Large Hadron Collider Physicists Object to Co-Authorship With Russians, Report Suggests

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Some physicists working at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have objected to co-authorship with Russian institutes and individuals also engaged in experiments at the facility due to Moscow's special military operation in Ukraine, a British newspaper reported, citing sources.

The four largest experiments carried out at the LHC involve thousands of scientists and engineers, with articles on the research findings usually mentioning all members of the project, the report said.

The pieces have not been published since March 2022 because of a lack of agreement on how Russian and Belarusian institutes, if at all, should be listed, the news outlet reported, adding that Russian specialists made up about 7% of the contributors.

"We have Ukrainian collaborators for whom this question is naturally extremely painful. [But] most of my Ukrainian colleagues do not extend responsibility for the invasion to their colleagues from Russian institutes. I would say that some of my EU colleagues are much more radical," Russian physicist Fedor Ratnikov was quoted as saying by the newspaper.

In June 2022, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) decided to cease the cooperation agreement with Russia and Belarus after 2024.

CERN is the largest high-energy physics laboratory in the world. It is known for experiments involving the LHC, which was created with the participation of physicists from different countries. The collider helped scientists to discover the existence of the Higgs boson elementary particle responsible for the existence of other particles' mass.

The LHC consists of a 17-mile ring of superconducting magnets that have to be cooled to -456 degrees Fahrenheit even when the beam is turned off. The collider consumes a third as much energy as Geneva and is powered by French electric utility EDF, which has been struggling to fix corrosion problems at its nuclear plants.