When prompted parley at MIT gave me this funny version of the official update the European Strategy for Particle Physics News. If you prefer the snappy version it came out pretty good.
After more than two years of intense deliberation, countless meetings (presumably accompanied by excellent coffee and the occasional croissant), and a heroic 260+ written submissions, the CERN Council has officially updated the European Strategy for Particle Physics. The verdict? Europe wishes to remain politely but firmly at the top of the high-energy physics food chain. The medium-term plan is to squeeze every last drop of physics out of the High-Luminosity LHC upgrade — because if you’ve already built the world’s largest machine, you may as well use it until 2041. For the long term, the community has chosen its next flagship: the electron–positron Future Circular Collider (FCC-ee), a 90-kilometre underground ring designed to study the Higgs boson with the kind of obsessive precision that only Europeans (and possibly Swiss watchmakers) can truly appreciate.
The FCC-ee promises a “broad exploratory programme,” which is diplomatic physicist-speak for we’re not entirely sure what we’ll find, but it will be glorious. It will also conveniently leave behind a very large tunnel that a future hadron collider can move into, much like a particularly ambitious pied-à-terre passed down through the generations. CERN Council President Costas Fountas, Director-General Mark Thomson, and Strategy Secretary Karl Jakobs all expressed appropriately measured European enthusiasm — no fist-pumping, but plenty of confidence. The Council has now invited CERN management to begin the delicate art of persuading Member States, Associate Members, non-Members, and the European Union to collectively reach into their pockets, with a final decision expected by 2028. Until then: discussions, public consultations in France and Switzerland, annual reports, and presumably more excellent coffee.
