Gianotti: «At CERN the most powerful accelerator in the world. It will reveal new secrets of the Universe”

«CERN has always been an excellent scientific laboratory and an engine of innovation. Just think of the creation of the World Wide Web (www), which took place right here, and to the numerous applications of CERN technologies in the medical field, in particular in the fight against tumors. Now it has also become an important crucible for the artificial intelligence that we already use both for some accelerator operations and in the analysis of experiment data. For example, the production of Higgs boson at the LHC is very rare compared to other phenomena and artificial intelligence techniques help us extract weak signals from the sea of processes that occur in the collisions of proton beams. Our objectives are so ambitious that CERN becomes a test bed for the most advanced technologies. It is no coincidence that the Eric Smith Foundation has decided to invest 48 million dollars with us to apply AI in the online selection of events when we restart the LHC after its upgrade at the end of this decade. If an AI authority like Smith makes a donation to CERN for a technological collaboration, it indicates how important our research is to help it grow.” Since 2016, Fabiola Gianotti has been at the helm of the most important research center in the world on the physics of nature and which this year celebrates 70 years since its birth, and looks with enthusiasm at new technological possibilities.
Among these is the possible construction of a new and gigantic particle accelerator, the successor to the current Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which allowed the discovery of the “God particle”, the Higgs boson.
«We are carrying out a feasibility study of the new baptized machine Future circular collider (FCC), which looks like a large ring with a circumference of 90 kilometers, three times longer than the current LHC – says the director general of Cern -. If approved, Fcc it will be the most powerful tool ever built to study the laws of nature at the most fundamental level and thus try to answer open questions about the structure and evolution of the universe. The project could be approved in 2027-2028. Fcc is also revolutionary in terms of technological developments, from superconducting magnets to new materials and energy recovery devices, with great potential impact on society and everyday life».

How will the FCC work?
«We will proceed in two phases: in the first we will accelerate and collide beams of electrons and anti-electrons, while in the second phase we will return to causing collisions between protons as in LHC, but at energies 7-8 times higher. The first phase will have as its main purpose the study of the Higgs boson, a particle crucial to our very existence and still mysterious in many respects. It is linked to the initial stages of the universe and its destiny. In the second phase we will be able to study energies never directly explored and, possibly, discover new particles and phenomena impossible to capture with the current accelerator. There are numerous questions left open, and the so-called Standard Model, a highly successful theory confirmed by numerous experimental tests, is incomplete and incapable of explaining everything we observe. FCC, like a powerful microscope, will therefore be the most extraordinary instrument ever designed to look into the hitherto unattainable depths of nature.”

Will the new accelerator be a very complex and very expensive undertaking?
«According to plans, construction could be completed by 2045 and would cost 15 billion euros spread over twenty years. Around 70% of the cost would be covered by CERN’s annual budget.”

Will this be enough to guarantee Europe world supremacy in physics research?
«We are in direct competition with China, which is planning to build an accelerator similar to our FCC. The government has not yet approved it but the Chinese scientific community strongly supports it and the Beijing Academy of Sciences has ranked it first in the strategy of nuclear and particle physics. And if China supports such a project, it means that its technological and socioeconomic impact will be very significant. The challenge is open. If we want to maintain Europe’s world leadership in particle physics and in the cutting-edge technologies that our field develops, we must continue with the program.”

There is much more in CERN’s future…
«Meanwhile next year we will finish operating the current LHC as it was initially conceived. Subsequently, operation will be interrupted for three years in order to enhance it, increasing its brightness, a parameter linked to the intensity of the proton beams. The LHC will remain active until 2041 and, in the meantime, we will prepare for the leap with the successor. In parallel, we will continue to explore open questions in physics with smaller and complementary machines such as our “antimatter factory”, and to study radioisotopes which are also valuable in the field of medicine, thus completing the picture of the countless fronts of physical research at CERN”.

Looking even further to find answers in a new physics, there are those who propose the creation of muon accelerators, particles with a mass two hundred times higher than the electron and which would therefore be more effective.
«This is certainly an interesting possibility, which is being explored. Muons are not stable particles like electrons or protons, they decay very quickly, posing technological obstacles that still need to be overcome. Cern voted to interrupt relations with the world of Russian physics after the invasion of Ukraine and the choice has created some discontent among researchers. It should be noted that relations with Russian scientists working in Italy or other countries have not ceased, but with those employed by Russian institutes. Most of which openly supported the invasion and some of which are subject to international sanctions. Invading a sovereign country and supporting war are not acts aligned with Cern’s values. For this reason the Council has decided to interrupt relations.”

Has Italy’s presence at CERN changed over time in terms of scientific and technological participation?
«Italy continues to play a leading role at Cern, as it has always been since the beginning of the laboratory’s history with Edoardo Amaldi, one of the founding fathers, exactly 70 years ago. In a very competitive environment on a global level, Cern has had three Italian general directors out of 16 and today has around 2,500 Italian scientists coming mostly from our universities and from the National Institute of Nuclear Physics, a flagship of our research and institution envied by other countries. The participation of the Italian industry, supplier of high-level competitive technologies, is also very significant.”

Under his direction, Cern has expanded its borders and many nations have become part of the Geneva European center. Will the expansion continue?
«We have gone from 12 member countries in 1954 to 23 today. Brazil recently became an associate member, the first on the American continent, which is great news. Estonia will soon become one and Ireland already is. It is exciting to see how CERN involves more and more scientists from all over the world, around 17 thousand with more than 110 nationalities represented. In the meantime, we are making a lot of efforts to increase the female presence today to 23%, trying to reach the goal of 25% women by 2025.”

In October, the Science Gateway was inaugurated at Cern, a new center for the public designed by Renzo Piano and dedicated to the dissemination of physics. The result?
«I would say extraordinary: in less than six months we had 150 thousand visitors, a number previously reached in a year. There is nothing more exciting for me than sharing CERN research and the wonders and usefulness of science in general with everyone. Science is indeed fundamental for the future of humanity and the planet.”