The director general of the Ministry of Science will go to Switzerland to discuss upgrading Israel's position in the European accelerator
Construction of the new particle accelerator at Saran in Geneva. Israel is interested in joining the laboratory as a "state-company"
Senior officials in the Ministry of Science are currently making feverish efforts in order to earn Israel the status of a company in the most powerful particle accelerator in the world. The accelerator is now being built in Saran - the initials of
"The European Laboratory for Nuclear Research", in Geneva. Tomorrow, Aryeh Shomer, the director general of the Ministry of Science, will go to a meeting with the director general of SERN, Prof. Luciano Maini, to discuss the possibility of Israel joining the laboratory in the status of a "state-company".
For about a decade, Israel has been participating in CERN as an "observer". This costs her about 1.2 million dollars a year, and in return Israeli physicists can participate in their experiments carried out in the laboratory. In order to obtain the status of a "member" of the National Laboratory, the state must obtain the consent of the laboratory's directors and representatives of its member governments, and pay approximately 6 million dollars per year.
A new particle accelerator named LHC is currently being built in Saran's laboratory. The construction of the accelerator will be completed in about five years, and it will be the most powerful accelerator ever built. Physicists all over the world are eagerly awaiting the start of his work. A theoretical particle called the Higgs, also known as the "God particle", could be discovered in the accelerator. Mathematical calculations show that this is probably the particle that gives the mass to all the other particles that make up the substance.
If a few more of the physicists' wishes come true, the accelerator will also reveal evidence for the theory of supersymmetry, according to which all particles in the universe have supersymmetric partners, some of which may constitute the "dark matter". It is a mysterious substance that cannot be seen in the range of visible light, and it is not known exactly what it is made of, but apparently it makes up about 90% of the mass in the universe. There is even a possibility that the new accelerator will reveal evidence that in our universe there are additional dimensions, tiny and hidden from view.
The subject of membership in the Sergeant went up and down several times in the past. Saran's willingness to accept Israel as a partner is largely influenced by Israel's relations with its neighbors. The last window of opportunity opened about a year ago. Then officials at the Ministry of Science said that they had received "positive signals" from senior managers at Saran. At the meeting tomorrow, Arie Shumer will check how relevant the proposal is still.
Israel's difficulty in joining Saran lies in the payment of membership fees. The Ministries of Science and the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, which today finance the payment to the master, as well as the Planning and Budgeting Committee of the Council for Higher Education (VET), offered to jointly finance half of the amount, while the Ministry of Finance would finance the other half. The Ministry of Finance refused the offer, and until recently it seemed that the budgetary difficulty would once again hinder Israel's accession to the SAR. But Schumer, based on conversations he had, predicts "that a positive trend on the part of the Europeans will also lead to a positive trend for the treasury-government."
Prof. David Horn from Tel Aviv University, head of the Israeli Committee for High Energies and a supporter of the acquisition of membership status, adds that in the current situation Israelis cannot serve as managers at the Laboratory and they cannot participate in the "committees that decide scientific politics" of the laboratory. Those committees determine, among other things, which fields will be investigated in accelerators.
Prof. Horn and Prof. Giora Mickenberg from the Weizmann Institute - which is the driving force behind the activity of the experimental physicists at SARN - say that SARN is the largest scientific organization in Europe and joining it will strengthen Israel's position on the continent. In the past, Internet technology, the world wide web, was developed at Saran. The sophisticated experiments carried out at Saran today lead to the development of new technologies, such as fast communication between computers.
According to the current agreement, approximately 70% of the amount that Israel pays to Saran should be returned to it in the form of orders from Israeli industry. But membership status in the project, Prof. Mickenberg notes, will allow Israeli industry to compete in tenders issued by Saran.
According to the chief scientist of the Ministry of Science, Prof. Hagit Maser-Yeron, "the encouragement this will have for the Israeli industry is enormous, because it will force it to compete."
However, there are physicists who believe not only that the company will not benefit science, but that it may even harm it. "There is always a fear that if a small country like Israel becomes a member of an organization like Saran, all the physicists will be forced to work in one place. It means one experiment, one type of physics." Says Prof. Halina Abramovich from Tel Aviv University, who in addition to her work at Saran, is also a partner in the research being done at the "Daisy" particle accelerator in Germany. "The risk is that as soon as we become members of Saran, the choice will be taken away from us, and we will have to work harder to convince bodies to give us funding for projects outside of Saran. I saw it in Poland, where I come from."
A similar process also happened in Spain, says Prof. Aharon Levy from Tel Aviv University. According to him, Spanish physicists have difficulty obtaining budgets for experiments that are not conducted at Saran, because the state does not have enough budgets to divert to other experiments. He believes that the Israeli industry will not benefit much in the near future because most of the tenders related to the construction of the new accelerator have already been closed.
Support for Israeli companies in the European particle accelerator
By Tamara Traubman, 24/1/01
The CEO of Saran, a European laboratory where the world's most powerful particle accelerator is currently being built, yesterday expressed his support for Israel joining the laboratory, as a "member state". He said this in a meeting that took place in a laboratory in Geneva with Aryeh Shumer, director general of the Ministry of Science. The meeting was part of a frantic effort that Israeli government officials are currently making to obtain membership in the laboratory.
"My position, as CEO of Saran - and I believe that this position is shared by many here - is that Israeli physicists are among the main players in particle physics," said Prof. Maini, in a telephone interview with "Haaretz". "I think it would be only natural for Israel to be A full company and you can also help in determining the laboratory's scientific policy", he added.
Schumer defined the results of the meeting as "tremendous progress". He added that since the decision will finally be decided by the Saran Council, which consists of the laboratory's management and representatives of its member governments, the ministry and Israeli ambassadors will
In the following months, a "campaign of political-diplomatic work", to convince the representatives of the governments to accept Israel as head of state. According to some estimates, it is possible that the matter will be discussed by the Council as early as June of this year.
It's been about a decade that Israel has held the status of an "observer state" in Israel. It pays about two million Swiss francs, and in return, Israeli physicists are allowed to work in Saran's accelerators. Part of the amount returns to Israel in the form of orders from the industry. In exchange for the membership, Israel will have to pay about ten million Swiss francs.
Prof. Eliezer Rabinovitch, who deals with theoretical physics at the Hebrew University, did a long research period at the Sr. According to him, although membership in the laboratory will not lead to "a leap forward in terms of the quality of Israeli physics, joining the flagship of European science will lead to an improvement in its political position on the continent, and will be a challenge to Israeli technology." It justifies the cost associated with membership.
Prof. Giora Mickenberg, from the Weizmann Institute, who was present at the meeting in Geneva, added that the company will open up for the industry the possibility to compete for tenders issued by the laboratory, in areas of technology in which Israel is strong, such as programming and system control. This will also allow Israeli technicians and scientists to receive jobs and scholarships from Israel.
However, some physicists fear that the large budget that Israel will invest in the acquisition of the companies will harm physics research in Israel, and their ability to receive research grants for experiments in other accelerators. Prof. Hagit Maser-Yeron, who unofficially coordinates the efforts in Israel to obtain the membership, estimates that the research will not be harmed once it is implemented, the cost will be shared between the Ministry of Science, and bodies that fund scientific activities today.
{Appeared in Haaretz newspaper, 24/1/2001{
The first non-European company
If Israel receives the status of a member of the SRNA, it will be the first non-European country to obtain membership in the laboratory. Seran, the "European Laboratory for Particle Physics", was established in the early XNUMXs on the ruins of World War II. Countries that were enemies just a few years before became, thanks to the project, building an alliance united around a single scientific goal.
European countries recognized the fact that in order for European science to be able to compete with the economic power of the USA, they must unite. The USA has invested a lot of budgets in Saran.
Tamara Traubman
{Appeared in Haaretz newspaper, 24/1/2001{
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