Hikaru Utada Would Rather Play CERN Than CoachellaNEWS | 30 March 2025Schrödinger’s cat, quantum entanglement—the songs on Hikaru Utada’s latest album, Science Fiction, go deeper into the singer-songwriter’s “fascination with science” than they ever have before. Part greatest-hits collection, part reflection on interests they have cultivated for many years, it’s a body of work that shows their breadth as an artist. It only seemed fitting, then, that WIRED Japan would invite Utada to Switzerland to visit CERN, one of the world’s leading research centers for particle physics, an invitation they quickly accepted.
“CERN is a place I have dreamed of visiting for the past 10 years or so,” Utada says. “To be honest, being able to go there and talk to the scientists and see the particle accelerator might be even better than performing on the main stage at Coachella [laughs]. I definitely wanted to go.”
CERN is the world’s largest particle physics laboratory, located on the border between Switzerland and France. Its iconic Large Hadron Collider (LHC)—a gigantic circular accelerator with a circumference of 27 kilometers—made its name in 2012 when it discovered the Higgs boson, the mysterious particle that continues to play a key role in experiments into the origins of the universe.
The center’s work is not limited to research about how the universe began and the behavior of subatomic particles; it can also lead to advances that have greater impacts on everyday life. For example, in 1989, Tim Berners-Lee, a British computer scientist who was then working at CERN, developed a system to provide decentralized, real-time access to information within the organization. It became the foundation for the World Wide Web.
Hikaru Utada explores ATLAS, a large general-purpose particle detector located 100 meters underground on the CERN main campus, which detects and measures particles accelerated and collided by the Large Hadron Collider. PHOTOGRAPH: TIMOTHÉE LAMBRECQ
In recent years, the organization has also been proactively engaged in outreach efforts that fuse art and science. That’s why University of Tokyo physicist Junichi Tanaka and Kazuki Kojima, a researcher at KEK (High Energy Accelerator Research Organization) are here. CERN asked the Japanese scientists to accompany Utada and WIRED on our CERN visit. Utada asked the two of them more questions than anyone else. While standing in front of ATLAS (the large general-purpose particle detector located 100 meters under the main CERN campus that detects and measures particles accelerated and collided by the LHC), the conversation around the topic of dark matter was a lively one.Author: Megan Farokhmanesh. Tomonari Cotani. Verity Burns. Jennifer Ouellette. Ars Technica. Jorge Garay. Stephen Clark. Maggie Chen. Javier Carbajal. Asher Elbein. Source
