interview
SCIENCE

Certain of Things Never Seen
The more we know the world, the less we control it. But this is "a sign that speaks to us," and shows us that "we cannot live at zero risk." LUCIO ROSSI, physicist at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), in Geneva, Switzerland, introduces us to the theme of the Rimini Meeting: certainty. On the tracks of that "God Particle," passing
through errors and moralism, he tells us what he is discovering–about himself.

BY ALESSANDRA STOPPA

Give me scientific certainty. We would like this about everything–about the choices we have to make, about what tomorrow will be. We would like to be sure with no room for mistakes, like a scientist when he publishes his final results, black on white. "But in science, certainty is hardly ever–as we have been led to believe–an absolute evidence, a glaring truth." The physicist Lucio Rossi works for the biggest scientific experiment going on in the world, the CERN Super Accelerator in Geneva. Five billion euros (six billion US dollars) and 20 years of work have been spent on a hypothesis: the existence of the "God Particle" (see box p. 37). If it is found, it will explain the mechanism that gives origin to mass, the physical size of matter, without which things would not exist for us–everything would be just a series of dots.
"If we don't find it, 90% of physics theories will be put in doubt," he says, unruffled. He has a wire of 1mm thickness in his hand. Inside it pass another 6,000 tiny wires, capable of producing the same density of energy unleashed a few seconds after the Big Bang, "and unleashing a light capable of illuminating details down to a billionth of a billionth," he says, looking at the floor. One hundred meters below us passes a circular tunnel of electromagnets 17 miles long, where thousands of elementary particles travel at the velocity of light.
Walking between the magnets under repair, cooled to -455°F, Rossi explains why Ernest Rutherford is one of the clearest examples of why "scientific certainty is not an immediate evidence." It was Rutherford who unveiled the atom just 100 years ago, though he never "saw" it. An exhibition at the Rimini Meeting will be dedicated to him. The Meeting's theme ("And Existence Becomes an Immense Certainty") takes up the challenge of a world in which uncertainty in life seems to have become an incurable sickness.

If scientific certainty is not always an absolute evidence, then what is it?
Like most certainties, it is not immediate; it is a series of clues that converge upon a solution and lead toward a reality that we do not perhaps see, but of which we can be relatively sure. With the experiment for which he went down in history, Rutherford formulated the "planetary model" of the atomic nucleus. He only deduced the structure of the atom, but on the basis of the clues he had in hand, he was certain. The whole history of science is based on reasonable certainties, certainties reached by verifying positive hypotheses, not doubts. Science advances because there are people convinced of some things without having all the elements at hand. Think of Einstein; he was certain by intuition of the principle of General Relativity long before he was able to prove it. He sustained that knowledge derives from "an almost religious type of certainty." He was pre-convinced of his theories.

But he put them to the test and could even have been proven wrong.
Because the truth is always ready to be tested, so much so that certainty is never static. It either vanishes or increases, it does not stand still. And that's not all. Knowledge of the truth has another characteristic: it is inexorable. Man lives trying to bridge a distance, but the final point "braces itself like an elastic barrier, refusing to be crossed." This is Fr. Luigi Giussani's expression, and my work keeps on confirming it.

In what sense?
The answer to a given question is never conclusive. For example, if and when we find the God Particle, this discovery will open up more questions than it will give us answers. It's always the case. When you manage to explain one level of nature, and the explanation is satisfying and rational, there is always an indication of a further, even deeper level of knowledge. It's the same thing we experience when we love someone. We never stop getting to know them; we never know them completely. It's the same for reality: we never stop penetrating it, more and more deeply. Yet, the world is finite! And for me this is the clearest sign that there is an infinite inside the finite.

Why?
Rationality is a miracle in itself. We are distinct from the world, but we understand it. The world is akin to us. This is a miracle, and it is the reason why knowing reality is a value in itself, way beyond the usefulness a discovery may have. The CERN is one of the few fortresses against the enormous error of asking science to be more and more "practical." This is a limitation of the dominant culture that is searching for comfort more than for truth.

In this sense, is the attempt to bridge that "inexorable distance" more and more reduced to the effort to "control" reality?
Yes, and it is a reduction because, if the aim is control, we preclude the possibility of truly knowing reality. The will to "control" is proper to man. The problem is that we do not allow ourselves to be questioned by the first provocation reality gives us–which is the evident fact that we cannot dominate everything.

On Palm Sunday, the Pope said, "With the increase of our abilities there has been an increase not only of good. Our possibilities for evil have increased and appear like menacing storms above history. Our limitations have also remained...." The accident in the Fukushima nuclear power station is emblematic, but the problem has been reduced to the consequences, in the question of yes or no to nuclear energy, completely neutralizing the power with which reality has touched us.
We have lost the capacity to learn what reality is saying, because it is no longer seen as a sign. In my experience, only the Christian vision gives total value to reality and enables man to face up to it impartially. Because if you cannot face up to reality as a whole, it becomes either something to exploit (a mere resource) or something to conserve as it is, for fear of touching it (an idol). You are bound to be trapped between these opposites.

Why is reality no longer lived as a sign?
Because we have thrown off destiny. If we live as if destiny is not there, reality tells me nothing. It is because the sense of destiny is lacking that the mania for control takes over. It is the illusion of thinking we can live without risk. But in life, there is no "zero risk." The very fact of living implies risk; we have to make choices. The idea of eliminating risk is an evil fruit of the modern moralistic spirit.

So does moralism hamper knowledge of reality?
Absolutely. What is moralism? It is when you remove the origin but expect to maintain the behavior, which, since it cannot hold, needs a cage: the law. So it is with reality. You lack the attitude you need to stand before reality in a positive way, and, at the same time, you don't want to go wrong–but then it becomes impossible to learn from reality. I came to see this very clearly in the accident in the tunnel on September 19, 2008, which stopped everything.

What happened?
A few days after the launching of the accelerator before the eyes of the whole world, a connection between the magnets burned out, provoking an enormous disaster. In a few seconds, a technological jewel, fruit of 20 years' research, put out of action. It seemed the end of all our efforts–an error connected to a not very difficult aspect had put an end to a project of the highest engineering and theoretical physics. I was and still am responsible for the part concerning magnets and superconductors, so for me the blow was even heavier.

How did you live through what happened?
I admitted the mistake–not out of intellectual honesty, but because we would have been prisoners of it. I took the risk of taking up a human position. Here, we do difficult things, and usually they work, so it's easy to think we are infallible. We were arrogant at the test stage and we had not considered the possibility of an error. Moreover, the tendency is not to admit mistakes, or at least to admit to only a single, chance error, not a conceptual one. Now, with a 420-day delay and $72 million lost, we have discovered that the machine had an overall weakness in design. Acknowledging this made us more free in building and the climate was less one of suspicion. Above all, it has multiplied our forces–if you embrace the error, you realize that it is there to show you how to go ahead. Thanks to my Christian experience, I was able to look at it, and I gained by it, because I confirmed that Christ is the only one who safeguards positivity toward reality.

So, accepting your limitations makes you discover that the relationship with reality always has a root that gravitates toward the infinite?
It reveals the link with the infinite, but not only that; the awareness of our limitation and of our disproportion makes us discover that everything is a gift. The tsunami that devastated Japan is a clear example of this: the plate tectonics that turn against man in an earthquake are the same as those which permit the fragile equilibrium that makes life possible on this earth. What does this tell us? Firstly, that what we have is more, much more, and that what we lack, or come to lack, is a painful signal that everything is a gift. The world is not something due to us, our being is not something due to us. This is true to the point that man can even manage to reproduce primordial things, but the origin is beyond his grasp. It is like an asymptote–you can approach it, but never touch it… No technique of artificial fertilization on its own can give origin to a child; a child will always remain a mystery. At the origin of everything there is–as we say with seemingly worn-out words, though they are the only ones adequate–a gratuitous act.

Do your colleagues think the same?
It's incredible that this is the great temple of science, we spend almost one billion euros a year of European taxpayers' money looking for scraps of truth, yet hardly anyone asks whether truth exists. This question is deleted. It's something that eats at my guts, and has put me in crisis many times. I ask myself: Is it possible that the others don't see it? Am I the one imposing a superstructure of mystery onto reality? Today, many reasonable theories explain that the world emerged from the quantum vacuum. But the point is that that vacuum is not a vacuum, it is full of particles and virtual antiparticles. That vacuum is not nothing, and the miracle is existence as opposed to nothingness, an existence, moreover, with incredibly precise and sophisticated laws. Without this, the idea of rationality doesn't stand up; the supreme act of rationality is to take note of this gratuitousness.

But not everyone recognizes it...
Truth puts us all on the same level; what makes the difference is freedom, the human material. The world is one big witness to the fact that gratuitousness exists; everything is made to attract us, it's a huge gift, but I have to open myself to it. It takes freedom to recognize it. I go on seeing a gain in the human position that is born in the relationship with the Mystery. I want to be loyal to this gain.

You have been working at CERN since 2001; what is the greatest discovery you have made?
I am in no doubt: that of rediscovering in an existential way, at the dawn of my 55th year, what I heard Fr. Giussani say when I was 22. I remember him as if it were today in the Church of San Marco, Milan, calling out to us all: "The truest thing is that I, in this moment, do not make myself!" I am rediscovering that all I have has been given to me–and much, much more.