Slashdot Mirror
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
(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?
That's why I like the LHC...
Everyone chips in and it's up to them to decide how to use their money. They don't have to keep going back every year to re-interview for their jobs.
... 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.
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..
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.
When it comes to cutting edge particle physics research, "We can still do useful work here," sounds like a pretty compelling case to me.
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
Yeah 'cause the republitards are so invested in science eh ?
The Dems had full control of Congress and the WH for 2 years, and they still have the WH and the Senate. They spent staggering amounts of other people's money.
Funny how the "Party of Science!!" didn't see fit to bother spending any of that loot on these projects.
Heck, they still could. There's billions of (un)Stimulus money still unspent that Obama could use Executive Orders to direct a tiny fraction of towards these projects and fully fund them.
Actions speak louder than words, and the Dems through their actions are screaming that their political pals getting a boatload of our cash is far more important than science, despite what they say in their talking points on TV.
Truth be told, *neither* party really gives a rip about all that "science stuff" when it comes right down to it, if it doesn't give them some kind of political advantage and/or funnel some cash to an ally.
Stop being so blinded by (D) and (R) partisan distractions. It doesn't make you look smart. It makes you look like a mind-numbed drone.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
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.