CERN and space science

The connection between CERN and space is tangible this week, as former CERN Fellow and ESA astronaut Christer Fuglesang begins the second week of his mission on space shuttle flight STS-128. I had the pleasure to meet Christer back in October 2008 at an IEEE symposium in Dresden, and he asked me whether we could give him something related to CERN for his official flight kit. We thought of caps and tee-shirts, but in the end decided to give him a neutralino as a symbol of the link between particle physics and the science of the Universe. Neutralinos are theoretical particles that the LHC will be looking for, and if they exist, they’re strong candidates for the Universe’s dark matter. Christer’s neutralino is just a model, of course, escaped from the particle zoo, but what better symbol of the connectedness of science?

Christer Fuglesang is not the only link CERN has with the space shuttle programme. We’ve recently learned that the AMS-2 experiment, which will be looking for antimatter and dark matter in space, has had its berth confirmed on the last ever shuttle flight in October 2010. AMS-2 is currently under construction at CERN and is destined for installation on the International Space Station. Once in orbit, CERN will be the experiment’s data centre.

These are very positive stories for CERN, and examples of a more fundamental truth: science can’t be pigeonholed. People talk of different disciplines like physics, chemistry and biology. Or sub-disciplines such as particle physics, astrophysics and cosmology. Science is such a vast domain that it has to be this way, but it’s frequently at the interface between disciplines that the best science emerges.

I was also reminded last week that the parallels between particle physics and the space programme go further than the science. Both also push back the frontiers of technology, and it’s an inevitable part of the process for both to encounter setbacks along the way. With 2009 being the 40th anniversary of the first lunar landing, the world is celebrating the success of the Apollo programme, but many years of hard work were necessary before the triumph of 1969. And as we marvel at the amazing pictures sent back from the Hubble Space Telescope, the instrument’s initial blurred vision has been consigned to history. Even Christer experienced the reality of living at the technology frontier last week, as his launch was delayed due to a technical fault in a liquid hydrogen valve. Today, we can celebrate the success of his launch, and look forward to celebrating the joint successes, technological and scientific, of particle physics and the space science programme in years to come.

Rolf Heuer