When Will U.S. Physicists Have Their Day?

Apr. 30 -- Since the demise of the Superconducting Super Collider project, physicists have been understandably hesitant about lobbying the U.S. government for another major accelerator.

But recently, a group of scientists has begun testing the waters.

"We hope that in two to three years the country will be ready for another machine," said Chris Quigg, a physicist at Fermilab, one of the nation's leading physics research centers, located near Chicago. "It would be a big deal to build, but not a ridiculously big deal."

In the early 1980s, U.S. physicists argued the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) was an absolute must if the country wanted to remain at the cutting edge of particle physics. Large accelerators provide physicists with glimpses of the particles that make up matter by smashing protons or electrons into their negative counterparts and shaking out the atom's smallest pieces.

But when the project's budget ballooned from $5 billion to nearly $12 billion, Congress decided to scrap it in 1993. The loss was devastating to the hundreds of researchers who had relocated to the project's north Texas site and to those who were hoping to glean new discoveries about the nature of matter and the universe.

As then-Sen. Bennet Johnston, D-La., declared on the day the House voted to abandon the SSC, "This is a sad day for science."

Last summer — nearly 10 years after the abandonment of the SSC — a group of physicists met to discuss plans for a new major accelerator. Although the events of Sept. 11 might seem to lessen the chances the U.S. government will fund another major accelerator any time soon, Quigg is hopeful the post-Sept. 11 climate may actually help their cause.

"I have hope the nation will be more serious now and more willing to do complicated, expensive things — including big physics — for the general good," he said. "I think it's time this country starts worrying about its legacy."

European Rivalry

Even if U.S. physicists successfully argue their case for a new accelerator, a rival looms on the horizon. A multinational European laboratory is now under construction near Geneva called the Large Hadron Collider or LHC. The LHC will be seven times more powerful than the current most powerful collider in the United States — the Fermilab's Tevatron accelerator in Illinois.