Editorial – March 2014

Dear Colleagues,

For this issue of the PH Newsletter we have focused on the activities related to the Future Circular Collider, which is being considered as a possible long term future for the laboratory, to follow the LHC. There was a recent kick-off meeting for these studies which was held in the University of Geneva earlier this year (http://indico.cern.ch/event/282344/). As you may know there are three different configurations under study, for proton-proton, e+e-, or e-hadron collisions, and the proponents of each have provided a short article to explain their interest. Although the time-scale is long, it is important that the studies get underway now, so that we will be in a position to choose the most suitable future energy-frontier facility when the results from the future running of the LHC have been digested.

You will also find other articles on the ICTR-PHE 2014 conference, as the PH department has made a significant contribution in CERN's medical activities, a letter from Ugo Amaldi addressing the question of the beauty of physics, and read about a new application developed by our colleagues in the TH unit that will allow users to participate in running simulations of high-energy particle physics using their home computers.

I wish you pleasant reading.