collaboration in accelerator science and related technologies, and also through the signature of an agreement in 2010 between ANSTO and CERN concerning collaboration in nuclear, accelerator and material science. The Australian Collaboration for Accelerator Science (ACAS) is a collaboration between the Australian National University, ANSTO, the Australian Synchrotron and the University of Melbourne and ACAS has joined the CLIC/CTF3 Collaboration.