One universal language

« We speak one single universal language and this language is science ». These were the words CERN Director General Rolf Heuer used last September during a ceremony celebrating CERN 60th anniversary. During the past year, the largest particle physics laboratory in the world has been expanding the community of those sharing this common language. Since May 6th, it now includes Turkey. This brings CERN with three Associate Members, the others being Serbia and Pakistan. Serbia joined in 2012 and is now in pre-stage to Membership while Pakistan is waiting for final approval from its government after signing a treaty in December 2014.

These new treaties follow intensive efforts deployed by CERN Director General to expand CERN’s membership beyond Europe’s boundary. Israel became the first non-European Member State to join the organization in 2014. Member States must pay a substantial fee but they have special privileges: their scientists can be hired by CERN and their industries can bid for contracts. Other countries such as India, which has been participating in CERN’s experiments since the 1970’s, are also considering becoming Associate Member States.

The representatives of the 21 countries with full membership form the Council, CERN’s governing body. Other states have Observers status and their representatives can attend the Council meetings but without voting rights. Such is the case of the United States, Russia, Japan and India. CERN also welcomes scientists from dozens of other countries from all over the world. These non-member states all contribute financially to various experiments, sending scientists and supplying detector or accelerator parts, or computing facilities. As of September 2014, 10400 scientists from 101 nationalities participated in CERN various experiments.

The distribution of the 10400 CERN Users by nationality as it was on 1 September 2014. In total, 101 different nationalities were represented. Source: CERN

On May 7, CERN signed a new treaty with the United States that will strengthen the participation of American scientists at CERN as well as open the way for CERN to contribute to US-based scientific projects. Such agreements are concrete examples of how the long-term strategies for particle physics all over the world emphasize close international cooperation.

Nowadays, research in particle physics can only be achieved by pooling together resources. Not only does it lead to great science such as at the Large Hadron Collider, but it also contributes to world peace. A multi-disciplinary laboratory for applied research is currently being setup on the model of CERN in Jordan. It will bring together scientists from the Middle East, including Israel, Turkey and Pakistan. The SESAME project (Synchrotron-light for Experimental Science and Application in the Middle East) is due to come in operation in early 2016.

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« We speak one single universal language and this language is science ». These were the words CERN Director General Rolf Heuer used last September dur...

And there it goes again

05/05/2015

Pauline Gagnon

This morning around 9:30, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN produced the first proton collisions since the restart of the accelerator at the beg...

One universal language

19/05/2015

And there it goes again

05/05/2015

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To be alerted of new postings, follow me on Twitter: @GagnonPauline or sign-up on this mailing list to receive an e-mail notification.

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One universal language

19/05/2015

« We speak one single universal language and this language is science ». These were the words CERN Director General Rolf Heuer used last September dur...

And there it goes again

05/05/2015

Pauline Gagnon

This morning around 9:30, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN produced the first proton collisions since the restart of the accelerator at the beg...