EU hails leadership in exploring universe’s origins

The most complicated and ambitious scientific project ever built successfully completed its first major experiment yesterday at the European Centre for Nuclear Research (CERN). At the forefront of a revolution in particle physics, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is expected to shed light on conditions a few moments after the Big Bang.

The successful switch-on of the LHC, a particle accelerator used to study “the fundamental building blocks of all things,” was hailed by the French EU Presidency as “a huge success for Europe which demonstrates its world leadership in the main fields of science”. 

The first test beam to successfully complete a complete circuit of the accelerator’s 27-kilometre tunnel on the French-Swiss border on 10 September was accompanied by doomsday scaremongering that it might create black holes with enough gravitational pull to swallow up the Earth. But a safety report published on 5 September had proven that safety fears about the accelerator were unfounded.

The collider is “perfectly safe”, said CERN’s chief scientific officer Jos Engelen, adding that “nature has already conducted the equivalent of about a hundred thousand LHC experimental programmes on Earth – and the planet still exists”. 

The experiment is expected to help scientists to understand the origins of the universe as well as find out what 96% of the universe is made of: so-called ‘dark matter’. Current knowledge is limited to just 4%, represented by the ordinary particles that make everything we see “from an ant to a galaxy”.

The findings are also said to be essential for various direct applications in areas such as intensive computing and medicine. CERN is already collaborating with thousands of scientists around the world to operate a distributed computing and data storage infrastructure called the LHC Computing Grid (LCG). It has also been the driving force behind the European multi-science grid Enabling Grids for E-SciencE (EGEE).

EU Science and Research Commissioner Janez Poto?nik described the experiment as an illustration of the scientific excellence Europe can achieve through increased collaborative research between EU countries as well as the bloc and the rest of the world. The Commission has observer status in CERN, while 18 EU member states are full members. 

The EU executive contributed some €40 million to the multi-billion euro LHC through its Framework Programmes for Research and Development (FP). The official launch of the LHC, the concept of which was first approved in 1994, will take place in Geneva on 21 October. The first high-energy collisions are scheduled to take place after this date.

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