1950’s: Physicists explaining their work (or trying to…)
4,546 views · Published 20 July 2017 · 3:47 · Indexed 20 September 2026
Channel: CERN · 2017 · Film & Animation
In the 1950s the muon was still a complete enigma. Physicists could not yet say with certainty whether it was simply a much heavier electron (with 200 times the mass) or whether it belonged to another species of particle. CERN launched the ‘g-2’ experiment in 1959, aimed at measuring one of the properties of this strange electron – its ‘magnetic moment’. The experiment was to test quantum electrodynamics, a theory elaborated in the 1940s to describe the effect of the electromagnetic force on charged subatomic particles such as electrons or muons. Six physicists joined forces in 1959 to try and measure this value on CERN’s first accelerator, the Synchrocyclotron. This video extract from 1967 explains how CERN began. Read more about the experimental physicists at CERN: http://cern.ch/go/9FRc You can follow us in: http://www.cern.ch http://www.youtube.com/cerntv http://www.facebook.com/cern http://twitter.com/cern/ http://instagram.com/cern http://linkedin.com/company/cern Copyright © 2017 CERN
