Jobs – Page 116 of 527

Opening doors with a particle-physics PhD

Alexandra Martín Sánchez began her studies in particle physics at the University of Salamanca, Spain, in 2003, during which she had an internship at the University of Paris-Sud at Orsay working in the LHCb collaboration. This prompted her to take a master’s degree in particle physics, followed by a PhD at Laboratoire de l’Accélérateur Linéaire (LAL) in Orsay. She worked on CP violation in B⁰→ DK*⁰decays and hadronic trigger performance with the LHCb detector, and the subject fascinated her. She recalls with emotion witnessing the announcement of the Higgs-boson discovery in July 2012 from Melbourne, Australia, where the ICHEP conference was being held and where she was presenting her work: “Despite the distance, the atmosphere was super-charged with excitement.”

Getting a permanent position is particularly hard nowadays
Alexandra Martín Sánchez

Yet, one year later, Alexandra decided to leave the field. Why? “There were possibilities to do a postdoc in Marseille for LHCb, or elsewhere for other experiments, but I had already changed countries once and had created strong links in Paris,” she explains. “I loved working in research at CERN, and if it had been easier to continue in this way I would have, but getting a permanent position is particularly hard nowadays and you need to do several postdocs, often switching countries.”

After submitting her thesis, she consulted the careers office at Orsay to discuss her options. But it was word-of-mouth and friends who had already made the transition from research to industry that were the biggest help. After attending an IT careers fair in Paris in 2013, she was offered a job with French firm Bertin Technologies, who were looking for skills in scientific computing, in particular to offer consulting services for large groups including French energy giant EDF. Reckoning that this first step into industry could open the door to a large company, she took the plunge.

“Bertin Technologies had recruited me without having a clear idea regarding the profile of a particle-physics researcher, but they were immediately very satisfied with the way I worked. My recruiters were surprised to see me at ease in all aspects of the job, whether it was coding, functioning in teams or collaborating with other services.”

Moving on

After one year with the firm, Alexandra was recruited by EDF R&D, just as she had hoped for. Initially joining as a research engineer, five years later she is now project manager of open-source software called SALOME and leads a team of seven people. SALOME is used for industrial studies that need physical simulations, making it possible to model EDF’s operation of facilities and means of production, such as nuclear power plants or hydroelectric dams. “Computer science is the same as at CERN, even if it is applied to different data. Programming is also done in Python and C++. The code used is also that generated by researchers, that is to say, more or less ‘industrial’ and I easily found my way around, as we share the same development work habits. At CERN we work on software developed by CERN, and at EDF on software developed by EDF. In both cases it is also teamwork. The principles remain the same,” she explains.

“Large groups like EDF are of course fairly hierarchical companies, but CERN is also very large and very hierarchical. One can feel protected by such structures. On the other hand, they have a cumbersome administrative side, which means that things do not necessarily move as quickly as we would like. What I miss, however, is the international aspect of the collaborations. Today I’m thinking of staying at EDF because I’m happy there. The career paths are varied and the company motivates its engineers to change jobs every four or five years, unless they wish to become specialists in their fields.”

The thesis is a real professional experience!
Alexandra Martín Sánchez

The biggest lesson is that the skills she had learned during the process of obtaining a PhD in an environment like CERN are extremely transferable. “During my recruitment interviews, I highlighted my programming experience, my ability to communicate and present my work, and especially my ability to complete a thesis project over several years,” she says. “My advice to alumni looking for a job is to make the most of this PhD experience. Both sides of the job are of interest to recruiters: the technical part but also the communication and collaboration skills with researchers and engineers from all over the world. This makes a real difference from candidates coming from an engineering school: the thesis is a real professional experience!”

Bridging Europe’s neutron gap

**Reactor neutrons** The Institut Laue-Langevin in Grenoble. Credit: ILL

In increasing its focus towards averting environmental disaster and maintaining economic competitiveness, both the European Union and national governments are looking towards green technologies, such as materials for sustainable energy production and storage. Such ambitions rely on our ability to innovate – powered by Europe’s highly developed academic network and research infrastructures.

Neutron science holds enormous potential at every stage of innovation

Europe is home to world-leading neutron facilities that each year are used by more than 5000 researchers across all fields of science. Studies range from the dynamics of lithium-ion batteries, to developing medicines against viral diseases, in addition to fundamental studies such as measurements of the neutron electric-dipole moment. Neutron science holds enormous potential at every stage of innovation, from basic research through to commercialisation, with at least 50% of publications globally attributed to European researchers. Yet, just as the demand for neutron science is growing, access to facilities is being challenged.

Helmut Schober is director of the Institut Laue-Langevin and chair of the League of advanced European Neutron Sources. Credit: ILL

Three of Europe’s neutron facilities closed in 2019: BER II in Berlin; Orphée in Paris; and JEEP II outside Oslo. The rationale is specific to each case. There are lifespan considerations due to financial resources, but also political considerations when it comes to nuclear installations. The potentially negative consequences of these closures must be carefully managed to ensure expertise is maintained and communities are not left stranded. This constitutes a real challenge for the remaining facilities. Sharing the load via strategic collaboration is indispensable, and is the motivation behind the recently created League of advanced European Neutron Sources (LENS).

We must also ensure that the remaining facilities – which include the FRM II in Munich, the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL) in France, ISIS in the UK and the SINQ facility in Switzerland – are fully exploited. These facilities have been upgraded in recent years, but their long-term viability must be secured. This is not to be underestimated. For example, 20% of the ILL’s budget relies on the contributions of 10 scientific members that must be renegotiated every five years. The rest is provided by the ILL’s three associate countries (France, Germany and the UK). The loss of one of its major scientific members, even only partially, would severely threaten the ILL’s upgrade capacity.

Accelerator sources

The European Spallation Source (ESS) under construction in Sweden, which was conceived more than 20 years ago, must become a fully operating neutron facility at the earliest possible date. This was initially foreseen for 2019, now scheduled for 2023. Europe must ask itself why building large scientific facilities such as ESS, or FAIR in Germany, takes so long, despite significant strategic planning (e.g. via ESFRI) and sophisticated project management. After all, neutron-science pioneers built the original ILL in just over four years, though admittedly at a time of less regulatory pressure. We must regain that agility. The Chinese Spallation Neutron Source has just reached its design goal of 100 kW, and the Spallation Neutron Source in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, is actively pursuing plans for a second target station.

The value of neutron science will be judged on its contribution to solving society’s problems

We therefore need to look to next-generation sources such as Compact Accelerator driven Neutron Sources (CANS). Contrary to spallation sources that produce neutrons by bombarding heavy nuclei with high-energy protons, CANS rely on nuclear processes that can be triggered by proton bombardment in the 5 to 50 MeV range. While these processes are less efficient than spallation, they allow for a more compact target and moderator design. Examples of this scheme are SONATE, currently under development at CEA-Saclay and the High Brilliance Source being pursued at Jülich. CANS must now be brought to maturity, requiring carefully planned business models to identify how they can best reinforce the ecosystem of neutron science.

It is also important to begin strategic discussions that aim beyond 2030, including the need for powerful new national sources that will complement the ESS. Continuous (reactor) neutron sources must be part of this because many applications, such as the production of neutron-rich isotopes for medical purposes, require the highest time-averaged neutron flux. Such a strategic evaluation is currently under way in the US, and Europe should soon follow suit.

Despite last year’s reactor closures, Europe is well prepared for the next decade thanks to the continuous modernisation of existing sources and investment in the ESS. The value of neutron science will be judged on its contribution to solving society’s problems, and I am convinced that European researchers will rise to the challenge and carve a route to a greener future through world-leading neutron science.

Neutrino oscillations constrain leptonic CP violation

Physicists working on the T2K experiment in Japan have reported the strongest hint so far that charge-conjugation × parity (CP) symmetry is violated by the weak interactions of leptons. Based on an analysis of nine years of neutrino-oscillation data, the T2K results indicate discrepancies between the way muon-neutrinos transform into electron-neutrinos and the way muon-antineutrinos transform into electron-antineutrinos, at 3σ confidence. While further data are required to confirm the findings, the result strengthens previous observations and offers hope for a future discovery of leptonic CP violation at T2K or at next-generation long-baseline neutrino-oscillation experiments due to come online this decade.

These exciting results are thanks to the hard work of hundreds of T2K collaborators
Federico Sanchez

“These exciting results are thanks to the hard work of hundreds of T2K collaborators involved in the construction, data collection and data analysis for T2K over the past two decades,” says T2K international co-spokesperson Federico Sanchez of the University of Geneva.

Discovered in 1964, CP violation has so far only been observed in the weak interactions of quarks, mostly recently in the charm system by the LHCb collaboration. Since the size of the effect in quarks is too small to explain the observed matter-antimatter disparity in the universe, finding additional sources of CP violation is one of the outstanding mysteries in particle physics. The quantum mixing of neutrino flavours as neutrinos travel over large distances, the discovery of which was marked by the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physics, provides a way to probe another potential source of CP violation: a complex phase, δ_CP, in the neutrino mixing matrix. Though models indicate that no value of δ_CP could explain the cosmological matter-antimatter asymmetry without new physics, the observation of leptonic CP violation would make models such as leptogenesis, which feature heavy Majorana partners for the Standard Model neutrinos, more plausible.

Muon and e-like rings in Super-Kamiokande — Super-Kamiokande event displays showing the Cherenkov rings produced when an electron neutrino (left) or antineutrino (right) interacts with water, producing an electron or positron. The detector is instrumented with about 11,000 photo-sensors, the colours in the event displays representing the timing of the photon detection. Credit: T2K collaboration.

Long baseline

The T2K (Tokai-to-Kamioka) experiment uses the Super Kamiokande detector to observe neutrinos and antineutrinos generated by a proton beam at the J-PARC accelerator facility 295 km away. As the beams travel through Earth, a fraction of muon neutrinos and antineutrinos in the beam oscillate into electron neutrinos that are recorded via nuclear-recoil interactions in Super Kamiokande’s 50,000-tonne tank of ultrapure water, where the charged lepton generated by the weak interaction creates a Cherenkov ring which can be distinguished as being created by an electron or muon (see image above). Since the beam-line and detector components are made out of matter and not antimatter, the observation of neutrinos is already enhanced. The T2K analysis therefore includes corrections based on data from magnetised near-detectors (ND280, which uses the magnet originally built for the UA1 detector at CERN’s Spp̄S collider) placed 280m from the target.

T2K 3 sigma bound in Nature — 2D confidence intervals at the 68.27% confidence level (top) and at 68.27% and 99.73% (middle) for the complex phase δCP versus the neutrino-oscillation parameter sin²θ₂₃ in the preferred normal ordering from T2K and reactor-neutrino data. The bottom panel shows the 1D confidence intervals in both the normal and inverted orderings. Source: Nature.

The δ_CP parameter is a cyclic phase: if δ_CP=0, neutrinos and antineutrinos will change from muon- to electron-types in the same way during oscillation; any other value would enhance the oscillations of either neutrinos or antineutrinos, violating CP symmetry. Analysing data with 1.49×10²¹ and 1.64×10²¹ protons produced in neutrino- and antineutrino-beam mode respectively, T2K observed 90 electron-neutrino candidates and 15 electron-antineutrino candidates. This may be compared with the 56 and 22 events expected for maximal antineutrino enhancement (δ_CP=+π/2), and the 82 and 17 events expected for maximal neutrino enhancement (δ_CP=−π/2). Being most compatible with the latter scenario, the T2K data disfavour almost half of the possible values of δ_CP at 3σ confidence. For the “normal” neutrino-mass ordering favoured by T2K and other experiments, and averaged over all other oscillation parameters, the measured 3σ confidence-level interval for δ_CP is [−3.41, −0.03], while for the “inverted” mass ordering (in which the first mass splitting is greater than the second) it is [−2.54, −0.32]. Averaged over all oscillation parameters, δ_CP=0 is now disfavoured at 3σ confidence, though it is still within the 3σ bound for some allowed values of the mixing angle θ₂₃(see figure, above).

“Our results show the strongest constraint yet on the parameter governing CP violation in neutrino oscillations, one of the few parameters governing fundamental particle interactions that has not yet been precisely measured,” continues Sanchez. “These results indicate that CP violation in neutrino mixing may be large, and T2K looks forward to continued operation with the prospect of establishing evidence for CP violation in neutrino oscillations.”

Next steps

To further improve the experimental sensitivity to a potential CP-violating effect, the collaboration plans to upgrade the near detector to reduce systematic uncertainties and to accumulate more data, while J-PARC will increase the beam intensity by upgrading its accelerator and beam line.

“This is the first time ever CP-violation is glimpsed in the lepton sector and it has the potential of being a very large effect,” says Albert De Roeck, group leader of the CERN neutrino group, which has participated in the T2K experiment since last year. “Future neutrino CP violation measurements will be further performed by currently running neutrino experiments, and then the torch will be passed to the planned high precision neutrino experiments DUNE and Hyper-Kamiokande that will provide measurements of the exact degree of CP violation in the neutrino system.”

First physics for Belle II

The Belle II collaboration at the SuperKEKB collider in Japan has published its first physics analysis: a search for Z′ bosons, which are hypothesised to couple the Standard Model (SM) with the dark sector. The team scoured four months of data from a pilot run in 2018 for evidence of invisibly decaying Z′ bosons in the process e⁺e⁻→μ⁺μ⁻Z′, and for lepton-flavour violating Z′ bosons in e⁺e⁻→e^±μ^∓Z′, by looking for missing energy recoiling against two clean lepton tracks. “This is the first ever search for the process e⁺e⁻→μ⁺μ⁻Z′ where the Z′ decays invisibly,” says Belle II spokesperson Toru Iijima of Nagoya University.

The team did not find any excess of events, yielding preliminary sensitivity to the coupling g′ in the so-called L_μ−L_τ extension of the SM, wherein the Z′ couples only to muon and tau-lepton flavoured SM particles and the dark sector. This model also has the potential to explain anomalies in b → sμ⁺μ⁻ decays reported by LHCb and the longstanding muon g-2 anomaly, claims the team.

Belle II Z — Simulation of an e⁺e⁻→μ⁺μ⁻Z′ event in Belle II. Here, the Z′ boson decays to two neutrinos, but it may also decay into a dark-matter particle and its antiparticle. Credit: KEK/Belle II and Virginia Tech

The results come a little over a year since the first collisions were recorded in the fully instrumented Belle II detector on 25 March 2019. Following in the footsteps of Belle at the KEKB facility, the new SuperKEKB b-factory plans to achieve a 40-fold increase on the luminosity of its predecessor, which ran from 1999 to 2010. First turns were achieved in February 2016, and first collisions between its asymmetric-energy electron and positron beams were achieved in April 2018. The machine has now reached a luminosity of 1.4 × 10³⁴cm^-2s^-1 and is currently integrating around 0.7 fb^-1 each day, exceeding the peak luminosity of the former PEP-II/BaBar facility at SLAC, notes Iijima.

By summer the team aims to exceed the Belle/KEKB record of 2.1 × 10³⁴cm^-2s^-1 by implementing a nonlinear “crab waist” focusing scheme. First used at the electron-positron collider DAΦNE at INFN Frascati, and not to be confused with the crab-crossing technology used to boost the luminosity at KEKB and planned for the high-luminosity LHC, the scheme stabilises e⁺e^– beam-beam blowup using carefully tuned sextupole magnets located symmetrically on either side of the interaction point. “The 100 fb^-1 sample which we plan to integrate by summer will allow us to provide our first interesting results in B physics,” says Tom Browder of the University of Hawaii, who was Belle II spokesperson until last year.

Flavour debut

Belle II will make its debut in flavour physics at a vibrant moment, complementing efforts to resolve hints of anomalies seen at the LHC, such as the recent test of lepton-flavour universality in beauty-baryon decays by the LHCb collaboration.

We will then look for the star attraction of the dark sector, the dark photon
Tom Browder

As well as updating searches for invisible decays of the Z′ with one to two orders of magnitude more data, Belle II will now conduct further dark-sector studies including a search for axion-like particles decaying to two photons, the Z′ decaying to visible final states and dark-Higgstrahlung with a μ⁺μ^– pair and missing energy, explains Browder. “We will then look for the star attraction of the dark sector, the dark photon, with the difficult signature of e⁺e^– to a photon and nothing else.”

CERN establishes COVID-19 task force

The CERN-against-COVID-19 logo. Credit: CERN.

The CERN management has established a task force to collect and coordinate ideas from the global CERN community to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on the scientific and technical expertise of some 18,000 people worldwide who have links with CERN, these initiatives range from the production of sanitiser gel to novel proposals for ventilators to help meet rising clinical demand.

CERN-against-COVID-19 was established on 27 March, followed by the launch of a dedicated website on 4 April. The group aims to draw on CERN’s many competencies and to work closely with experts in healthcare, drug development, epidemiology and emergency response to help ensure effective and well-coordinated action. The CERN management has also written directly to the director general of the World Health Organization, with which CERN has an existing collaboration agreement, to offer CERN’s support.

It’s not about going out there and doing things because we think we know best, but about offering our services and waiting to hear from the experts as to how we may be able to help
Beniamino Di Girolamo

The initiative has already attracted a large number of suggestions at various stages of development. These include three proposals by particle physicists for stripped-down ventilator designs, one of which is led by members of the LHCb collaboration. Other early suggestions range from the use of CERN’s fleet of vehicles to make deliveries in the surrounding region, to offers of computing resources and 3D printing of components for medical equipment. From 3-5 April, CERN supported a 48-hour online hackathon organised by the Swiss government to develop “functional digital or analogue prototypes” to counter the virus. Other ways in which computing resources are being deployed include the deployment of distance-learning tools such as Open Up2U, coordinated by the GÉANT partnership. CERN is also producing sanitiser gel and Perspex shields which will be distributed to gendarmeries in the Pays de Gex region.

Another platform, Science Responds, has been established by “big science” researchers in the US to facilitate interactions between COVID-19 researchers and the broader science community.

“It has been amazing to see so many varied and quality ideas,” says Beniamino Di Girolamo of CERN, who is chair of CERN-against-COVID-19 task force. “It’s not about going out there and doing things because we think we know best, but about offering our services and waiting to hear from the experts as to how we may be able to help. This is also much wider than CERN – these initiatives are coming from everywhere.”

Proposals and ideas can be made by members of the CERN community via an online form, and questions to the task force may be submitted via email.

Particle physicists propose stripped-down ventilator to help combat COVID-19

A preliminary CAD model of the HEV unit. Credit: HEV Collaboration.

As part of the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic, a team led by physicists and engineers from the LHCb collaboration has proposed a design for a novel ventilator. The High Energy Ventilator (HEV) is based on components which are simple and cheap to source, complies with hospital standards, and supports the most requested ventilator-operation modes, writes the newly formed HEV collaboration. Though the system needs to be verified by medical experts before it can enter use, in the interests of rapid development the HEV team has presented the design to generate feedback, corrections and support as the project progresses. The proposal is one of several recent and rapidly developing efforts launched by high-energy physicists to help combat COVID-19.

The majority of people who contract COVID-19 suffer mild symptoms, but in some cases the disease can cause severe breathing difficulties and pneumonia. For such patients, the availability of ventilators that deliver oxygen to the lungs while removing carbon dioxide could be the difference between life and death. Even with existing ventilator suppliers ramping up production, the rapid rise in COVID-19 infections is causing a global shortage of devices. Multiple efforts are therefore being mounted by governments, industry and academia to meet the demand, with firms which normally operate in completely different sectors – such as Dyson and General Motors – diverting resources to the task.

There are many proposals on the market, but we don’t know now which ones will in the end make a difference, so everything which could be viable should be pursued
Paula Collins

HEV was born out of discussions in the LHCb VELO group, when lead-designer Jan Buytaert (CERN) realised that the systems which are routinely used to supply and control gas at desired temperatures and pressures in particle-physics detectors are well matched to the techniques required to build and operate a ventilator. The team started from a set of guidelines recently drawn up by the UK government’s Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency regarding rapidly manufactured ventilator systems, and was encouraged by a 3D-printed prototype constructed at the University of Liverpool in response to these guidelines. The driving pressure of ventilators — which must be able to handle situations of rapidly changing lung compliance, and potential collapse and consolidation — is a crucial factor for patient outcomes. The HEV team therefore aimed to produce a patient-safety-first design with a gentle and precise pressure control that is responsive to the needs of the patient, and which offers internationally recommended operation modes.

As the HEV team comprises physicists, not medics, explains HEV collaborator Paula Collins of CERN, it was vital to get the relevant input from the very start. “Here we have benefitted enormously from the experience and knowledge of CERN’s HSE [occupational health & safety and environmental protection] group for medical advice, conformity with applicable legislation and health-and-safety requirements, and the working relationship with local hospitals. The team is also greatly supported from other CERN departments, in particular for electronic design and the selection of the best components for gas manipulation. During lockdown, the world is turning to remote connection, and we were very encouraged to find that it was possible in a short space of time to set up an online chat group of experienced anesthesiologists and respiratory experts from Australia, Belgium, Switzerland and Germany, which sped up the design considerably.”

Prototyping the HEV buffer-concept at CERN to demonstrate “breathing” and flow capabilities of the device. The demonstrator is built with in-house parts and looks mechanically very different to the final system. Control is provided via LabView, whereas the final system will use an embedded controller. Credit: HEV Collaboration.

Conceptual design of the HEV ventilator. Credit: HEV Collaboration.

Stripped-down approach
The HEV concept relies on easy-to-source components, which include electro-valves, a two-litre buffer container, a pressure regulator and several pressure sensors. Embedded components — currently Arduino and Rasbperry Pi — are being used to address portability requirements. The unit’s functionality will be comprehensive enough to provide long-term support to patients in the initial or recovery phases, or with more mild symptoms, freeing up high-end machines for the most serious intensive care, explains Collins: “It will incorporate touchscreen control intuitive to use for qualified medical personnel, even if they are not specialists in ventilator use, and it will include extensive monitoring and failsafe mechanisms based on CERN’s long experience in this area, with online training to be developed.”

The first stage of prototyping, which was achieved at CERN on 27 March, was to demonstrate that the HEV working principle is sound and allows the ventilator to operate within the required ranges of pressure and time. The desired physical characteristics of the pressure regulators, valves and pressure sensors are now being refined, and the support of clinicians and international organisations is being harnessed for further prototyping and deployment stages. “This is a device which has patient safety as a major priority,” says HEV collaborator Themis Bowcock of the University of Liverpool. “It is aimed at deployment round the world, also in places that do not necessarily have state-of-the-art facilities.”

Complementary designs
The HEV concept complements another recent ventilator proposal, initiated by physicists in the Global Argon Dark Matter Collaboration. The Mechanical Ventilator Milano (MVM) is optimised to permit large-scale production in a short amount of time and at a limited cost, also relying on off-the-shelf components that are readily available. In contrast to the HEV design, which aims to control pressure by alternately filling and emptying a buffer, the MVM project regulates the flow of the incoming mixture of oxygen and air via electrically controlled valves. The proposal stems from a cooperation of particle- and nuclear-physics laboratories and universities in Canada, Italy and the US, with an initial goal to produce up to 1000 units in each of the three countries while the interim certification process is ongoing. Clinical requirements are being developed with medical experts, and detailed testing and qualification of the first prototype is presently underway with a breathing simulator at Ospedale San Gerardo in Monza, Italy.

Sharing several common ideas with the MVM principle, but with emphasis on further reducing the number and specificity of components to make construction possible during times of logistical disruption, a team led by particle physicists at the Laboratory of Instrumentation and Experimental Particles Physics in Portugal has also posted a proof-of-concept study for a ventilator on arXiv. All ventilator designs are evolving quickly and require further development before they can be deployed in hospitals.

“It is difficult to conceive a project which goes all the way and includes all the bells and whistles needed to get it into the hospital, but this is our firm goal,” says Collins. “After one week we had a functioning demonstrator, after two weeks we aim to test on a medical mechanical lung and to start prototyping in the hospital context. We find ourselves in a unique and urgent situation where there are many proposals on the market, but we don’t know now which ones will in the end make a difference, so everything which could be viable should be pursued.”

The Human Condition: Reality, Science and History

“Homo has much work left to become Sapiens,” is Gregory Loew’s catchphrase in The Human Condition: Reality, Science and History. An accelerator physicist with an illustrious 50-year-long career at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in California, Loew also taught a seminar at Stanford University that ran the gamut from psychology and anthropology to international relations and arms control. His new book combines these passions.

This reviewer must admit to being inspired by the breadth of Loew’s polymathic ambition, which he has condensed into 200 colourful pages. The author compares his work to noted Israeli historian Yuval Harari’s hefty tomes Sapiens and Homo Deus, but The Human Condition is more idiosyncratic, and peppered with fascinating titbits. He points out the difficulties in connecting free will with quantum indeterminacy. He asks what came first: the electron or the electric field? Neglecting to mention the disagreement with the long-accepted age of the universe inferred from fits to the cosmic microwave background, he breathlessly slips in a revised-down value of 12.8 billion years, tacitly accepting the 2019 measurement of the Hubble constant based on observations by the Hubble Space Telescope. He even digresses momently to note the almost unique rhythmic awareness of cockatoo parrots.

But this is not a scenic drive through the nature of existence. Loew wants to be complete. He reverses from epistemology to evolution and the nature of perception, before pulling out onto the open road of mathematics and the sciences, both fundamental and social, via epigenetics, Thucydides and the Cuban missile crisis. The final chapter, which looks to the future, is really a thoughtful critique of Harari’s books, which he discovered while writing. It’s heartening to join Loew on an expansive road trip from metaphysics and physics to economic theory and realpolitik.

No scientific knowledge or mathematical training is necessary to enjoy The Human Condition, which will entertain and intrigue physicists and lay audiences alike. While some subjects, such as homosexuality, are treated with inappropriate swiftness, in that case with a rapid and highly questionable hop from Freud to Kinsey to Schopenhauer to Pope Francis, in general Loew writes with a refreshing élan. His final thought is that “if all Homo Sapientes became wiser, they would certainly be happier.” Here, he flirts with contradicting Kant, a philosopher he frequently esteems, who wrote that the cultivation of reason sooner leads to misery than happiness. But perhaps the key word is “all Homo Sapientes”. If every one of us became wiser, perhaps through the utopic initiatives advocated by Loew, we would indeed be happier.

Fiction, in theory

Irène Jacob reads an excerpt from *Big Bang*. Credit: SJ Hertzog / CERN-PHOTO-202002-036-2

French actor Irène Jacob rose to international acclaim for her role in the 1991 film The Double Life of Véronique. She is the daughter of Maurice Jacob (1933 – 2007), a French theoretical physicist and Head of CERN’s Theory Division from 1982 to 1988. Her new novel, Big Bang, is a fictionalised account of the daughter of a renowned physicist coming to terms with the death of her father and the arrival of her second child. Keen to demonstrate the artistic beauty of science, she is also a Patron of the Physics of the Universe Endowment Fund established in Paris by George Smoot.

When Irène Jacob recites from her book, it is more than a reading, it’s a performance. That much is not surprising: she is after all the much-feted actor in the subtly reflective 1990s films of Krzysztof Kieślowski. What did come as a surprise to this reader is just how beautifully she writes. With an easy grace and fluidity, she weaves together threads of her life, of life in general, and of the vast mysteries of the universe.

The backdrop to the opening scenes is the corridors of the theory division in the 70s and 80s

Billed as a novel, Big Bang comes across more as a memoir, and that’s no accident. The author’s aim was to use her entourage, somewhat disguised, to tell a universal story of the human condition. Names are changed, Irène’s father, the physicist Maurice Jacob, becomes René, for example, his second name. The true chronology of events is not strictly observed, and maybe there’s some invention, but behind the storytelling there is nevertheless a touching portrait of a very real family. The backdrop to the opening scenes is CERN, more specifically the corridors of the theory division in the 70s and 80s, a regular stomping ground for the young Irène. The reader discovers the wonders of physics through the wide-open eyes of a seven-year-old child. Later on, that child-become-adult reflects on other wonders – those related to the circle of life. The book ties all this together, seen from the point in spacetime at which Irène has to reconcile her father’s passing with her own impending motherhood.

For those who remember the CERN of the 80s, the story begins with an opportunity to rediscover old friends and places. For those not familiar with particle physics, it offers a glimpse into the field, to those who devote their lives to it, and to those who share their lives with them. The initial chapters open the door to Irène Jacob’s world, just a crack.

The atmosphere soon changes, though, as she flings the door wide open. More than once I found myself wondering whether I had the right to be there: inside Irène Jacob’s life, dreams and nightmares. It is a remarkably intimate account, looking deep in to what it is to be human. Highs and lows, loves and laughs, kindnesses and hurts, even tragedies: all play a part. Irène Jacob’s fictionalised family suffers much, yet although Irène holds nothing back, Big Bang is essentially an optimistic, life affirming tale.

Science makes repeated cameo appearances. There’s a passage in which René is driving home from hospital after welcoming his first child into the world. Distracted by emotion, he’s struck by a great insight and has to pull over and tell someone. How often does that happen in the creative process? Kary Mullis tells a similar story in his memoirs. In his case, the idea for Polymerase Chain Reaction came to him at the end of hot May day on Highway 128 with his girlfriend asleep next to him in the passenger seat of his little silver Honda. Mullis got the Nobel Prize. Both had a profound impact on their fields.

Bohr can be paraphrased as saying: the opposite of a profound truth is another profound truth

Alice in Wonderland is a charmingly recurrent theme, particularly the Cheshire cat. Very often, a passage ends with nothing left but an enigmatic smile, a metaphor for life in the quantum world, where believing in six impossible things before breakfast is almost a prerequisite.

Big Bang is not a page turner. Instead, each chapter is a beautifully formed vignette of family life. Take, for example, the passage that begins with a quote from Niels Bohr taken René’s manuscript, Des Quarks et des Hommes (published as Au Coeur de la Matière). Bohr can be paraphrased as saying: the opposite of a profound truth is another profound truth. As the passage moves on, it plays with this theme, ending with the conclusion: if my story does not stand up, it’s because reality is very small. And if my story is very small, it is because reality does not stand up.

Whatever the author’s wish, Big Bang comes across as an admirably honest family portrait, at times uncomfortably so. It’s a portrait that goes much deeper than the silver screen or the hallowed halls of academia. The cast of Big Bang is a very human family, and one that this reader came to like very much.

European strategy update postponed

The European strategy for particle physics. Credit: CERN.

During its 197^th session, which took place for the first time by videoconference on 19-20 March, the CERN Council addressed the impact of the current COVID-19 situation on the update of the European strategy for particle physics (ESPPU).

The ESPPU got under way in September 2017, when the CERN Council appointed a European Strategy Group (ESG) – headed by Halina Abramowicz of Tel Aviv University and comprising a scientific delegate from each of CERN’s member and associate-member states, plus directors and representatives of major European laboratories and organisations and invitees from outside Europe – to organise the process. Following two years of discussions and consultation with the high-energy physics and related communities, the ESPPU entered its final stages in January with a week-long drafting session in Bad Honnef, Germany. Afterwards, the ESG released a statement reporting convergence on recommendations to guide the future of high-energy physics in Europe. These were due to be submitted for final approval at an extraordinary session of the CERN Council on 25 May in Budapest, Hungary, before being publicly released.

Discussing with various stakeholders in the Member States will take more time
Ursula Bassler

Acknowledging that the COVID-19 outbreak threatens the lives and health of hundreds of thousands of people, and affects the everyday lives of millions, the CERN Council has now agreed that it would not be appropriate to release the ESG update (and an accompanying deliberation document) to a wider audience, nor for the Council to make any further comment on the contents of the documents for the time being. The Budapest event has been cancelled and replaced by a new extraordinary session, to be held by videoconference on the same date, at which the Council will further discuss how to proceed.

“In these exceptional circumstances it is not the right time to release the strategy, and discussing with various stakeholders in the Member States will take more time,” says Ursula Bassler, president of the CERN Council. “Even though this will come as a disappointment to many physicists after all the effort put into the ESPPU, everyone can understand, that in this situation, the process will last longer.”

Yerevan hosts early-career accelerator internship

The inaugural joint German-Armenian internship in accelerator physics was held at the CANDLE Institute in Yerevan, Armenia, from 29 September to 5 October. In this first round, twelve undergraduates at Universität Hamburg joined eleven students from Yerevan State University to form eight small teams. Each team worked its way through an experiment under the supervision of experts from both nations, interacting with physicists in a laboratory setting for the first time in many cases. The goal of the programme of week-long internships, which was supported by the German Federal Foreign Office, is to integrate accelerator physics and technology into undergraduate courses and provide students with an early experience of international cooperation. It will make use of eight experimental stations recently set up to foster young academics learning accelerator technology in Armenia.

CANDLE is the Armenian synchrotron-radiation storage-ring project. As a first step towards its realisation, AREAL, an ultrafast laser-driven electron accelerator, has been constructed. The next steps are S-band linac acceleration up to 20-50 MeV and the generation of coherent and tunable THz-radiation in an undulator.

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