A sad day for US Physical Science.
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On Friday, physicists will shut down [Fremilab's] accelerator called the Tevatron, a once-unrivaled atom smasher that has been eclipsed by the Large Hadron Collider buried beneath the border of France and Switzerland.
For some in Batavia, it will be a somber moment, akin to losing a family member. Others wonder whether it signals a lack of commitment to high-level particle science on U.S. soil.
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Originally Posted by Rep. W. Foster, Ph.D. (D, IL)
The decline of particle physics in the U.S. is really a symptom of the erratic and sometimes anti-scientific attitudes in Washington and the incompetence of Congress in managing science.
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US Representative Foster said a mouthful right there. Incompetence in Congress? But I repeat myself.
They will continue operations to confirm or refute (I despise the word "debunk") the FTL results seen at CERN, hopefully by mid-2012. There is also a plan to build a new test system for particle physicists using not the highest energy beams, but the most numerous collisions. Dubbed Project X, it is projected to cost $2B, but as yet has no funding. Not a good sign.
And for the idiots that say that particle physics gives no benefit for the common folk, there is this fact:
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But there also have been more immediate benefits from the Tevatron: Its powerful magnets led to MRIs and are used in superconducting. Neutron therapy helps treat cancer patients. And the collider has changed the way science analyzes data.
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And a final note, by early next year, they should put the finishing touches on the research on whether the Higgs Boson exists, or is a figment of imagination, research that will be corroborated by CERN.