Author: Gina Gunaratnam In 2024, the EPS release a calendar of “Inspiring Physicists”. Read the interview of Sébastien Mouchet, researcher & honorary senior lecturer at the University of Mons, Belgium and the University of Exeter, UK. He wrote the editorial of the calendar, together with Lorena Ballesteros Ferraz and Riccardo Molo. As a master’s student at the University of Namur, Belgium, I attended the annual meeting of the Belgium Physical Society (BPS) organised in Namur in May 2011. BPS is member society of the European Physical Society. I became a member of the BPS and started receiving the Europhysics News. I remember that the issue that I got at that conference featured an introduction to natural and bioinspired photonics co-authored by Pete Vukusic (https://www.epsnews.org/articles/epn/abs/2011/03/epn2011423p20/epn2011423p20.html) whose group hosted me for about 4-5 years as a postdoctoral researcher later on in my career. It was a surprising coincidence as I was at the time carrying out my master’s thesis in this field. The field of natural and bioinspired photonics investigates optical effects in natural organisms, typically phenomena arising from photonic structures, and takes inspiration from these effects and the related optical structures to develop novel technological applications. One of the main challenges in natural photonics is to understand how nature produces photonic structures, often very regular structures at the 100-nm scale that competes in terms of performances with structures fabricated by nanotechnology. Unveiling the exact developmental stages of these structures would be a big step forward. This field of research is very multidisciplinary. It involves some aspects of physics and photonics, of materials science as well as of biology. It also relies on both experimental and numerical approaches. I often try to adapt the project of eager students to what they want and what motivates them: more simulations, only simulations, more experiments or only experiments; more physics, more materials science, or more biology depending on what they are interested in. Since the second year of my bachelor’s degree to the end of my master’s degree in physics, my cohort was exclusively composed of men. I had a great time but one must admit that it was a bit peculiar. I could not imagine that girls and women are less good at or less interested in physics. I think that science and research have much to gain from being more inclusive and diverse.
Particle physicists chart a course to the future
The aim of the third update of the European Strategy for Particle Physics is to develop a visionary and concrete plan that greatly advances human knowledge in fundamental physics through the realisation of the next flagship project at CERN.
Students from Estonia, Japan and the USA win the 11th edition of Beamline for Schools
Winners of the 2024 CERN Beamline for Schools competition: “Mavericks” from Estonia (top right), “SPEEDers” from the USA (bottom right) and “Sakura Particles” from Japan (left) (Images: Mavericks, SPEEDers, Sakura Particles)Geneva and Hamburg, 25 June 2024. Beamline for Schools (BL4S) is a physics competition run by CERN, the European laboratory for particle physics, open to secondary school pupils from all around the world. Participants are invited to prepare a proposal for a physics experiment that can be undertaken at the beamline of a particle accelerator, either at CERN or at DESY (Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron in Hamburg, Germany). In 2024, three winning teams have been chosen, based on the scientific merit of their proposal and the communication merit of their video. “Mavericks”, a team from the Secondary School of Sciences in Tallinn and the Hugo Treffner Gymnasium in Tartu, Estonia, and the team “Sakura Particles”, which brings together pupils from Kawawa Senior High School in Kanagawa, Joshigakuin Senior High School and Junten High School in Tokyo, Kawagoe Girls High School in Saitama and Kitano High School in Osaka, Japan, will travel to CERN in September 2024 to perform the experiments that they proposed. The team “SPEEDers” from Andover High School in Andover, USA, will carry out their experiment at a DESY beamline. A beamline is a facility that provides high-energy fluxes of subatomic particles that can be used to conduct experiments in different fields, including fundamental physics, material science and medicine. BL4S started in 2014 in the context of CERN’s 60th anniversary. Over the past 10 years, more than 20 000 pupils from all over the world have taken part in the competition, and 25 teams have been selected as winners. The participation rate has been rising consistently over the years, with a record 461 teams from 78 countries submitting an experiment proposal in 2024. “Preparing a proposal for a particle physics experiment is a very challenging task. The success of Beamline for Schools shows that, when provided with the right support, high-school students can design feasible, interesting and imaginative experiments,” says Charlotte Warakaulle, CERN Director for International Relations. “We are continuously impressed by the quality of the proposals, and this year is no exception. The candidates demonstrated impressive creativity and great rigour, two essential qualities for students who might decide to take up scientific careers.” The fruitful collaboration between CERN and DESY started in 2019 during a long shutdown period of the CERN accelerators. This is the sixth year that the German laboratory has hosted competition winners. “Every year I am very impressed by the creativity and determination of the team members,” says Beate Heinemann, Director in charge of Particle Physics at DESY. “I am already looking forward to hosting the team from the USA this year. This programme is so important to me as it advances not only science but also the cultural exchange between young people from different nations.” “Our experiment will focus on detector development for high-altitude ballooning applications,” says Saskia Põldmaa, one of the “Mavericks” members, from Estonia. “This is by far the biggest opportunity we have had so far in our lifetime so we will hold onto it dearly. We can’t wait to calibrate our homemade muon detector!” “Our team focuses on detector development for muon tomography applications. We will test and optimise our homemade two-dimensional position-sensitive detector,” says Chiori Matsushita from the Japanese “Sakura Particles” team. “CERN has always been a dream for us. Finally getting to go there, not as a tourist but to do experiments, is amazing!” “We focus on beam diagnostics: our aim is to measure and analyse the Smith-Purcell (SP) radiation emitted by different diffraction gratings when DESY’s electron or positron beams pass by,” says Niranjan Nair from the US “SPEEDers” team. “We are thrilled to have the opportunity to not just watch scientific advancement passively, but actively contribute to it at DESY: the ultimate goal of our experiment is to research SP radiation as a tool for beam diagnostics.” The winning proposals were selected by a committee of CERN and DESY scientists from a shortlist of 49 particularly promising experiments. In addition, three teams will be recognised for the most creative video proposals and another 13 teams for the quality of physics outreach activities they are organising in their local communities, taking advantage of the knowledge gained by participating in BL4S. Beamline for Schools is an education and outreach project funded by the CERN & Society Foundation’s donors.This 11th edition is supported notably by ROLEX through its Perpetual Planet Initiative and by the Wilhelm and Else Heraeus Foundation. Further information: The prizes awarded for the best outreach project have been kindly provided by the Belgian project “Stars Shine for Everyone”. BL4S website: https://beamlineforschools.cern/ 2024 edition: https://beamline-for-schools.web.cern.ch/2024-edition Shortlisted teams and special prizes in 2024: https://beamline-for-schools.web.cern.ch/sites/default/files/BL4S_all-winners_2024_final.pdf Previous winners: https://beamlineforschools.cern/resources/winners Countries represented among the shortlisted teams: Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong SAR China, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Poland, Romania, Singapore, Spain, Thailand, Türkiye, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States.
Discovery Space, an EU-funded project
Discovery Space is an EU-funded project to develop an Exploratory Learning Environment to facilitate students’ inquiry and problem-solving through learning scenarios featuring virtual and remote labs. Students will be guided through differentiated learning pathways, customized by their input as they progress through learning scenarios covering a variety of topics. For more information on Discovery Space, please see: https://discoveryspace.eu/.
CERN welcomes Estonia as its 24th Member State
Geneva, 30 August 2024. Today, CERN is welcoming Estonia as its 24th Member State, marking the end of the formal application process that started in 2018 and crowning a period of cooperation that stretches back three decades.
ESO — EHT scientists make highest-resolution observations yet from the surface of Earth
ESO, 27th August 2024. The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration has conducted test observations, using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and other facilities, that achieved the highest resolution ever obtained from the surface of Earth [1]. They managed this feat by detecting light from distant galaxies at a frequency of around 345 GHz, equivalent to a wavelength of 0.87 mm. The Collaboration estimates that in future they will be able to make black hole images that are 50% more detailed than was possible before, bringing the region immediately outside the boundary of nearby supermassive black holes into sharper focus. They will also be able to image more black holes than they have done so far. The new detections, part of a pilot experiment, were published today in The Astronomical Journal.