Tomorrow
The CERN Large Hadron Collider started up in September 2008. Our contribution to this remarkable milestone in mankind's scientific achievements inspired us to publish the 'new-horizon' message.
If you were to bring an engineer 1,800 years forward from the height of the Roman Empire to the 19th century, he would see little that surprised him – concrete, steam, roads, shipbuilding were really nothing new. However, if you brought him forward just another 150 years, he would see combustion engines, aircraft, radio communications, plastics, television, video storage and computers. He would not recognise the world.
The last few generations have travelled further and faster through the sights and secrets of the universe than ever before. In doing so, we have created a lot of comfort for many of us, and an awful lot of waste on a depleted, overcrowded, yet still uniquely beautiful planet.
It is time for science to find new answers so that they can be used to keep humans moving forward with a level of respect for all the other inhabitants of the planet. This is essential – it is beyond doubt.
Humans have thrived on communication. With early cave paintings came social order, settlements and farming. When we started writing we recorded detailed observations and began the rise of medicine. By studying the successes and failures of previous generations, each new one has become better than the last.
We must not break the trend of passing on the lessons of our discoveries and our mistakes. It’s time to find new paths into tomorrow.