Autumn Travel – Day 9 – Cern and Carouge

CERN, the European Centre for Nuclear Research, is at the northern end of the Tramline number 18. I went for a free guided of some of the older parts of the establishment including the Synchrocyclotron, the first particle accelerator which came on line in 1957 and was retired in 1990. The other place we saw was part of the Atlas Research centre. The tour lasted 80 minutes and was free, our guide was a researcher who was doing her doctorate at CERN and she was investigating how and why at the time of the Big Bang there was a huge discrepancy between the number of particles of matter and particles of anti-matter. CERN created some anti-matter in February 2026 and these particles are kept in a vacuum surrounded by powerful magnets.

The Carouge suburb is located towards the other end of tramline 18 and is a fascinating suburb of Geneva with architecture very different from the rest of the city.