Professor Rolf-Dieter Heuer, Director General of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (better known as CERN), explains why the slow work of science is fundamental to our fast-moving world.
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Ever since Tim Berners-Lee created the world’s first web page – http://info.cern.ch – in a nondescript lab room in 1989, we have lived in a world of CERN’s creation.
“That changed the way we worked and, of course, the way the whole world communicates,” says Professor Rolf-Dieter Heuer from his office at the institute’s sprawling headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. As CERN’s Director General, Professor Heuer is responsible for running an organization that has transformed the fabric of our society, adding rocket fuel to the pace at which we do business, make connections, and manage our lives.
The world wide web may be CERN’s most famous legacy but its influence doesn’t stop there. From new types of medical treatment to advances in solar energy and the advent of cloud computing, the fundamental science conducted by CERN’s army of brilliant physicists is reshaping, well, just about everything we do – and know.
Established in 1954 by 12 European states (today there are 20 member states), CERN is enjoying one of the most exciting eras in its history. In 2008, researchers at the Large Hadron Collider – a particle accelerator housed beneath a mountain on the Franco-Swiss border – successfully smashed two beams of protons into each other at a fraction below the speed of light, kicking up a subatomic cloud of particles that scientists hope will offer invaluable insights into the origin of the universe.
But the really cool stuff came in September 2011 with the results of OPERA. An experiment in which a neutrino beam of subatomic particles was fired from Geneva to a laboratory in Italy, 730km away – apparently travelling faster than the speed of light – OPERA left the science community scratching its head, and the rest of the world wondering how soon it could purchase time-traveling Deloreans. (“Maybe a few decades,” is Professor Heuer’s conservative prediction.)
“The general public is realizing not just how fascinating science can be, but what can come out of science in terms of knowledge and, at some stage, the betterment of society.”
And yet the challenge for the professor is that the incredible speeds (literally ‘incredible’ – the FTL experiment is being sceptically cross-checked by CERN’s sister labs in Japan and Illinois) unleashed within CERN’s accelerators contrast with the slow work of delivering answers to an expectant public.
“The world is moving so quickly that people are asking for answers when we don’t have the question yet,” Professor Heuer admits. Even worse, in this economic climate, “They are asking, ‘Why do we need science? We should take care of our immediate problems first.’ But if people in past decades had thought that way, we wouldn’t have the society we have today. Everything depends on science – this is what we need to communicate to people. I think it’s working because the general public is realizing not just how fascinating science can be, but what can come out of science in terms of knowledge and, at some stage, the betterment of society.”
The answer, perhaps, lies in rediscovering the roots of science – in using the FTL breakthrough to go back to the future. “I want to encourage the interest of artists in our work,” the professor reveals. “After all, at the very beginning, art and science started as the same thing. Bring them back together and the public might say, ‘Oh, this is how you can see science.’ Once people start talking about it, you have progress in understanding and accepting it.”
That is how Professor Heuer and the maverick minds at CERN will give science back its soul – and propel the world one step closer to warp speed.
HOW CERN CHANGED THE WORLD
The World Wide Web
Developed by Tim Berners-Lee in 1989, it was originally a way of connecting scientists with the vast amounts of documentation produced by CERN experiments.
Hadron Therapy
A method of treating tumors with heavy isotopes and proton therapy rather than X-rays. An offshoot of work done in the LHC.
PET/MRI Scans
Positron emission tomography (PET) instrumentation developed for particle physics experiments is now being combined with magnetic sphere imaging (MRI) for diagnostic possibilities.
Efficient Vacuums
Vacuum technology developed to run particles through the LHC is being deployed in the development of highly efficient solar cells.
Cloud Computing
CERN’s distributed grid computing system allows scientists to take part in experiments from anywhere in the world. That has evolved into the cloud.
