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Verbatim-Fabiola-Gianotti

The texts and links provided on this page were written by Fabiola Gianotti, CERN Director-General from 2016 to 2025, in the context of the European Strategy update or in discussions with the FCC project coordinators. Their purpose was to stimulate reflection on the key messages to be conveyed in presentations to various audiences. Excerpts may be used as quotations, provided proper credit is given.

Particle physics underpins our understanding of how the Universe has evolved from the first moments after the Big Bang right up until today. It underpins our understanding of the building blocks that make up stars, planets, galaxies and life on Earth. And it underpins our understanding of the forces that hold everything together. Over the years, we have learned that cosmological dynamics and the universe on the largest scales are intimately connected to particle physics, i.e. physics at ultra-short distances.

The discovery of the Higgs boson at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider in 2012 marks an important milestone in this journey. The Higgs boson is both the simplest and the most perplexing particle ever discovered. We know that it is related to the mechanism that allowed matter to form in the early Universe, some 13.8 billion years ago, and thus enabled us to exist. The Higgs boson may also be connected to the ultimate fate of the Universe. And it may also play a role in explaining unanswered questions, such as the composition of dark matter, the disappearance of antimatter in the first instants after the Big Bang and the energy content of the Universe.

These and other mysteries show that humanity is missing something big in its understanding of the laws of nature and point to the need for a new, revolutionary paradigm in fundamental physics. Discovering this new paradigm will require unprecedented tools of exploration and unprecedented technologies.

The Future Circular Collider will be the most extraordinary instrument ever built to study the fundamental laws of nature at the shortest distances, to nail down the characteristics of the Higgs boson and to understand its role in the birth and the fate of the Universe, and to address the deep questions that connect the microscopic world to the largest scales.


Fabiola Gianotti, May 2024

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