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For the most part, this entry is really just an update on some things mentioned in previous entries this month.
Finally, not related to any recent post, I have talked before about the state of particle physics in the United States and how it is being choked to death by inadequate funding. The situation is quite unfortunate, as there have been a couple of very important discoveries in the past ten years (dark energy and neutrino mass being the top two that come to mind) and there is reason to suspect that more are coming in the not-too-distant future. However, due to lack of funding, the number of particle physicists at national laboratories is decreasing and, after the BaBar experiment at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center ends in 2008, Fermilab will be the only remaining particle physics lab in the United States. Furthermore, after the Tevatron accelerator shuts down circa 2010, there will be no significant particle accelerator in the US. Europe has the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) getting ready to begin and Japan has committed the equivalent of $1.5 billion into the Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex (J-PARC), which is currently under construction. However, the next-generation machine in the United States should have been the Superconducting Supercollider (SSC) and it should have been running by now. But it was killed in Congress thirteen years ago.
In a few years, I will have to find a permanent position for myself somewhere. Whether or not I return to the United States will largely come down to two factors: Politics and jobs. If the political situation in the United States does not improve, I am not likely to return. However, even if it does,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cheshcat and I are not going to settle somewhere that we cannot both find jobs in our chosen fields. Unless the state of particle physics in the United States changes from its present course, I seriously question whether I will be able to realistically expect living there to be a wise career choice.
Anyway, this afternoon I went to a special seminar on the report of the EPP2010 committee, where EPP stands for Elementary Particle Physics and 2010 is the date for the decadal report. The committee was comprised of very prominent particle physicists, as well as distinguished scientists from other fields (e.g., astronomy, medicine) and some non-scientists (e.g., a former undersecretary of the army who also served as CEO of Lockheed-Martin, an economist who was president of Princeton College). Given my position as an "American" particle physicist in the very early stages of his career, this report was particularly interesting for me to hear. It makes some strong statements and notes that particle physicists are an exemplary model of international cooperation -- apparently, this aspect of our work, which I take for granted, impressed many of the non-particle physicists on the panel. The committee also recommends an increase of at least 2% per year, for the next seven years, if the US is to remain a significant player on the world stage of particle physics... and an increase of 10% per year if the US wants to play a leading role. In today's funding environment, I find it hard to believe that this will happen... but I am glad that the truth is being put out there so starkly and hope that it will have an impact. The report also calls for the US to invest heavily in the International Linear Collider (ILC), which is the next big project being planned and will cost several billion dollars to complete. The country that will host the ILC is not yet chosen, but Fermilab is likely to be the site if it is indeed constructed in the United States.
I am highly skeptical that the ILC will be built at all, and it is not a given that it will be in the US. However, I am coming to accept that if the ILC does not happen in the US, either because it never gets built or gets built elsewhere, then particle physics in the United States is doomed to a slow death and particle physicists in the United States will mainly be travelling to contribute to projects elsewhere. The prospect of having to travel abroad to an experiment does not bother me. So far, I have worked on no projects in the United States. My thesis work was done on the Super-Kamiokande experiment, in Japan (because the US would not fund a similar experiment), and my first post-doc was done on the Pierre Auger Observatory, in Argentina. In both of these cases, I had domestic options to chose from and decided against them. Even now, I live in England but must travel to Italy to work on my experiment. So I am not afraid of having to travel to do my work. What does concern me is that, if funding continues to dry up, the prospect of finding a permanent job and the ability to contribute to those projects elsewhere will become more difficult. Working at Fermilab and watching project upon project get cancelled has made me cynical. The next few years, in which EPP2010 recommends the US spending $500 million on research and development for the ILC, will be quite telling.
For the record, anyone getting bored by all the talk of physics that has beset this journal lately can blameblaisepascal and company for
asking me to write more about my work. For those who did ask, I hope that the recent commentary is interesting. If not, and you are being bored to tears by all this talk of liquid refrigerants and cryostats, just remember that experimental particle physicists have to do an awful lot of stuff (e.g., hardware construction, electronics, software, data analysis) before we reach any of the exciting physics results.
- First, in this entry, I talked about how the mailboxes all say "E II R", but how I had spotted an older one bearing "G VI R" from King George the Sixth's reign (1936 - 1952). polyfrog chimed in, pointing out that he had seen an older box, bearing the brand "G V R" (King George the Fifth reigned from 1910 - 1936). Well, I took a dinner break yesterday to grab some take away and, by chance, noticed a mailbox very near to the building where I work. I've seen in dozens of times, and it does have a large "E R" on it. However, I noticed last night that the small Roman numeral between the letters was not the usual "II". Nope, this box said "E VII R". Well, there has not been a Queen Elizabeth the Seventh yet... so either this mailbox has had access to the Tardis, or some other time travelling device, or it was put there during the reign of King Edward the Seventh, who ruled prior to George the Fifth, from 1901 - 1910. Now I have to keep an eye out for a mailbox bearing "V R", for Victoria Regina, who reigned before Edward the Seventh. There won't be a numeral, since she was the first (and, so far, only) Queen Victoria. I'm such a geek, I know.
- Next, for those of you living in the United States, you can breath a sigh of relief, as your currency seems to have halted its nose-dive into the toilet. In this entry, I talked about how the dollar had plummeted from an exchange rate of $1.745/pound when I arrived in England -- two months ago today -- to about $1.845/pound. After that entry, the dollar continued to drop, hitting a low value of $1.891/pound on the same day that cassiopia arrived here. That's a 7.7% loss of value in a fairly short time! I am quite glad that I changed my cash before that, otherwise I would have lost a couple hundred dollars! Since then, however, the dollar has stabilized a bit... and even recovered some of its value. As of this evening, the exchange was back down to $1.857/pound:
I'm really such a geek... I know! - Third, in last night's entry, I talked about attempting to cool down the K-400 cryostat with liquid helium. Although we found the reason that we were unsuccessful last night, we tried again today... and still had no luck. The problem of last night is definitely solved -- its symptoms are gone -- but there is some new problem, and we are not sure what it is yet. We used up all our helium blowing cold gas, with no significant accumulation of liquid in the cryostat. This is too bad, because the liquefier down the road is acting up again, plus there is a holiday weekend, so we will not get any more helium until Tuesday, at the earliest. Since I am leaving for Italy on Wednesday -- the tickets are now purchased -- I will not be able to cool down the cryostat before going to Gran Sasso. This is somewhat of a disappointment. However, I am gaining an appreciation for how complex these cryostats are... and how difficult it is to work with them. When properly cooled down, they are colder than the universe. That's pretty darn cold!
Finally, not related to any recent post, I have talked before about the state of particle physics in the United States and how it is being choked to death by inadequate funding. The situation is quite unfortunate, as there have been a couple of very important discoveries in the past ten years (dark energy and neutrino mass being the top two that come to mind) and there is reason to suspect that more are coming in the not-too-distant future. However, due to lack of funding, the number of particle physicists at national laboratories is decreasing and, after the BaBar experiment at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center ends in 2008, Fermilab will be the only remaining particle physics lab in the United States. Furthermore, after the Tevatron accelerator shuts down circa 2010, there will be no significant particle accelerator in the US. Europe has the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) getting ready to begin and Japan has committed the equivalent of $1.5 billion into the Japan Proton Accelerator Research Complex (J-PARC), which is currently under construction. However, the next-generation machine in the United States should have been the Superconducting Supercollider (SSC) and it should have been running by now. But it was killed in Congress thirteen years ago.
In a few years, I will have to find a permanent position for myself somewhere. Whether or not I return to the United States will largely come down to two factors: Politics and jobs. If the political situation in the United States does not improve, I am not likely to return. However, even if it does,
cheshcat and I are not going to settle somewhere that we cannot both find jobs in our chosen fields. Unless the state of particle physics in the United States changes from its present course, I seriously question whether I will be able to realistically expect living there to be a wise career choice.Anyway, this afternoon I went to a special seminar on the report of the EPP2010 committee, where EPP stands for Elementary Particle Physics and 2010 is the date for the decadal report. The committee was comprised of very prominent particle physicists, as well as distinguished scientists from other fields (e.g., astronomy, medicine) and some non-scientists (e.g., a former undersecretary of the army who also served as CEO of Lockheed-Martin, an economist who was president of Princeton College). Given my position as an "American" particle physicist in the very early stages of his career, this report was particularly interesting for me to hear. It makes some strong statements and notes that particle physicists are an exemplary model of international cooperation -- apparently, this aspect of our work, which I take for granted, impressed many of the non-particle physicists on the panel. The committee also recommends an increase of at least 2% per year, for the next seven years, if the US is to remain a significant player on the world stage of particle physics... and an increase of 10% per year if the US wants to play a leading role. In today's funding environment, I find it hard to believe that this will happen... but I am glad that the truth is being put out there so starkly and hope that it will have an impact. The report also calls for the US to invest heavily in the International Linear Collider (ILC), which is the next big project being planned and will cost several billion dollars to complete. The country that will host the ILC is not yet chosen, but Fermilab is likely to be the site if it is indeed constructed in the United States.
I am highly skeptical that the ILC will be built at all, and it is not a given that it will be in the US. However, I am coming to accept that if the ILC does not happen in the US, either because it never gets built or gets built elsewhere, then particle physics in the United States is doomed to a slow death and particle physicists in the United States will mainly be travelling to contribute to projects elsewhere. The prospect of having to travel abroad to an experiment does not bother me. So far, I have worked on no projects in the United States. My thesis work was done on the Super-Kamiokande experiment, in Japan (because the US would not fund a similar experiment), and my first post-doc was done on the Pierre Auger Observatory, in Argentina. In both of these cases, I had domestic options to chose from and decided against them. Even now, I live in England but must travel to Italy to work on my experiment. So I am not afraid of having to travel to do my work. What does concern me is that, if funding continues to dry up, the prospect of finding a permanent job and the ability to contribute to those projects elsewhere will become more difficult. Working at Fermilab and watching project upon project get cancelled has made me cynical. The next few years, in which EPP2010 recommends the US spending $500 million on research and development for the ILC, will be quite telling.
For the record, anyone getting bored by all the talk of physics that has beset this journal lately can blame
blaisepascal and company for asking me to write more about my work. For those who did ask, I hope that the recent commentary is interesting. If not, and you are being bored to tears by all this talk of liquid refrigerants and cryostats, just remember that experimental particle physicists have to do an awful lot of stuff (e.g., hardware construction, electronics, software, data analysis) before we reach any of the exciting physics results.
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Persephone