From the ILC Newsline: “Europe launches update of strategy for particle physics”

“In Europe, the CERN Council – the governing body of CERN in which the representatives of the 20 member states decide on scientific programmes and financial resources – is the body committed to drawing the particle physics roadmap for the next twenty years. The European strategy document, released in July 2006, addressed accelerator and non-accelerator-based particle physics together with R&D for new accelerator and detector technologies. At that time, the scientific community foresaw an update by the end of 2010, when they believed the LHC results on the Higgs boson and physics beyond the Standard Model would be revealed. ‘ We changed ours plans slightly, estimating that 2012 would be a better year to learn whether the Higgs boson exists or not, and by that time we expect astroparticle experiments to tell us more about dark matter or neutrinos, for example,’ said Michel Spiro, president of the CERN Council. ‘ Apart from this two-year delay for the update, we followed most of the recommendations contained in the 2006 strategy document.’

With regard to the International Linear Collider (ILC), Michel Spiro can not judge today whether the LHC will tell the physicists enough about the Higgs and new physics so that a decision could be made by the end of 2012. ‘ In any case, I think that we need a global effort to continue beyond 2012, and personally would like to see the ILC and CLIC [Compact Linear Collider Study] projects work more closely together in technical R&D projects management and scientific research,’ said Michel Spiro.”

See the full article here.