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US Particle Colliders In Need of Funding
DevotedSkeptic writes "When the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Switzerland seized the world record for the highest-energy collisions in 2010, it also sealed the fate of the leading US particle collider. The Tevatron, at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois, was closed the following year to save money. Now, physicists at another US physics facility, the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York, are trying to avoid a similar end. On 13 August, researchers at the ALICE heavy-ion experiment at the LHC at CERN, Europe's particle-physics lab near Geneva, announced that they had created the hottest-ever man-made plasma of quarks and gluons. This eclipsed the record temperature achieved at RHIC two years earlier by 38%, and raised uncomfortable questions about RHIC's future. Tribble still hopes to avoid having to close any of the three facilities. In 2005, he notes, a similar crisis was averted after an advisory committee laid out the dire consequences of flat funding for the future of US nuclear science. In the end, Congress came through with the budgetary increases required. 'What we want to do here is to spell out what will be lost under different budgets,' he says. His committee is planning to hold a final meeting in November, in time to influence the budget requests from US funding agencies for the next fiscal year."
Kickstarter
sudo ergo sum
Maybe a personal crisis, if your government funded livelihood is at risk.
But, there's absolutely nothing in the article which makes a compelling case. The best they can plead is "We can still do useful work here, even though we can't do anything unique."
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Sadly, politicians do not realise that.
Research is about finding new things about the universe and this accelerator does not compete with that. They are different machines, made to examine different pieces of the universe and by adding the findings we learn more than if we had only one or two accelerators.
Sadly, funding is tied to "highest energy", "longest tunnel", "highest temperature" and those who cancel the projects do not get that it actually is not about "Hehe, now we showed them damned europeans/americans/chinese/russians!!!1" but about... research.
..."the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC)...
OK, Seriously? All you geeks and science nerds in a room, and NO ONE could come up with a comic book hero or something to name that thing? (Iron Man popped in my head after about 3 milliseconds...)
Rappers don't run around talking about how they're gonna "tap dat gluteus maximus"...and they sell millions of albums and rake it in. Take a hint, and you'll get funding.
And this is why it was shortsighted to close down the SSC project before it was completed. All of this research could be taking place here in the US
(1) have the RHIC invade another country. It's the easiest way to spend several hundred million dollars "off the books"
(2) spread the management and construction out over the territory of no less than 51 Senators and/or 220 Reps. Why do you think NASA is scattered all over the country? It's not because there are prime launch sites in TX, OH, and MD, among others.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
And politicians are the ones granting funding if you go gov't. When you're a man (and most polis are), and you are taught that your entire career will be measured by your smile and charisma - what else will you learn except that everything in the world that matters is about dick size?
no, they should just make up a story that people are causing the universe to expand and we need to find a way to slow it down
you need a scary story about how people are at fault to play on guilt feelings and the fear of change and the unknown
... it seems to me as an outsider. Which is ironic that it was science and engineering that created the USA as it is today. I don't know if its a dumbed down education system, lack of political direction or just a slowly growing luddite mentality. If it doesn't want to be an also-ran following in Chinas heals (as it already is in the manned space race now) then it better do something about it fast. But I won't hold my breath.
Wow you guys sure get creative.
Worst thing, this sort of idiocy probably works.
I think you mean to say the incredible results. The government reducing spending on science will cause the economy to boom, create 12 million jobs, and ensure America's great future.
That's how austerity works right? It must be, because people love austerity measures*.
*as long as they aren't measures that impact them. No purchase necessary. See details inside.
Wow you sure are an idiot.
See, I can do it too. Moron.
It's not the size of your particle collider, it's how you use it.
One of the new projects, announced just months before CERN opened was the Federal Rare Isotopes Beam project in Lansing, Michigan. Since congress committed to funding it fully in 2008, it's only received a small portion of the full funding -- with the current congress kicking the pledges down the road year after year. Funding has been augmented for this facility by private investors, but that will also dilute the type of research this facility will be able to do once it is complete..
No funding for science. Poor education standards.
I bet Mitt Romney even gets elected.
I blame ubiquitous television.
look, money.
I just went on a RHIC tour on August 5th with my son. The tour guide said that one of the things that was special about the RHIC was that it can smash atoms of different types. For example they said that they could smash a gold atom into a uranium atom which is not possible at any of the other particle accelerators. I am just a layperson so I don't know if this is really unique but the tour was absolutely awesome. I thought that I would only be able to see this from a distance. But the tour guides (grad students) let you climb all over this thing and take pictures and ask lots of questions - they were very patient. I got to poke my head right into the business end of this thing. Very cool.
They should put this on kick starter or something? I for one would be more than willing to donate to a US based facility. Granted its would prob only provide a small portion of their funding but would at least show the government that the people are more interested in furthering our understanding of science than we are in killing terrorists and spying on our own citizens. Just sayin.
This shows how wrong and f* up the US mentality is... When the Superconducting Super Collider was to be constructed CERN was the first to fall in and help funding, giving up from constructing a new collider since there was no reason to have two colliders and fighting back and forth on who had the biggest penis. Since SSC was postponed (and then given up on) CERN had to build the LHC, and never closed their doors for other institutions to do their experiments or access the data... But now the headlines are "oh, look at how much we will loose, and how much our penis will shrink".... grow up U.S.!!! Learn to play along with others and you'll see you'll spend less and get more for your spent bucks.
The TSA budget is $6.5 billion. Get rid of the TSA and their security theater and that will go a long way towards funding these scientific endeavors.
I realize defunding the TSA will immediately allow the hordes of terrorists lurking in our country to go into action, but that is a chance we'll have to take if we want to slow or halt the downward spiral of science in this country.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
These physicists should get private funding instead of expecting the U.S. government to keep bailing them out. I'm sure there would be plenty of private companies looking to put money towards a project that would benefit humanity without ever making a profit. And if not, then that means there was nothing valuable to be gained and we haven't wasted any more money on such nonsense, right?
... the answer is privatization. The private sector can always do a better job than government, and is much more efficient! Republicans NEED to win this fall so that they can cut funding completely, cut harmful regulations on nuclear research, and get this country back to science's true mission, making money! ~
LRN 2 SWM
I'm serious. Absolutely 100% serious about this.
I posted on Facebook the other day that I'd like to see a Kickstarter project: Fusion Power: $50Billion, so we can begin tackling some real problems.
Let's get science and technology rockstars and geek icons like Neil deGrasse Tyson, Bill Nye the Science Guy, Patrick Stewart, William Shatner, Matt Inman of the Oatmeal, Randall Munroe of XKCD and others to promote the projects. We spend billions of dollars on frivolous things. Let's redirect those funds to something that will make a difference for all of humanity.
WE CAN DO THIS PEOPLE!
If there's one thing politicians of all flavors love it's jingoism. Maybe what we really need to do is reignite the sense of competitiveness by pointing out how the Europeans are leaving the US in the dust when it comes to making new discoveries like the Higgs Boson, and give them something to harp about to their voters when the US wins the race to make the next big discover.
Imagine the vitriol that would be aimed at George W. Bush had this been posted 4-5 years ago...
What!?
This isn't GWB's fault!?!?
That's unpossible!!!
I think I speak for a lot of scientists when I say we all could use more funding. This isn't to say there isn't enough money out there for us to do great things, but we all need to think hard about what we're doing and why.
I know I've moved out of some research areas because I couldn't really make a compelling argument that society needed to invest in them right now.
Maybe particle physicists should think about how many billions each year we really need to spend smashing things together at near the speed of light. Sure, it's cool, but maybe we have what we can reasonably expect to get out of the field at this point. For the last 10 years, observational cosmology has been a much more cost effective investment for probing the same research areas. Maybe it's time for those guys to ramp back up.
1. Get a patent for a round underground object
2. Sue CERN
3. Don't really need this step, it's just here for formatting.
4. Profit!!!
PlusFive Slashdot reader for Android. Can post comments.
They are different machines, made to examine different pieces of the universe and by adding the findings we learn more than if we had only one or two accelerators.
Actually in the case of the Tevatron and the LHC that is not true. Once the LHC started up there was very little that the Tevatron could do that the LHC could not do a lot better. The two machines have a huge overlap in their physics programs. I am not sure whether that is true for RHIC as well since I am not a heavy ion guy but it would not surprise me. While it is true that electron-positron colliders have different physics programs we are comparing hadron colliders to other hadron colliders so the overlap is huge.
Typically what happens with older accelerators which lose the "highest energy" crown, and attendant research program, is that they convert into going into extremely high luminosity machines which can be used for neutrino beams and/or high intensity meson or muon beams for precision fixed target experiments. So while it might be tough for the US to lose its accelerators and hand the lead over to Europe just providing funding for the existing accelerators without some program to repurpose them would be an exercise in flag waving and not much to do with science.
If the US wants to compete it needs to build the next generation of machines (e.g. International Linear Collider) or develop serious plans to redevelop existing accelerators to function at the precision frontier....which is a decision I hope it will make. If not there will probably be a slow down in the field while other countries take up the slack but the march of science will continue with, or without, the US in the vanguard.
If the Republican Congress is coupled with a Republican presidency, science in the US will be pushed back to the dark ages, and not just for the lack of funds. I hope these pinheads are aware of the law of unintended consequences. If they aren't, they soon will be...
True - but at least they kill jews!
CERN opened in 1954.
China is not your #1 creditor, it's the largestforeign creditor.
The US is its own largest creditor (states, cities and various funds like Medicare).
http://lmmartin.hubpages.com/hub/Who-are-Americas-Creditors-or-Debt-Economics-for-Beginners
The innovation at CERN came from government funded money. You cannot dispute that.
I once heard a story about a very early demonstration of electricity. I believe it was in France, though I can't recall exactly who the scientist was. But anyway, he was giving this big demonstration about how he could connect two coils of wire, wrap one around a compass, and then by moving a magnet through the other, it would make the compass needle move. After the demonstration, a woman approached him and basically said 'this is all very interesting, but what _use_ is it?' to which he replied 'of what use is a newborn baby?' -- i.e., I have no clue; we're not there yet, but I'm sure we'll figure out something.
That discovery is why you can post on Slashdot. Why we have computers. And lightbulbs. Cars, jets, telephones, shit there's probably not a single item that you own that would have been possible as it currently exists without electricity. Obviously it's pretty important part of modern life. What if people had thought like you, and never continued research into this phenomenon because it didn't appear to have any practical use?
Hmm... okay. I'm sure I've got a few particles I could spare.
US Particle Colliders In Need of Funding
Get in line.
I am sad now. Truely your hurtful, hurtful words cut me so deeply. I think I shall go throw myself in front of a train now, and it's all your fault.
Install one of these.
Have gnu, will travel.
There is a natural concentration of high energy research going on. To run these accelerators you need a lots of very specialized experts. The number of experts needed to run these machines is not linearly dependent on the number of machines they run. The more concentrated the research on this field the more efficient it is. The biggest high energy laboratory is CERN. It opened doors to any country in the world to join. It will grow further and will attract more research to itself.
I think there are areas where other laboratories can't compete, they need to do something different, specialize them selfs.
I remember from a series of Get Smart, "Your German scientists are not as good as out German scientists"
The USA doesn't need the world's best particle collider. Our scientists need access to the world's best particle collider. It's much more efficient for several countries to fund one big machine than to have a giant competition for who has the bigger proton gun.
I believe that was Michael Faraday, in London. If you search you will find various versions of this quote and its setting (that he said it to the Prime Minister, for example), but I heard that he said it at the Friday Evening Lectures at the Royal Institution, which he started and was very popular at. These included demonstrations, and it wouldn't surprise me much if that was a regular question, to which he had a regular answer.
while LHC has higher energy. LHC will alays have to contend with bound free pair production which will limit its luminosity. RHIC can also do research with polarized proton collisions.
Of the three projects, the Mich St FRIB is most likely to be cut as both RHIC and CEBAF have upgrades underway or nearly complete and have significant backlogs, up to a decade, of users with experimental plans. FRIB is still on the drawing board and thus can wait until better times.
The problem with science, speaking as one who benefits from Federal research largesse, is that every project starts, grows, then is made to sound like an albatross. If we get merely flat funding, it'll be bad! If our budget is cut, it'll be a disaster! No one offers to give money back of course, but pretty soon the calls for help drown each other out. When exactly will the RHIC, or any other high-quality science project, have enough funding for the foreseeable future? What is that level? Why should this program get steady increases while the government is spending far beyond its means? Should we stop starting new projects, because they will eventually grow to unsustainable levels and we can't cut budgets because science is important, to the exclusion of everything else? We all have to accept boundaries.
Why pay to fund anything, AM i right.
We have string theory.
Because breakin' Up is hard to do !
(ducks and runs)