The Director General of CERN underlines the importance of fundamental research for humanity, particularly in the face of climate and health issues. The European laboratory, which notably “discovered” the Higgs boson, is a driver of innovation in Europe. But its leadership is threatened… by China.
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Journalist at the Planet pole
Published on 11/28/2024 at 6:43 p.m.
Reading time: 6 min
Dince 2016, Fabiola Gianotti has headed one of the most prestigious scientific institutions on the planet: the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). Located in Geneva, CERN is best known for housing underground, on the French-Swiss border, the most powerful particle accelerator in the world – the “Large Hadron Collider” (LHC). This 27 km long circular tunnel is designed to observe the behavior of elementary particles – protons – propelled against each other at speeds close to that of light. It was the LHC which made it possible, in 2012, to confirm the existence of a particle called the Higgs boson – which earned the Nobel Prize for Belgian physicist François Englert, who predicted its behavior with his colleagues Peter Higgs and Robert Brout.
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