In the period up to 2011, Messer will supply around 160,000 kg of helium through its Swiss subsidiary, Lenzburg-based Messer Schweiz AG, for the operation of the world’s largest particle accelerator built to study the building blocks of matter.
The cooling capacity of the liquefied inert gas helium will cool the more nearly 2500 superconducting magnets used to accelerate the particles. The scientists at CERN will also use the helium from Messer to cool down the large spectrometer magnets for the particle physics experiments.
The proton and ion accelerator, or ‘Large Hadron Collider’ (LHC), has been installed in a 27 km underground tunnel by the Geneva-based European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) and is expected to go into operation in the summer.
Inside LHC ring, which straddles the border of France and Switzerland 100 metres underground, particles will be accelerated to very high speeds and then made to collide in order to gain new insights in the field of particle physics.
