The world needs more mega-science projects, said Director-General of CERN, Mark Thomson, during his visit to Mumbai on Monday (August 31, 2026) for the India premiere of ‘The Peace Particle’, a documentary on CERN. The documentary was premiered at the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research. During the programme, Mr. Thomson also delivered an address on ‘particle physics: today and tomorrow’.
While answering The Hindu’s questions on the future projects of CERN and the organisation’s interest in India, Mr. Thomson said the Future Circular Collider would push the boundaries of innovation, technology and imagination.
The Future Circular Collider would be a new 91-km ring, which was expected to be operational by 2045-48. Its final stage would collide electrons and positrons. It had not yet been approved, but CERN expected a positive decision by 2028, Mr. Thomson said.
‘Visionary project’
“Also, we are pausing for four years to bring a brighter version of LHC [Large Hadron Collider], which will be more powerful. We will use technologies we have not used before, because they were not there. In the very long term, we are looking at what happens in the future, after the LHC. We call it the Future Circular Collider. This will be an ambitious project, pushing the boundaries of technology, innovation and imagination, and is a project for humanities. Not just for particle physics. It is a scientific, visionary project,” he said.
LHC, built by CERN, is the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator. The 27-km tunnel accelerates two beams of subatomic particles to near the speed of light and smashes them together. The Higgs boson was discovered using the LHC. The LHC was officially shut down on June 29, 2026. It is scheduled to remain completely offline till 2030.
The High-Luminosity LHC will have 10 times more brightness as compared to LHC. “It will be an incredible scientific opportunity which will give a lot more data, better detectors and new techniques. It has real discovery potential,” Mr. Thomson said during his lecture.
Future mysteries
He said that while we know a lot about the universe now, there were many deep mysteries such as why was the universe made only of matter, with hardly any antimatter; what was the unknown 95% of the mass and energy of the universe; unification and why was gravity so weak compared to the other forces; and why were there three generations or if there were more. He also said that more mysteries such as whether the Higgs boson interacted with dark matter, what determined the hierarchy of masses of the particles, was the Higgs boson a fundamental particle, and the nature and stability of the Higgs potential were all related to the Hadron collider.
When asked about CERN’s interest in India, Mr. Thomson said the country had great technological strength and brilliant young people. “India has excellent technologies, it is very well-organised and has brilliant people. We are looking at CERN’s future and how India can be a part of that,” he said in an exclusive conversation with The Hindu after the programme.
Speaking about the contribution of CERN, he said the institution was driven by the curiosity to understand the universe.
“The reason for our success is the deep international co-operation for fundamental science. We ask the hardest questions, so we develop technologies which can answer those questions. That is how World Wide Web was invented. It changed the world. There are many such examples. By pushing the boundaries of fundamental science, we have changed our science. The Internet would be different without what we did at CERN,” he said.
Speaking about the relevance and significance of CERN, he said its work lit up the imagination of the young generations.
Director of ‘the peace particle’ Alex Kiehl said it was an incredible challenge to shoot it. “The LHC is the largest machines that humans have ever built to search for the smallest particles in the universe. India has been central to that,” he told The Hindu.
Producer Elin Rhys said it was her dream of many years to make this documentary. “LHC was designed by a Welsh scientist. I am from Wales. There is so much international co-operation and collaboration in the name of peace to find the most amazing things,” she said.
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