Canada offered front-row seat for CERN's particle-smashing experiments

From Ottawa citizen:  Canada offered front-row seat for CERN's particle-smashing experiments

 

Photograph by: Denis Balibouse , Reuters

VANCVANCOUVER — A top European physicist is heading to Ottawa to offer Canada membership in one of the most exclusive science clubs on Earth.

Rolf Heuer, director general of the European centre for nuclear research (CERN), is keen to have Canada join as an associate member. The price: $10 million a year and a 10-year commitment.

Heuer, who will meet Tuesday with government science officials, said membership would buy Canada "a seat at the table" at CERN, the storied physics lab re-creating Big Bang conditions in a huge underground particle smasher near Geneva.
Scientists hope for their first glimpse of the elusive Higgs boson this year. The "God particle," as it is often called, is believed to be what gives elementary parties their mass and made everything we see possible: stars, planets and life.

But the hunt for the Higgs is just the start, said Heuer, who was in Vancouver Monday to open a week-long conference on CERN's particle-smashing experiments.

CERN has a 20-year plan to explore the many secrets of "dark matter" and the "dark universe," which Heuer said accounts for 95 per cent of the universe.

While the world of particle physics is esoteric, the real world spinoffs can be considerable. CERN was the birthplace of the World Wide Web, which as Heuer points out, "has changed our world."

Dozens of Canadian scientists are involved with experiments at CERN, and are keen to see the country join as a member as it would mean involvement in decisions about experiments, and more opportunities to work and study at laboratory which is like a university dedicated solely to particle physics.

They say the biggest benefit of membership is that Canadian firms would be allowed to bid on contacts to design and supply equipment for CERN, which has an annual budget of close to $1 billion.

"There is a huge multiplier effect when you have so many different parts of the world coming together," said Rob McPherson, a physicist at the University of Victoria and spokesperson for the Canadian science team involved in the search for the Higgs boson. He said scientists and Canadian companies both would benefit from the collaboration that comes with CERN membership.

Heuer said in an interview that he has long been keen for CERN to expand its membership beyond the European Union.

"Science is getting more and more global," he said, "and therefore, to my mind, one needs a global approach.
"We have taken the decision that the 'E" in CERN has changed from Europe to Everywhere."

Heuer said the expansion was in the works before the economic crisis that now has governments around the world tightening budgets for big science.

CERN is about as big as earthly projects get. The Large Hadron Collider propelling particle beams around CERN's 27-kilometre underground tunnel at close to the speed of light cost close to $8 billion. The machine's power bill is about $30 million a year.

So far, European countries have made good on their funding commitments to CERN. There have been reports that Greece might have trouble paying this year but Heuer, who recently met with Greek officials, said he would "not be so pessimistic."

While he said the economic crisis is worrisome, Heuer insisted it is not what motivated CERN to open membership to countries outside Europe, a decision that was made in 2009.

Israel became a member last fall, and CERN has opened membership to several other non-European countries, including Brazil, India, Russia, Japan and Canada

The U.S., said Heuer, is "a difficult story."

"It's not stable," he said, noting that U.S. science decisions can change from one year to the next. "Particle physics needs sustainable support."

Heuer is scheduled to meet Tuesday with Gary Goodyear, Canada's minister of state for science and technology, to discuss the finer points of membership.

"For a country like Canada. I don't want to say it's peanuts, but it is a small sum of money," Heuer said, noting that Greece pays $17 million a year for CERN membership.

Canada already has spent more than $100 million on research and equipment for the experiments at CERN.
Along with more access to decisions, contracts and facilities, membership might also open the door to CERN building more facilities in Canada, said Tim Meyer, head of strategic planning and communications at TRIUMF, the national physics facility based at the University of British Columbia. TRIUMF is home already to one of CERN's data farms, storing some of the massive amount of information generated by the particle smashing experiments.

Canada's physics community is keen on CERN membership, but it an open question whether the idea will sell in Ottawa, where the government has been harshly criticized for its recent cuts to government science, and slapped a moratorium on funding for many Canadian science facilities, such as living fungi and algae collections and Arctic research facilities.