[phas-grad] [phas-dept] Physics & invasion of Ukraine

[Carlos Bertulani]

Excerpt from NY Times today:

At the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, outside Geneva, Switzerland, scientists still delight in describing the diverse array of peoples — Israelis and Iranians; Hindus, Muslims, atheists and Catholics — who worked side-by-side a decade ago to discover the Higgs boson, the key to mass in the universe. Astronauts take pride in the brotherhood of the cosmos symbolized by ceremonial exchanges of bread and salt when crews arrive at the International Space Station.

These ties are now being threatened as opposition to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues to grow in scientific circles — even in Russia, where use of the word “invasion” in regard to Ukraine is now a crime. Conferences and academic exchanges have been canceled. Open letters from winners of the Nobel Prize and other groups have proliferated. The Russian and American space programs, which have been intertwined for 30 years, now seem destined to go their separate ways.

Last week the waves of condemnation reached CERN, long an avatar of the dream of international collaboration. In a meeting of its governing body, the CERN Council, on Tuesday, the lab said it would not engage in any new collaborations with the Russian Federation “until further notice” and suspended it from its observer status at the lab.

The condemnation from CERN was particularly stinging in its symbolism.

The laboratory was formed in 1954 to help bind a war-torn Europe, and the effort has been splendidly spectacular. Its Large Hadron Collider rules the roost in particle physics; the collider’s discovery of the long-sought Higgs boson a decade ago resonated globally. And the World Wide Web was invented at CERN, as a way to allow physicists to easily share their data.

[In the full article you will see details and statements by many of our physics colleagues.]

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/12/science/physics-cern-russia.html

Pierre Ramond, a physicist at the University of Florida and one of the innovators of string theory, wrote: “CERN’s decision was necessary. The lack of any would have been a black mark: CERN is more than a scientific marvel, it was and remains the first symbol of the post-WW2 new Europe.”
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