Maximilien Brice/CERN

Fabiola Gianotti is the incoming director-general of CERN.

Fabiola Gianotti, the Italian physicist who announced the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012, will from 1 January take charge at CERN, the laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland, where the particle was found.

Gianotti spoke to Nature ahead of taking up the post, to discuss hints of new physics at the upgraded Large Hadron Collider (LHC), China’s planned accelerators and CERN’s worldwide ambitions — as well as how to deal with egos.

How excited should we be about the latest LHC results, which already hint at signals that could turn out to be due to new physics phenomena?

At the moment, experiments are seeing some fluctuations and hints, which, if they are due to signals from new physics, will next year consolidate with the huge amount of data the LHC will deliver. On the other hand, if they are just fluctuations, they will disappear. We have to be patient. In addition to looking for new physics, we are going to study the Higgs boson with very high precision.

Will any of the hints that we’ve already seen be directing the physicists’ searches?

I don’t think that the direction of exploration is being guided by the hints people see here and there. The correct approach is to be totally open and not be driven by our prejudices, because we don’t know where new physics is, or how it will look.

Following the LHC's energy upgrade, data collection in the 2015 run has been slower than hoped. How would you characterize it so far?

Run 2 has been extremely successful. We have recorded about 4 inverse femtobarns of data [roughly equivalent to 400 trillion proton–proton collisions]. The initial goal was between 8 and 10 femtobarns, so it’s less. However, a huge number of challenges have been addressed and solved. So for me, this is more important than accumulating collisions. We could have accumulated more, but only by not addressing the challenges that will allow us to make a big jump in terms of intensity of the beams next year.

In 2015, one LHC paper had more than 5,000 authors. There must be some people on such experiments who want more credit for their efforts. How do you deal with the clash of egos?

I think the collaborations accept very well this idea that everybody signs the paper, and I am also a strong supporter of that. The reason is simple: you can be the guy who has a good idea to do a very cute analysis, so get very nice results. But you would not have been able to do the analysis if many other people had not built the detectors that gave you the data. None of these experiments is a one-man show, they are the work of thousands of people who have all contributed in their domain and all equally deserve to sign the paper.

I hope that universities, advancement committees and boards that hire people understand that just because there are many authors, that does not mean the individual did not make an important contribution.

CERN is currently at the heart of international particle physics, but China is designing a future collider that could succeed the LHC after 2035. Do you think that China could become the world's centre for particle physics in the 2040s?

At the moment there are many conceptual design studies for future big accelerators around the world. Of course conceptual studies are important, but there is a big step between studies and future reality. I think it is very good that all regions in the world show an interest and commitment to thinking about the future of particle physics. It’s a very good sign of a healthy discipline.

Is there a chance that China might become a CERN member?

Before becoming a full member, you become an associate member, and associate membership is something that can be conceived [for China]. So we will see in the coming years if this can become a reality. It’s an interesting option to explore.

Do you plan to encourage more countries to become CERN members?

Of course. A lot has been done since 2010 to enlarge CERN membership, in terms of associate members in particular, but also [full] members: we got Israel, for instance, and soon we will get Romania. I will continue along this direction.

Some people think that future governments will be unwilling to fund larger and more expensive facilities. Do you think a collider bigger than the LHC will ever be built? And will it depend on the LHC finding something new?

The outstanding questions in physics are important and complex and difficult, and they require the deployment of all the approaches the discipline has developed, from high-energy colliders to precision experiments and cosmic surveys. High-energy accelerators have been our most powerful tools of exploration in particle physics, so we cannot abandon them. What we have to do is push the research and development in accelerator technology, so that we will be able to reach higher energy with compact accelerators.

Journal name:

Nature

DOI:

doi:10.1038/nature.2015.19040

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1. 
   qiwu hu • 2015-12-27 05:41 PM

   Hu temporal quantum theory Introduction "Hu quantum space-time theory" (referred HQW), after ten years of natural sciences specialized learning, ten years of dedicated to learning and thinking, writing for four years, since May 18, 2015 began, the world's two more than ten advanced countries (United States, Canada, Australia, France, Britain, Russia, Germany, Finland, Switzerland, Italy, Pakistan, India, Argentina, Mexico, South, Portugal, Greece, Singapore, Japan, Korea) and regions 80 a number of research institutions and scientific organizations and the mainstream news media and issued more than 4,000 copies of e-mail for publicity, as of today, has been more than six months, foreign and Hong Kong and Taiwan to promote its nearing completion. It is to use physical methods, scientific explanation of the origin and evolution of the universe and of elementary particles. According to modern physics: time / space / mass / energy / electric / magnetic / wave / force / gravity etc. described further analysis to know their essence. In the conventional electromagnetic theory, quantum theory, cosmology, astrophysics, particle physics, and so on the basis of multi-dimensional space, combined with space, time and space Hu established quantum theory. It is easily explained by the gravitational gap gravitational principle, we see the shortcomings of Newton's theory; Einstein general relativity is also very easy to understand the mystery. It proposed a new classification of celestial bodies and elementary particle classification method proposed two types of space-time concept and anti-temporal concept, it is easy to understand black / white hole / DS, but also easy to understand why the anti-matter / dark matter and dark them? Why black? Why Anti? And the location and manner of their existence. Scientific understanding of human nature provide an accurate theoretical guidance system. No matter how many years mankind again, no matter how scientific development, only to return to the track of Hu quantum space-time, in order to understand the nature of nature. Once the human control of its border control technology atomic mass exchange, will be able to local control gravity, change production of human life. Hu is the basis of quantum theory, space-time super cutting-edge research, the world's leading major significance and role, and look forward to your support and attention. HQW also made scientific advice and recommendations for the financial investment and private investment. 1 against the government invested directly operating photovoltaic solar power project Rationale: According HQW, solar power over matter and movement patterns within the solar system objects small. If you get an additional solar substances therein (genus quantum energy, and nuclear and other energy is not the same as others), the integrated environmental and economic benefits for the negative. Non-special circumstances and special needs, government at all levels can not invest. 2 against the central government invested dark matter deep space exploration Rationale: According to existing theories of physics to calculate the orbits of celestial bodies and quality of the goods and use gravitational lensing observations confirm the view that dark matter does not participate in the reaction electromagnetic pervasive entity substance only about 5% less. In the Chinese-American Nobel Prize winner Professor Ding Zhaozhong and often into the team's chief researcher for the Chinese Academy of Sciences team, based on the dark matter is dark matter, antimatter, dark matter and its antimatter principle but the reactants can be observed, with the full support of national finances under, develop satellite to explore. Due to defects in the theory, the research is doomed to fail. (This is the spirit of science, is not a personal attack. I personally have great respect for them). HQW pointed out the dark matter why the dark? Where? In what way exists. Thus firmly opposed to the central government investment. 3 in favor of visible light communication research does not encourage ............... .. 4 supports neutrino research ............... .. 5 support graphene and atomic research material to its boundary exchange

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2. 
   Abed Peerally • 2015-12-24 04:49 PM

   First time I read such a very balanced article about the LHC. There is clearly a combination of good administrative concerns and good science for the future and Dr. Fabiola Gianotti deserves our congratulations and best wishes. She is absolutely right that the future of collider research is not particularly obvious. Perhaps at most we will see a small number of new or modified particles mostly connected to the weak force. There has to be at least one more boson that plays a crucial role in quark transformation. However the gluon/quark science, in terms of their comprehension and of what could be exploited in terms of energy useful for mankind, that is going to be very very difficult both in forecasting and in actually doing the research. Otherwise the search for a unified strong force/electromagnetic/weak forces merger has even greater hurdles and it is not true to say that at the highest cosmological universal temperatures they merge into a single force. Rather than have parallel extrapowerful colliders in China and Europe, it is best for science and society to have a joint world project. The Chinese might not unfortunately agree. But it might turn out finally that Bill Clinton and his committees were well advised not to support the super expensive powerful collider project. The last thing I wish to say that it is all well to claim that henceforth, as Heuer said some days back, IT will generally replace scientists in making the analyses and studies of LHC huge tonnage of data. One day if ever the Chinese see other results it would be too easy to blame the machines and not the managers and scientists. We should not leave science behind us in world mega projects in favour of something more elusive in terms of scientific honour, dedication and responsibility.

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