Discovery Center receives 40 million kroner
The Discovery Center for Particle Physics at the Niels Bohr Institute has received a grant of 40 million kroner from the Danish National Research Foundation. This grant means that the Discovery Center, which was established in January 2010, can continue as a Center of Excellence for an additional five years from January 2015 through the end of 2019.
The Discovery Center is comprised of the research groups ATLAS and ALICE at CERN, the PLANCK Mission and Theoretical Particle Physics and Cosmology.
“The extension coincides well with the LHC accelerator at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, in Geneva, Switzerland restarting in the beginning of 2015. The experiments will operate at double the energy in relation to the previous maximum. The colossal energy levels will provide an opportunity for further studies of the Higgs-like particle found last year and it will allow us to unravel more of the riddles of the universe, like what the mysterious dark matter is made of,” explains Professor Peter Hansen, head of the Discovery Center.
The researchers affiliated with the Planck Mission can also continue their exploration of the very early universe and analyse data from the mission. The theoretical group works with both CERN and Planck data.
“We are infinitely pleased that the Discovery Center can now continue as a Center of Excellence, which allows our continued participation in the international exploration of the components of the universe and fundamental physical composition,” says Peter Hansen.