Briton Mark Thomson, new director general of CERN | Science

Briton Mark Thomson will become the new director general of the European laboratory for particle physics CERN. The researcher and manager were chosen today by a council of the organization’s 24 member countries, including Spain.

Thompson, who was born in Brighton 58 years ago, is a renowned particle physics expert who has been involved in major experiments such as CERN and the DUNE neutrino detector in the US, and is the author of one of the particle physics textbooks. the topic most used by physics students at university. In a recent interview with EL PAÍS, the researcher admitted that his country is trying to get closer to Europe after Brexit strengthening scientific cooperation. Thanks to CERN, Thompson said, Europe will “open a window into a universe we didn’t know about before.”

CERN was founded in 1954 and is the world’s largest particle physics laboratory, with a permanent staff of 2,500 people and a network of almost 20,000 collaborators. Its headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, is home to the Large Hadron Collider, the most powerful particle accelerator on Earth. One of the new CEO’s priorities will be to complete the ongoing process of refurbishing the facility to increase its luminosity, allowing for more detailed study of the Higgs boson, the so-called God particle. After years of searching, the boson was discovered by this machine in 2012. It is a fundamental part that other particles have mass, as well as a Universe with galaxies, stars, planets and life like the one we know exists.

The new head of CERN faces a second, even more difficult task: approving the construction of the Circular Collider of the Future, a new particle accelerator with a circumference of almost 100 kilometers that is set to become the next largest machine for discovery in physics in the near future. 70 years old.

The new director general must obtain the consent of CERN member states to launch this gigantic project, which will cost about 15 billion euros. Physicists hope that this machine is a Higgs boson factory and that this particle, or family of particles, since there can be more than one boson, will deviate from current theories describing the behavior of matter, and thus herald entry into a completely unknown area of ​​physics. This area encompasses two of the greatest mysteries of the cosmos: dark matter, which makes up approximately 25% of the entire universe, and dark energy, which makes up 70%.

Europe is a world leader in particle physics research, and another challenge for the current CEO will be to ensure it remains so in the coming decades. Its stated rival is China, a country of enormous enthusiasm and growing scientific talent, which also plans to build a huge particle accelerator to rival CERN.

Although member countries elected him today, the new director general will not take office until January 2026. Until then, Italian Fabiola Gianotti will be the outgoing president and the new CEO will have a year to land before fully taking over.

Gianotti, an experimental physicist born in Rome 64 years ago, was the first woman to head CERN in its history, a position she held for two five-year terms. In this case, the three final candidates were men: British physicist Mark Thompson, current director of the UK Science and Technology Council, Greek Paris Sfikas, a veteran CERN researcher, and Dutchman Robbert Dijkgraaf, a theoretical physicist. and former Minister of Education, Culture and Science of the Netherlands.