The signal ended in March 2022. Since? Radio silence. From CERN, the laboratory to which physics owes one of the greatest discoveries of the 21st century, no more scientific message emerges. For a year, the European institution, based in Geneva, has published almost no research paper on the experiments carried out in its particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC).
Why such silence from those who revolutionized fundamental research in 2012, observing for the first time the “God particle”, the Higgs boson, sixty years after Higgs had hypothesized its existence? After the outbreak of war in Ukraine on February 24, 2022, many Western scholars refused to have their names appear alongside Russian, officially pro-war institutions. Consequence: more than 250 papers were frozen, for lack of solution.
A major crisis, in the den of international scientific cooperation, created to unify the peoples of Europe around physics: “Our doctoral students, whose professional future depends on their publications, have still not reaped the fruits of their labor “, regrets Professor Brajesh Choudhary, Indian physicist and collaborator of Cern. “We, established researchers, had to demonstrate a great deal of pedagogy in the face of governments and funders asking us to justify this slack period. Publishing is the primary language of the scientist!”
“Science for Peace” in Wartime
Frozen publications, disturbed work atmosphere, and equipment that does not arrive… The war and international tensions have profoundly disrupted the daily lives of the 12,000 scientists at CERN, this machine for globalizing physics, where 113 nationalities are represented. Founded in 1954, the establishment was built on the idea of international science, “in the service of peace in Europe”, even before the Treaties of Rome, precursors of the European Union, were signed. It must now, and for the first time, come to terms with the realities of wartime science.
A test: “The ideal of a science above nations hardly resists international relations. Researchers are paid by States, and are not disconnected from national issues. And in the event of war, the institutions are systematically summoned to position themselves”, observes Yves Gingras, historian of science at the University of Quebec in Montreal.
On March 8, 2022, the council which brings together the 23 member states of the organization – including Ukraine – decided to suspend Russia’s observer status. Since 1991, the country, a leading player in world atomic physics, has been able to use the LHC, this 27-kilometre ring unique in the world, which allows particles to collide at the speed of light to update the infinite little. Then, last June, the CERN announced that no cooperation agreement would be renewed with Russia and Belarus.
These decisions sanction the declaration of support for the war made by the Union of Russian Rectors on March 4, 2022. They were welcomed by Ukrainian scientists at CERN, who fear that European technologies serve the Russian war machine, even if what is developed in Geneva has no direct military application.
“A Member State invaded by a partner? This is unprecedented”
A leader in particle physics, CERN can do without the Russian scientific apparatus. But this is not without upheavals: “We do not know exactly what it will represent on a day-to-day basis. Having an Associate Member State invaded by an Observer State is unprecedented”, concedes Pippa Wells, Deputy Director of Research . “We had to think very quickly about what we were going to say to our 12,000 scientists, assess the implications of the different scenarios, quantify Russia’s involvement in our experiments. But we already had as a common priority to condemn the invasion , and to support our Ukrainian colleagues.”
The contracts between CERN and Russia expire at the end of 2024. Until this deadline, scientists affiliated with these institutions can continue to collaborate. In February 2023, a solution was finally found regarding frozen publications: Russian institutions will not be mentioned, and researchers will be cited with an identification code to avoid detailing their affiliations in the articles. A solution appreciated by the Ukrainians of the establishment: “We could not appear with Russian institutions, at the risk of losing all funding”, explains Tetiana Berger-Hryn’ova, a Ukrainian physicist. A patch: the war interferes everywhere else.
CERN had to reorganize the LHC upgrade work, which runs until 2029. This project, called High-Luminosity LHC, is one of the “priorities of the European strategy for particle physics”. It should make it possible to produce five times more Higgs bosons. These particles are considered the very foundation of matter. They give it its mass. Since CERN proved their existence in 2012, it regularly generates them to study them. “Vladimir Putin and the Russian institutions had planned to inject 30 million Swiss francs, on a one-off basis. It’s 5% or 6% of the costs of the LHC, which will not be paid”, specifies Pippa Wells.
“It’s difficult to work with so many uncertainties”
Russia was also to provide collimators, large devices which are used to “clean” the beam of particles sent into the collider. Here again, the breakdown of cooperation, added to European economic sanctions, forced CERN to turn to a European supplier, overnight. Even the heating of the premises had to be changed. It ran on Russian gas.
Some 1,000 Russian scientists are still taking part in the experiments, pending the cut-off date. Although the decisions of the CERN Council and of the European Union are not intended to personally sanction Soviet researchers, they are not without consequences for the working atmosphere: “We continue to carry out measurements, to provide , as we did before all this madness. But especially on a psychological level, it’s different. Physics sometimes requires you to project yourself over several years, it’s difficult to work with so many uncertainties. And some relationships have been broken”, explains Fedor Ratnikov, Russian physicist, CERN collaborator.
Russian scientists caught in the crossfire
What will happen to Russian researchers after 2024? Fedor Ratnikov denounces a decision contrary to the European ideal: “Many scientists, who work in Russian institutes, are quite simply excluded from international projects, without further explanation. The situation shows to what extent the “humanist” objective CERN and Europe is fragile, easily ignored in stressful situations”, abounds the researcher, who regrets that international politics is shaking up the fabric of knowledge.
CERN is not the only one to have cut off cooperation with Russia and Belarus. The CNRS, the European Space Agency, the Council of Rectors of Belgium, or even the whole of Germany, have done so. Before the war, Russia was however asking for collaboration, unlike other regimes, such as China. In 2020, 42% of Russian publications were the result of international projects, according to the bibliographic platform Web of Science. These decisions leave many researchers persona non grata, as long as they do not resign from Russian institutions. With, in any case, a very uncertain future ahead of them.