SKOLKOVO Education Development Centre published a review of a lecture by Grigory Vladimirovich Trubnikov, JINR First Vice-Director, for the programme “Leaders of the scientific and technological breakthrough”.

Grigory Vladimirovich Trubnikov. Photo by © Stanislav Timokhin, 2020

Why is megascience necessary and why are megaprojects created?

The first reason is the scale of a facility and its tasks. Each of us has ambitions and the desire to surprise the world. But if we consider pragmatic issues, when a state has the world’s coolest project on astronomy or physics, it ensures, first of all, the prestige and the interest of the entire world in such a project.

The second aspect is people. In addition to unique technologies and prestige, this project attracts the most aggressive (in a good sense) people in science. These are researchers who want to realise their ambitions. They need an interesting task and a tool using which they can achieve their ambitions. That is why megascience projects are like magnets.

About 20 thousand people work at CERN while the permanent staff consists only of 2-2.5 thousand employees. At the same time, only 100 people are employed for official positions. These are truly outstanding scientists, experimenters who make world science. All remaining full-time employees are engineers, specialists who use the facilities. Moreover, there are 15-20 people from around the world who come to CERN to do research shifting the frontier of science.

It is an incredible concentration of intelligence that accumulates the brightest and the most ambitious things that can be imagined in the world. Strong scientific schools emerge on platforms of megaprojects since these are magnets for talents from all over the world. In addition, it demonstrates that the country contributes to the research infrastructure in the long run.

The third aspect is that megaprojects include hundreds of national and international scientific teams. The higher the project’s level, the higher its expertise and the higher the standards of its research.

Last but not least, a large-scale megaproject leads to the rise of a national industry. None of the megaprojects can be created by the efforts of only one country: neither technologically, or physically, nor financially. In this respect, megaprojects serve as a magnet for super-advanced technologies from around the world. A number of industrial companies would like to implement their projects but a test site is necessary for it. In the frames of megascience projects, long-term orders for training the staff and the technology development appear. That is why megaprojects are a huge driver for the high-tech sector of economy.

What’s next?

In my opinion, future mega-science projects will focus on space and deep ocean exploration. In space, this may include exploration of the Moon, construction of a base on Venus. Numerous problems should be solved for it, including technological in addition to medical ones. Today, we know only 6% of information about the ocean’s floor. That means that there is a huge amount of minerals to explore, amazing biodiversity. Ocean research has the potential to solve the pandemic’s problems (for example, it may contribute to the search for COVID-19 cures), overcome food shortages, and underwater stations may become new spaces for housing.

A megascience project should solve a challenge: it reacts 30 years in advance to a great challenge of a state or the world community. In 2020, the World Economic Forum published the Global Risks Report for the upcoming 10 years. The most likely risks are mainly connected to extreme weather conditions, failures in the fight against climate change, loss of biological diversity, man-made ecological disasters, and cyber threats. And in their turn, they cause pandemics, threats of food shortages, forced migrations, rising unemployment, and the collapse of the information infrastructure. To solve these challenges, consolidated efforts of numerous actors are necessary.

Natural sciences have their own challenges. Physics and astronomy do not convey information only about the tomography of the Earth but also the transmission of signals with the use of neutrinos. Human modeling crowns megaprojects. And I think that in the upcoming 100-200 years, there will be a task to replicate the human body on a full scale. This task will be beyond the control of researchers, but they should definitely think in this direction. In addition to physiological aspects, which are desirable to be solved in the next 50 years, there is also the chemistry of processes. However, the issue of social psychology will be far more complicated.

Sizes of facilities increase with the increase in energy. In the 1960s, the first collider was comparable to the height of a man – 2 metres. After 40 years, the Large Hadron Collider was 27-km big, the next colliders will be 5-10 times larger. To make a machine four times more powerful, an accelerator should be 40-50 thousand km large. And still, there will be not enough technologies to reach the conditions of the beginning of the Universe. A new approach to the architecture of megascience facilities is necessary. That is why nowadays everything aims at alternative energy, new conductors, new materials, new technologies.

What is important for an international project?

I represent the NICA project at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR) in Dubna. At present, about 30 countries with Russia’s key contribution take part in it. Why was this project the first to start and why so successfully? I believe that the main reason is that JINR is an international intergovernmental scientific organization, the only one in the territory of Russia. It is an analogue of CERN created with a difference of 1.5 years in 1956. About 20 such organizations now exist in the world. JINR is the third in terms of the number of the staff and the sixth in terms of the budget.

What is an international organization and how can we characterise it? First of all, by the number of partner organizations: there are about 900 of them from 80 countries in the JINR network. It means we have several thousand visits per year.

The Committee of Plenipotentiary Representatives from each country – 18 fully-fledged Member States and 6 Associate Members – govern the entire organization. Each country has one vote, and each is represented by a minister. This Committee gathers twice a year to discuss the budget, the scientific programme and to agree on its development.

The Financial Committee deals with budgetary issues. It consists of representatives of the governments of all the countries. It is also an absolutely independent and fully international body.

The main scientific body is the international Scientific Council with 50 members. Half of them represent the Member States, the others represent international organizations and leading institutes. For example, the following outstanding scientists work at the Scientific Council: the RAS president, the MSU rector, directors of leading academic institutes, directors of largest European and Asian laboratories and representatives of the CERN Directorate, presidents of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics and the European Physical Society. They assess the scientific programme of the Institute twice a year and take decisions on opening and closing projects, allocating additional resources, uniting several projects, as well as choose new scientific fields for them. The Scientific Council has subgroups for each scientific realm. They gather twice a year. It is significant that all of them are independent, and the Institute has no influence on their decisions. Approximately five thousand people are staff members of the Institute: 1,200 researchers, 500 of them are foreign scientists from other Member States (not Russia). 2,300 engineers and specialists ensure the work of the Institute.

International landscape

The NICA project is a part of various initiatives in the frames of BRICS, senior officials are members of its structure, for example, of the International Astronomical Union. It is significant for megaprojects to be in a landscape or a plan adopted by a large international body. As soon as a project is adopted for it, it immediately indicates international recognition. For example, within BRICS, JINR is responsible for the coordination of work of all the large-scale research initiatives – about 70-80 projects.

In the frames of the BRICS countries, we have created a platform using which any researcher from participating countries can get to any facility of the centre of collective use in Brasil, China, the RSA, or India with their own research programme. Everything is organized due to international standards, access regimes and regulations: the issues of ethics and labour protection, educational programmes, copyright should be regulated and formalised. At the same time, there is a limitation: all this is purely for peaceful science, we do not deal with national security issues.

Based on information by SKOLKOVO Education Development Centre