The gap between actual research in Malta and people's perception of it was never larger than last week when Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi visited the European Organisation for Nuclear Research in Switzerland - Cern.
No one could have been unimpressed by the extraordinary work done there, in particular the project which will get underway in May. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will spin protons, the particles that form the nucleus of atoms, at nearly the speed of light through a 27-kilometre tunnel by the shores of Lake Geneva. It will force head-on collisions of the beams, releasing energy equivalent to 350 cars travelling at 150kph smashing against each other. To prevent that energy from melting down the whole lot, it is cooled to just a few degrees above the coldest temperature known in physics. Cern will analyse the debris from the collision, hoping to find unexpected traces that would prove the existence of particles so far only determined by theory.
To the layman, there are few areas of science more baffling than nuclear phsysics - which makes the €3 billion price tag for the LHC just as baffling. The experts at Cern are not in the least bit put out by questions on the relevance of their work. Over the 53 years since it was founded, it has been at the forefront of scientific research, with scientists from all over the world working side by side. Some went on to win Nobel prizes. It was at Cern that the nucleus was finally understood.
There were other spin-offs, not the least of which is the world wide web, developed there in 1993 by Tim Berners-Lee, and PET diagnostic equipment for medicine. Hadron therapy (using nuclear particles) is rapidly gaining ground as cancer treatment.
So much for Cern. What is Malta's place in this extraordinary place? It started when a bright young scientist, Nicholas Sammut, went to Cern and, over the years, developed a magnet control that saved the laboratory hundreds of millions of euros. He took the initiative to make the collaboration a national one, as a result of which Dr Gonzi signed a memorandum of understanding with Cern which will lead to talks on possible ways to work together. These run from summer placements to membership. All the options would benefit Malta. There may not be that many nuclear physicists on the island but the scale of the laboratory should give some idea of the opportunities.
The LHC components might sound exotic as a whole but they are made of nuts and bolts, of cables and panels. The member countries are invited to research materials to withstand extreme temperatures or to produce bolts that do not distort the equipment when tightened. They produce the systems that painstakingly lower the equipment into the tunnel and the huge cooling systems above. They also provide the computers and software to analyse the mind-boggling amounts of information provided by the experiments. And technology transfer is one of the core principles at Cern, which means that companies also benefit from shared expertise, not just from sub-contracting.
How far will Malta go? Membership would be in the region of €350,000 (hardly significant for a laboratory with an annual budget of €610 million). Apart from boosting research in Malta, providing technology transfer and channelling possible contracts to the island, being part of Cern would boost Malta's international standing as a centre of excellence.
The fact that the Prime Minister's delegation included the University Rector was significant.
Cern is all about the cutting edge of technology. Isn't that where Malta wants to be?