More than 1000 people including eight Nobel laureates and close to 500 students from 70 countries took part in the Physics for Tomorrow conference in Paris on 13 January. The event took place at the headquarters of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). It marked the official launch of the International Year of Physics proclaimed by the UN, which aims to highlight the importance of physics and its contribution to society.
The conference was organized by UNESCO, the lead UN organization for the International Year, together with other organizations from the physics community, including the CNRS and CEA in France and CERN. CERN itself was founded under the auspices of UNESCO, which is one of the observer organizations to the CERN council, so it was appropriate that Carlo Rubbia and Georges Charpak, Nobel laureates from CERN, together with the director-general, Robert Aymar, were among the invited speakers.
During the opening ceremony, Aymar emphasized the crucial roles of physics as the driving force for innovation, as the magnet for attracting and training the most talented people, and in forging partnerships of nations. Rubbia participated in the round table on “What can physics bring to the socio-economical challenges of the 21st century?” and Charpak talked about “Teaching and education in physics”.
• This inaugurated a series of events that are taking place all over the world in 2005 to celebrate physics and emphasize its role. For further information see www.wyp2005.org.
A milestone has been reached on the way towards the realization of the European X-ray Free Electron Laser facility (XFEL). France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK have signed a Memorandum of Understanding in which they agree to prepare the ground for a governmental accord on the construction and operation of the European XFEL research facility until mid-2006. Denmark will also sign up soon. Together with Hungary, the Netherlands, Russia, Slovakia and the European Union, which are present as observers, the signatory countries form a steering committee that coordinates the preparations for the construction of XFEL.
Following a recommendation by the German Science Council, the German federal government decided in February 2003 to go ahead with XFEL as a European joint project to be situated at the DESY laboratory in Hamburg. Commissioning this research facility, which will be unique in Europe, is to start in 2012. Its cost amounts to about €900 million, which will be borne jointly by Germany and the partner countries.
The memorandum includes working out proposals for detailed time schedules and financing schemes, the future organization structure, the exact technical design and the operation of the X-ray laser. XFEL, with its ultra-short X-ray pulses with laser-like properties, will open up completely new opportunities in a wide range of research, from geological studies to nanotechnology.
In 1905 a young man working in the Bern patent office produced three publications on light quanta, special relativity, and the sizes and movements of molecules. The young man was, of course, Albert Einstein and 1905 was later called his annus mirabilis. The resulting theories provided insight into the cosmos, elementary particles and states of matter, and paved the way to our current understanding of matter and the universe. However, these papers also helped to lay the foundations for the economy of today, and it is for this reason that we should consider the International Year of Physics of 2005 more about looking forward than looking back.
In his work 100 years ago, Einstein was driven by his innate desire to understand the universe about him. Such curiosity-driven research creates new “breaking” knowledge – discoveries with the potential to have new, revolutionary effects in all domains of human interest. From televisions and electron microscopes to global-positioning systems (GPS) and mobile phones, there are numerous examples of breakthroughs that might not have been achieved through applied research and technology alone.
Nowadays many of the fundamental questions in physics continue to concern the structure of the universe. We can describe many of the features of the matter we know in the universe to considerable precision, but we also know that this “visible” matter constitutes only about 5% of the total energy of the universe. We know almost nothing about the remaining 95% – dark matter and dark energy. Extending our knowledge of this unknown 95% is by itself a good reason for pursuing fundamental research in this direction; and CERN, with the Large Hadron Collider project, is leading one of the efforts to further this understanding. More important, however, is the potential for this fundamental research of today to lead to the technological innovations of tomorrow, possibly as unsuspected as GPS and the World Wide Web were in 1905.
The Year of Physics also offers an important opportunity to emphasize why continued basic research, particularly in the field of physics, is essential for the 21st century in solving key problems – such as sustainable energy and protecting the environment – and in contributing to health and education, not only in the developed nations, but throughout the world. The late Abdus Salam, a physics Nobel laureate, believed that the gap between rich and poor nations was one of science and technology. In 1988, he wrote that “in the final analysis, creation, mastery and utilization of modern science and technology is basically what distinguishes the South from the North. On science and technology depend the standards of living of a nation”.
The European Union has acknowledged this view of the importance of science and technology, since it wants to become the most advanced knowledge-based economy on the planet before the end of the decade. The US believes itself to be in that position anyway for the foreseeable future. But what of the developing world? With the support of most nations, the UN has declared eight “Millennium Development Goals”, which are aimed at cutting world poverty by half in the coming decade and saving tens of millions of lives in the process. However, as Calestous Juma, the coordinator of the Task Force on Science, Technology, and Innovation for the UN Millennium Project 2005, has stated, “It is inconceivable that the eight Millennium Development Goals can be achieved by 2015 without a focused science, technology and innovation policy.”
Such a focused effort requires the will of many nations to work together. Fifty years ago, CERN came into being in the wake of the Second World War. A handful of scientists and politicians, in Europe and America, had the vision and energy to launch a unique undertaking: the establishment of a centre of excellence for Europe. Today CERN is known to be open to the world. Forgetting their differences of nationality, religion or culture, scientists from around the globe converge at CERN to work together, all sharing a common goal. This melting pot is one of the keys to the laboratory’s success. Based in their own countries, members of collaborations not only provide most of the ambitious experimental apparatus, but they also contribute to a novel, global, powerful information and communication infrastructure using their own countries’ industries and talents in a fair and constructive partnership. And the motivation for all this: cutting-edge physics.
Such collaborative efforts can be obviously applied to the current goals of the developed world. Similar collaborative and global scientific efforts also need to be applied to the goals of the countries on the less fortunate side of the digital and other divides. But underlying all must be the will to continue with curiosity-driven research, which will surely bring unknown benefits. We must allow scientists to keep on asking questions and searching for the answers. To quote Einstein: “We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive.”
Naturally, researchers take for granted that which is known, and instead focus on the unknown. Indeed, when I was at CERN working on the UA2 experiment, everyone was obsessed wih those areas of physics that were not yet understood. The public is also interested in those scientific subjects that still remain a mystery – where is the Higgs boson? Is string theory correct? What is dark matter? So when I left particle physics and became a science journalist, I continued to concentrate on unexplored territory. It was those research topics at the frontiers of knowledge and at the centre of controversy that inevitably resulted in the best stories.
However, when I sat down to write Big Bang, I decided to adopt a different approach – I wanted to celebrate how much we do know, and glory in the fact that we belong to the first generation of humans that have access to a coherent, consistent, compelling and verifiable model of the universe. The public is told so much about contentious issues, such as arguments over the existence, type and quantity of dark matter, that they probably have the impression that cosmologists know very little about the universe. In fact, I think the public would be staggered if they realized how much we do know.
The fact that the universe is expanding might seem dull to those of us within science, but to outsiders it probably sounds incredible. I suspect that the majority of the public perceive the expansion of the universe as a weird new hypothesis that will be overturned in a few years. If only they realized that the expansion of the universe was detected more than 75 years ago and has since been measured in detail and verified in a multitude of ways, then they might begin to engage with the staggering and profound implications of an expanding cosmos.
As well as spreading the gospel of our understanding of the universe, including the Big Bang model, I also wanted to show how superior models emerge in science and how they are eventually accepted, regardless of how controversial they are initially and no matter how powerful their detractors might be. Although we should be celebrating Albert Einstein in the centenary of his annus mirabilis, it is still worth noting that he vehemently opposed the Big Bang model when it was explained to him by the Belgian cosmologist (and priest) Georges Lemaître. Einstein told him, “Your calculations are correct, but your physics is abominable.” But a few years later, the observations showed that Lemaître was right, and Einstein had to concede defeat in the light of reality. The Big Bang model turned out to be basically correct and remains the best game in town.
Despite all the successes of modern cosmology and the Big Bang model, my book does feature an epilogue that explains the ways in which the model is incomplete. There are, of course, still aspects of our universe that cause bewilderment and arguments among cosmologists. For example, was there an inflationary period in the early universe, what is dark matter, what is dark energy and what is the fate of the universe? Such questions currently belong to the realm of speculation, and answering them sometimes seems impossible.
However, perhaps my book offers a note of optimism for cosmologists, because they can take heart by looking back through the history of their subject. After all, what now seems completely obvious was itself mysterious to scientists of the past. There was a time when nobody had any idea of how to measure the distances to the nebulae, but in 1923 Edwin Hubble solved the puzzle and showed that many of them were remote galaxies. He relied on the periodic variation in brightness of a type of star, known as a Cepheid variable, which he spotted in the Andromeda Nebula. The time between peaks in brightness betrays the absolute brightness of a Cepheid star and this could be compared to its apparent brightness in order to deduce its distance – and the distance to the Andromeda Nebula that it inhabited. Today, measuring the distances to galaxies is still not routine, but it is clearly no longer impossible.
Perhaps the best example of a once impossible problem that soon became trivial was discussed in 1835 by the French philosopher Auguste Comte. He had tried to identify areas of knowledge that would forever remain beyond the wit of scientific endeavour. In particular, he thought that some qualities of the stars could never be ascertained. “We see how we may determine their forms, their distances, their bulk, and their motions, but we can never know anything of their chemical or mineralogical structure.” In fact, Comte would be proved wrong within a few years of his death, as scientists began to discover which types of atom exist in the Sun.
Music has always seemed to attract physicists, perhaps because its clear and complex mathematical structure is somehow familiar, perhaps because creativity in music is refreshingly different from that in science. This link can be traced back to the ancient Greek philosophers, such as Heraclitus and Pythagoras, who discovered the mathematical basis of harmony and applied it to the movements of the planets.
In modern times at CERN, Vicky Weisskopf (director-general 1961-1964) was a gifted pianist and famously said, “When things get tough, there are two things that make life worth living: Mozart, and quantum mechanics.” One of his successors, Herwig Schopper (director-general 1980-1988), is also a keen pianist. It was music that brought together Jack Steinberger and Konrad Kleinknecht to work on CP violation in the K meson system. Steinberger played the flute and Kleinknecht the violin in the CERN chamber orchestra; over a beer after a rehearsal in 1965 the two agreed to collaborate. The collaboration extended to many memorable chamber-music sessions at Steinberger’s house, involving Heinrich Wahl, Jürgen May, Günther Lütjens, Yves Goldschmidt-Clermont and others.
Kleinknecht also forms a link to another great physicist-musician prominent in the pioneering days of CERN, Werner Heisenberg, a very fine pianist; Kleinknecht was part of a small orchestra brought together to celebrate Heisenberg’s 60th birthday by accompanying him in a performance of Mozart’s Piano Concerto, K488.
Turning specifically to the violin, many physicists, including the author of this article, have been fascinated by it, and found relaxation and fulfilment in playing. Of these, the most famous is Einstein. His violin rarely left his side and he played it often, at an accomplished level, throughout his life, saying that “life without playing music is inconceivable to me”. Max Planck was also a highly gifted pianist, composer and singer. Lise Meitner once remembered a musical evening at the Plancks’ house in Berlin, in which Planck, Einstein and a professional cellist played Beethoven’s Piano Trio in B-flat major. “Listening to this was marvellously enjoyable, despite a couple of unimportant slips from Einstein… Einstein was visibly filled with the joy of the music and smiled in a light-hearted way that he was ashamed of his dreadful technique. Planck stood quietly by with a blissfully happy face and, hand on heart, said ‘That wonderful second movement!’ ”
Einstein was an inveterate concert-goer. He attended the famous debut of Yehudi Menuhin with the Berlin Philharmonic under Bruno Walter, in which the 13-year-old Menuhin was soloist in a programme of the Bach, Beethoven and Brahms concertos that would be nowadays inconceivable. Einstein was so moved by Menuhin’s playing that he rushed into the boy’s room after the performance and took him in his arms, exclaiming “Now I know that there is a God in heaven!” He once said that had he not been a physicist, he would have been a musician: “I often think about music. I daydream about music. I see my life in the form of music.”
The other side of the coin is violinists who have been interested in physics. In the modern age, the well known American violinist, Joshua Bell, has a great interest in physics and has collaborated with physicists and engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in a project to enhance and expand the violin electronically. There is indeed a curious though tenuous link between Bell and Einstein. The great virtuoso Bronislav Huberman was a friend of Einstein, and visited him at his home in Princeton, no doubt together with his great Stradivarius violin, known as the “Gibson” Strad, made in 1713 during the “golden period” of his work. One day, the Strad was stolen from Huberman’s dressing room at Carnegie Hall in New York. It disappeared and was lost for more than 50 years, during which time the thief played it around the backstreet bars of New York City until he died. In 2001, Bell acquired the “Gibson” for almost $4 million and now uses it as his sole concert instrument.
Given their friendship and mutual interest, it seems likely that Huberman would have allowed Einstein to play this marvellous instrument, providing a link between Bell and Einstein through this great masterpiece of the violin-maker’s art.
Another violinist who is keenly interested in the work of CERN is Jack Liebeck, one of Britain’s outstanding young violinists. Liebeck, who was born in 1980, has been playing the violin since he was eight. He made his first public appearance playing the young Mozart on BBC television at the age of 10. Liebeck plays one of the finest instruments by another great maestro of Italian violin-making, Giovanni Battista Guadagnini. The violin dates from 1785 and is known as the “ex-Wilhemj”.
On 11 October 2004 Liebeck played with Russian pianist Katya Apekisheva in the CERN Auditorium. The occasion was a special gala concert sponsored by the UK Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council as a tribute to the CERN staff on the organization’s 50th anniversary. In the morning, Liebeck toured CERN and visited the locations where the ATLAS and CMS detectors are being installed for the Large Hadron Collider. The concert that evening featured an electrifying performance of the Prokofiev Sonata No. 1, as well as very fine readings of the Debussy Sonata and Beethoven’s “Kreutzer” Sonata. After a brief tuning-up variation on “Happy birthday to you”, the pair played a beautiful encore: “Vocalise” by Rachmaninov. A further concert in honour of CERN’s 50th anniversary, sponsored by the UK’s Central Laboratory of the Research Councils, was held at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire on 9 December, when Liebeck was accompanied by the British pianist Charles Owen.
Hardly was CERN’s birthday over when an even bigger cause for celebration arrived at the start of 2005 with the World Year of Physics, designated by the Institute of Physics as Einstein Year in the UK. Liebeck is embarking on a world tour giving concerts to celebrate this, and is also accompanying the author on a world lecture tour in which descriptions of Einstein’s universe and modern ideas in particle physics, including superstrings, will be illustrated with demonstrations on Liebeck’s Guadagnini and specially commissioned music from two young British composers, Emily Hall and Anna Meredith. Thus the long tradition of cross-fertilization between physics and music continues.
Einstein’s own words form a fitting conclusion: “I am happy because I want nothing from anyone. I do not care for money. Decorations, titles, or distinctions mean nothing to me. I do not crave praise. The only thing that gives me pleasure, apart from my work, my violin, and my sailboat, is the appreciation of my fellow workers.”
by João Magueijo, Arrow Books. Paperback ISBN 0099428083, £8.99.
Cosmologist João Magueijo certainly believes in rocking the boat. This is his first book, but he is happy to propose theories that challenge the fundamentals of physics. He also challenges the institution of science itself – so much so, that a long-time collaborator had to point out that a reference letter for a PhD student was not an appropriate forum for insulting the establishment.
So what is Magueijo’s theory? Simply, that the speed of light, one of the fundamental constants in our model of the universe, may not be as constant as we have assumed. Working through explanations of relativity and modern cosmology – often featuring a cow called Cornelia – he introduces the science of his Variable Speed of Light (VSL) theories, but it is the personal element that makes the book unusual. Here, Magueijo really brings us two books: one is popular science, and the other is about the day-to-day process of science, a human drama full of dreams, allegiances and betrayals. This section is likely to surprise members of the public as much as it makes scientists chuckle (or grimace) in sympathy with the story Magueijo has to tell.
In an unusual display of emotion, Magueijo attacks everything from the management of his university (which he suggests blowing up for the good of science) to journal reviewers (whose reports, he claims, often contain only 1% science). He avoids sounding bitter only because he compliments the same groups he criticises, remarking that his university has “perhaps the best scientific environment in the world”, despite his views on how it is run.
The book ends on an uncertain note, its VSL theories widely discussed but as yet unproven. Magueijo is not precious about his creation, or worried about humiliation if he is proved wrong. He believes that trying out new ideas is crucial to science. This aside, it is Magueijo’s unsanitized portrayal of science that will surprise and entertain his readers.
When invited to review Jacquard’s Web, I admit that I had to google (v.t., Macmillan English Dictionary) James Essinger. I discovered, with some misgivings, that he has published more than 25 management books with titles such as The Investment Manager’s Handbook and Virtual Financial Services. However, I also found a claim that he is good at making technical issues accessible, and indeed he is. Better still, Essinger turns out to be an accomplished storyteller.
Jacquard’s Web is an intricate tale of inventors and inventions, starting almost three centuries ago among the silk-weavers of Lyons, France, and ending today, or rather tomorrow, among computer users worldwide. Well researched, the narrative traces a chain of links between Jacquard’s silk-weaving loom and modern computers. Most of the techniques involved are adequately explained, even if occasionally with fuzzy accuracy (a pixel, whether on a screen or in woven cloth, has more than two possible states), but Essinger presents this particular technological evolution from a socio-economical standpoint, and here his familiarity with the business world and its denizens clearly adds value.
The story tells of the achievements and frustrations of a motley collection of characters, who between them took the punched card about as far as it could go. We find out about Joseph-Marie Jacquard, son of a Lyons master weaver, who cunningly avoided execution as a counter-revolutionary and went on to benefit from Napoleon’s imperial boost to science and technology; Charles Babbage, a Victorian gentleman of private means, who outlived the largesse of a government that funded his developments of some of the most complicated unbuilt machines ever imagined; Ada, Countess of Lovelace, daughter of Lord Byron and steadfast believer in Babbage, a scientifically minded lady born long before her time; Herman Hollerith, a mechanical engineer more at ease with cogs than commerce, who nonetheless became successful and wealthy thanks to his exploitation of Jacquard’s concepts; and finally Thomas Watson, businessman par excellence, patron saint of salesmen and father of IBM.
The automated loom technology patented by Jacquard in 1804 was born of a need to increase production of the exquisite silk fabrics so coveted by France’s aristocracy, and to create whatever pattern the customer desired – roses today, lilies tomorrow. The breakthrough came with the use of punched cards to store instructions for controlling the “pick” – the number and position of warp threads to be lifted for each row woven. The result was an astonishing 24-fold increase over the inch of cloth per day that a weaver and draw-boy could produce.
Thereafter, the humble punched card was pivotal to most of the inventions described, controlling the cogwheels of Babbage’s would-be Analytical Engine, storing data for Hollerith’s automatic information processing of US and Russian census returns, and governing the operation of tabulators, comptometers and early computers. Indeed, IBM’s very last punched card was produced as late as 1984.
Instead of Jacquard’s Web, this book could aptly have been titled Pieces of Cardboard that Changed the World. As well as looms and computers, the author recalls the notorious “hanging chads” of Florida, those parts of the stiff cards that didn’t always fall away from holes punched by voters in the 2000 presidential election.
With the advent of electronics, magnetic tapes and disks, Essinger has increasing difficulty arguing for one-to-one associations between looms and modern computers; Tim Berners-Lee might take umbrage, were that his nature, at the suggestion that “it is not stretching credibility too far to describe the internet itself [sic] as Jacquard’s Web”.
The final chapter, speculating on the future, is rather untidy, unnecessary and much weaker than the others. But never mind – the others are all good, packed with facts and anecdotes, agreeably illustrated, highly informative and subtly amusing.
Heads of state, representatives from many countries, and scientists and engineers from CERN’s past, present and future research in particle physics attended the laboratory’s official 50th anniversary ceremony on 19 October. The speakers praised the organization for its advancement of science and for fostering international collaboration, both among scientists and between countries, across Europe and beyond.
Juan Carlos, the King of Spain, Jacques Chirac, President of the Republic of France, and Joseph Deiss, President of the Swiss Confederation, were joined by delegations from member and observer states. Before the ceremony, Jacques Chirac visited the construction site for the CMS experiment in Cessy, France, and later he joined Joseph Deiss and Juan Carlos on a tour of the ATLAS cavern. Juan Carlos also took the time to meet many of CERN’s Spanish scientists.
Immediately before the ceremony, the heads of state and the delegations gathered in the recently erected Globe of Science and Innovation. This large, spherical building made entirely of wood was donated by the Swiss Confederation in honour of the 50th anniversary. In the Globe, which is as big as the dome of St Peter’s Cathedral at the Vatican, a multimedia presentation tailored to each country played while the representatives entered and signed the gilded visitor’s book.
Robert Aymar, director-general of CERN, began the series of speeches at the event. François de Rose, the sole surviving founder of the organization, gave a first-hand account of how CERN arose from the ashes of the Second World War. Also speaking were Federico Mayor, former director of UNESCO; Maria van der Hoeven, minister of education, culture and science of the Kingdom of the Netherlands (speaking on behalf of the president of the European Council, who was recovering from a severe illness); Robert Cramer, president of the Geneva State Council; and the heads of state, Joseph Deiss, Jacques Chirac and Juan Carlos. Enzo Iarocci, president of the CERN Council, closed the ceremony.
A common theme in the speeches was how CERN should continue to serve as a model of scientific rigour and international co-operation. Speakers pointed to how scientists at CERN have deepened our knowledge of nature, while also creating technologies of practical importance, such as new types of medical imaging equipment and the World Wide Web.
When CERN opened its doors to the public for its open day on 16 October, the laboratory took on the air of a county fair. Children took rides around the site in a big lorry, visitors ate ice cream that had been handmade in a flash using liquid nitrogen, and crowds strolled the lanes as they visited more than 50 events across various sites in Switzerland and France.
An estimated 32,000 visitors, from across Europe and beyond, flocked to the laboratory for a day of tours, displays and presentations. The majority of events were in experiment halls and workshops that are normally closed to the public. The last open day was in 1998, and this one attracted so many people that visitors had to wait in long lines at the main events.
Some of the biggest attractions were the huge detectors under construction for the Large Hadron Collider. Such tours helped the visitors gain a sense of the scale of CERN’s work – and even those who already had some notion of CERN were awed by the gigantic detectors, caverns, and tunnels.
Some of the attractions gave visitors a more direct feel for the science and technology behind research at CERN. In one hall, volunteers revealed the strange properties of matter at low temperatures with a miniature train levitated by a superconducting magnet, and demonstrated superfluidity in liquid helium. At the GridCafé, visitors could surf the Web and learn about the networks of computer centres that CERN is helping to organize. At another site, visitors gained hands-on experience assembling their own working cosmic-ray detectors.
In a letter to the European Cultural Conference in Lausanne, Switzerland, in December 1949, Louis de Broglie advocated “the creation of a laboratory or institution where it would be possible to do scientific work, but somehow beyond the framework of the different participating states”. Endowed with more resources than national facilities, such a laboratory could “undertake tasks, which, by virtue of their size and cost, were beyond the scope of individual countries”.
CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, came into being five years later in 1954. Today, 50 years after its foundation, it is reassuring to see that CERN is building the largest and most powerful particle accelerator ever: the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). This 14 TeV proton-proton collider is at the cutting edge of technology, and is a heartening sign of both the public’s support for basic science in Europe and beyond, and of the determination of European countries to stay at the forefront of particle physics.
I have been asked to imagine what the next 50 years might hold for CERN and for particle physics. I shall take this opportunity to look into a very cloudy crystal ball, with the deep conviction that particle physics will continue to enrich culture and produce knowledge and technology as it has done for a large part of the last century.
In the medium term, CERN’s activities will be dominated by the LHC. By modifying the magnetic fields of the collider around the proton-interaction points, we can envisage a luminosity upgrade that would prolong the working life of the accelerator and extend the mass range for discovery. At a much higher cost we can even imagine doubling the collision energy by replacing the present LHC dipoles with higher-field magnets. Indeed, fully exploiting the LHC could easily take us to 2020 or 2025. As a result, there is little chance of CERN being involved in the construction of a 0.5-1 TeV linear electron-positron collider.
But what can we say about the more distant future of CERN, say from 2020 onwards, once the results from the LHC and, possibly, the linear collider are known? A linear collider with a length of several tens of kilometres could conceivably be built underground alongside the Jura mountains next to CERN. On the other hand, a big circular tunnel, such as that required by a Very Large Hadron Collider, would have to go below Lake Geneva or below the Jura (or both). Either option would be simply too expensive to consider. This is why a 3-5 TeV Compact Linear Collider (CLIC) would be the project of choice for the CERN site. A CLIC project could be launched in about 2015, when the LHC will be operating smoothly at its design luminosity, and data-taking could begin as soon as the early 2020s.
CLIC or a VLHC are enormous projects that will have to be undertaken through worldwide collaboration. But does this mean we should make a further step along the lines advocated 50 years ago by de Broglie and promote a world laboratory? This issue has been widely discussed, but in my view concentrating high-energy particle physics in a single laboratory with worldwide support is not a good idea. It would be too vulnerable to fluctuations in policy and mistakes in management. Moreover, it would not stimulate competition. My preference would be a coordinated global network that includes universities, national laboratories and regional laboratories like CERN and Fermilab.
The International Committee for Future Accelerators has considered the concept of a global accelerator network, although there is no consensus on what such a network might actually be or what it could do for us. As I see it, a global network would essentially be a new way of organizing existing particle-physics centres across the world, and focusing them on projects with a global dimension. For example, it would perform “diffuse” R&D on accelerators and detectors, co-operating on a single project at any one time and providing components for the machines and detectors.
Multinational companies are supposed to do what national companies cannot. Similarly, a global accelerator network only makes sense if it can achieve something that individual regions cannot do by themselves and, moreover, something that is essential to make real progress in particle physics. CLIC at CERN and the VLHC at Fermilab could be among the long-term goals of the global accelerator network, which would keep the world’s particle physicists busy until 2050. The transition to such a new organization would probably be similar to the shift in Europe from national laboratories to CERN – it would be difficult but worth trying.
Whatever the next 50 years hold for CERN and particle physics in general, it will almost certainly require countries to pool their resources and work together closely. Some 54 years since de Broglie’s letter inspired European scientists to build a single laboratory, his vision of basic science is still as relevant: “The universal and very often disinterested nature of scientific research seems to have predestined it for reciprocal and fruitful collaboration.”
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