Recently, national media have highlighted the news that CERN, the European organization for research in nuclear and particle physics, has accepted Chile as one of its associate member states. CERN is currently home to the most sophisticated experiment exploring the limits of the subatomic realm: theLarge Hadron Collider (LHC). This experiment operates at the frontier of our technological and scientific knowledge.Beams of protons circulate through the Large Hadron Collider at speeds close to that of light in order to make them collide at specific points, where international collaborations (including Chile) have built sophisticated detectors capable of recording the collisions. The goal is to understand what matter is made of and what the basic constituents created at the dawn of time are.
These constituents (the elementary particles) were created fractions of a second after the Big Bang, and are at the origin of the formation of more complex structures, such as atoms, then molecules, stars, and galaxies, with solar systems like ours, which harbor planets like ours that contain life. Life in the form of thinking human beings who design instruments to try to analyze this process at different scales, and who question what happened and how it happened. This reductionism masks tremendous scientific complexity, as it could be interpreted to mean that understanding elementary particles is sufficient to understand more complex systems (such as human beings), which is not the case. But I embrace it for the purpose of this reflection.
Being able to be part of CERN's decision-making table -andto be participants in understanding this birth of known matter-is an opportunity that we will have when the pending signatures that will lead Chile to become an associate member country of the European laboratory are formalized. We will also have the opportunity to open Chilean industry to CERN tenders, and perhaps generate from our industry a contribution to the economic dynamism of the country. But reaching this privileged place, which has counted on hundreds of contributions from the national scientific community and also from ANID, leaves with a bittersweet feeling the deep appreciation of the legacy that brought us this far, and which, in my opinion, lays the foundations for future progress.
The scientific work associated with CERN from Chile involves not only efforts in experimental particle physics but also in the purest forms of theoretical physics. For some, this is something more intangible.Deciding what to build and how to explore the unknown stems from an intrinsic curiosity to understand the world around us. The process of scientific thought is what has driven human development. Examples from basic science abound. From understanding Newton’s laws of motion to build our world. Later, Einstein defined gravity itself as the geometry of spacetime—a definition that today allows us to accurately pinpoint our GPS location on our cell phones. Or how understanding the principles of quantum theory enables us to operate our computers today.
Developing models that predict the elementary particles we are made of today saves lives by, for example, allowing us to quantify the interactions between the atoms in our bodies and medical devices that detect photons (particles of light) during cancer treatments. Understanding what matter is has also created a need for an immense source of data, connected through theWorld Wide Webthat we use so frequently.
It is this theoretical and first edge that - in sometimes unpredictable time scales - allows the development of the technology. And it is necessary that it is not lost at the table of Chile's decision making for CERN. It is not only detectors and instruments built by Chilean men and women that operate -and those that could operate- in the CERN machines. Opportunities for research in basic science, theoretical physics and phenomenology are also enhanced, and to continue proposing ideas that can be tested in the precious experiments.
Chile has a history of theoretical particle physics dating back to the 1970s. Naturally, it was also the least expensive field to pursue in a developing country.In the beginning, our predictions required nothing more than ink and time. Today we need technology and computers that simulate proton collisions. Let us remember that it was also theoretical physicists who, at the same time, had the vision to involve Chile in the early experimental developments in particle physics associated with CERN. And it was theoretical physicists who proposed the famous Higgs boson, the LHC’s flagship discovery that today gives us the knowledge of why the electrons in our bodies have mass.
It is physicists and theoretical physicists who also propose new colliders or experiments for CERN, and who also express their intrinsic curiosity in arguments and evidence to international institutions as to why these machines should be built. We often determine what features the machines should have in their design, so that we can exploit the properties of particles - dictated by theory - to manifest themselves in experiments. It is this same curiosity that must prevail and be enhanced if we aspire to be seated at the discussion table with CERN.
Today, dozens of Chilean researchers in theoretical particle physics work developing predictions for CERN. Our work is less nuts and bolts, but just as essential. It is an increasingly collaborative work together with our experimental colleagues, in order to decide what to look for, how to look for it and to argue why it should be looked for.
Let us not forget the impact on our lives of wanting to understand the world, and thus the importance of doing basic science in particle physics. And today, more than ever, we need to continue betting on it. So that the new generations have more opportunities than we had, collaborating even more closely with CERN, and, in freedom, can give themselves fully to the mysteries of the subatomic world. Let us not forget that the most basic questions, the most intangible to the naked eye, are what, in the end, make us human beings. Let us honor the very mission of CERN in its mandate: to discover what our universe is made of and how it works.
