Phil Burrows, who gave the EPP2010 report at Oxford and served on the committee as one of two international members, seemed to think that the US has the best chance of being built in the United States. His logic was that Europe will be busy giving operations funding to the LHC and Japan has already invested too much money in J-PARC to be likely to commit to hosting another major accelerator.
Is he right? I don't know. However, if the US is the most likely place for the ILC to be built, then our field is largely at the mercy of Congress choosing to spend billions of dollars on a basic research project. It sounds like the SSC all over again, doesn't it? I don't have a lot of faith that this will happen and, if the EPP recommendation of investing $500 million over the next five years does not happen, then I would guess that the ILC is a dead duck.
Overall, I do feel like the situation in other parts of the world is much better. CERN, for instance, is building the LHC, while the SSC is long dead, with its ghost still haunting us. Over the past twenty years, Japan has put together the world's best neutrino program and is now investing in another major particle physics facility. Even the bit players, like Canada, are ramping up their funding (and therefore their efforts), with tangible goals and results -- SNO helped solve the solar neutrino problem, and the Subdury mine is planned to become a major, permanent, underground multi-experiment laboratory in Canada.
Does this mean that the ILC will be funded by somebody other than the Untied States? I don't know, and there is reason to be doubtful. However, with the state of the field in other countries, I would feel there is a future career in other places, even if no ILC happens. In the States, however, I think that failure to build the ILC is a sign that there is no committment remaining to particle physics, and very little career prospects as well.
Personally, I am not interested in working on the ILC. So it seems odd that I plan to watch the project so closely as an indicator of future career moves. However, it is my belief that a true investment in the ILC will require the total pot for particle physics in the States to grow significantly, with benefits for other, smaller, projects as well. In other words, growing the pie benefits the whole field in precisely the way that the shrinking of the pie with the cancellation of the SSC (or, more recently, the shift of BNL and SLAC and CESR away from particle physics) has hurt the entire field.
Just my thoughts. I'd be interested in hearing yours. By the way, who presented the EPP2010 report at Fermilab?
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Re: Meh.
Date: 2006-05-27 09:29 am (UTC)Is he right? I don't know. However, if the US is the most likely place for the ILC to be built, then our field is largely at the mercy of Congress choosing to spend billions of dollars on a basic research project. It sounds like the SSC all over again, doesn't it? I don't have a lot of faith that this will happen and, if the EPP recommendation of investing $500 million over the next five years does not happen, then I would guess that the ILC is a dead duck.
Overall, I do feel like the situation in other parts of the world is much better. CERN, for instance, is building the LHC, while the SSC is long dead, with its ghost still haunting us. Over the past twenty years, Japan has put together the world's best neutrino program and is now investing in another major particle physics facility. Even the bit players, like Canada, are ramping up their funding (and therefore their efforts), with tangible goals and results -- SNO helped solve the solar neutrino problem, and the Subdury mine is planned to become a major, permanent, underground multi-experiment laboratory in Canada.
Does this mean that the ILC will be funded by somebody other than the Untied States? I don't know, and there is reason to be doubtful. However, with the state of the field in other countries, I would feel there is a future career in other places, even if no ILC happens. In the States, however, I think that failure to build the ILC is a sign that there is no committment remaining to particle physics, and very little career prospects as well.
Personally, I am not interested in working on the ILC. So it seems odd that I plan to watch the project so closely as an indicator of future career moves. However, it is my belief that a true investment in the ILC will require the total pot for particle physics in the States to grow significantly, with benefits for other, smaller, projects as well. In other words, growing the pie benefits the whole field in precisely the way that the shrinking of the pie with the cancellation of the SSC (or, more recently, the shift of BNL and SLAC and CESR away from particle physics) has hurt the entire field.
Just my thoughts. I'd be interested in hearing yours. By the way, who presented the EPP2010 report at Fermilab?