Das: U.S. role in big science is too small
In this 2005 photo provided by CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, technicians check the magnets that will direct protons towards the target for the CERN Neutrinos to Gran Sasso project in Geneva. Credit: AP Photo/
Saswato R. Das, who writes about science and technology, received a graduate degree in earth and space sciences from Stony Brook University.
After more than a quarter century of outstanding contributions to science, the Tevatron particle collider at Fermilab outside Chicago was shut down once and for all at the end of last month. With it, the United States threw in the towel on massive high-energy physics experiments and closed a storied chapter in scientific discovery.
America split the atom, built the best accelerators and, until recently, was the place to be for high-energy physics. But things started changing with the cancellation of the superconducting super collider in the 1980s. Now with the demise of the Tevatron -- following the end of NASA's space shuttle program earlier this year -- the age of big, muscular science in America is over. The world's most exciting particle physics is now done in Europe. Just witness the recent discovery of elementary particles called neutrinos, which may exceed the speed of light, at CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) near Geneva, Switzerland.
President Barack Obama said in his February State of the Union address that we've reached a "Sputnik moment" for science and research, but for many American particle physicists, it's a moment of uncertainty, job applications to Europe, and debating whether to move to the private sector.
The Tevatron was once the most powerful particle smasher on the planet, a destination for the best particle physicists in the world. It employed hundreds of them. In 1995, it discovered the top quark, an elementary particle that had been predicted in 1973. Before it was shut down, it was being used to search for one of the Holy Grails of modern physics, the still-unfound Higgs boson, a massive elementary particle predicted by the Standard Model of modern physics.
Along the way, the Tevatron was instrumental in providing a boost to medical science. The collider needed superconducting wire for its giant magnets and created a small industry, driving down the price. Had it not done so, it's doubtful that MRI machines would have become as commonplace as they are today.
The closure of the Tevatron means the only particle collider left running in the United States is the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Lab. But the RHIC has a different focus -- more nuclear physics than the sort of particle physics that took place at the Tevatron. Particle physics work is now being done at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Brookhaven National Lab is involved in the work at CERN, acting as the U.S. "host" institution for its ATLAS Experiment, which is seeking clues to whether extra dimensions exist, the nature of dark matter and other esoteric physics by colliding protons together. Brookhaven physicists, who have been involved in this experiment from the start, are helping to operate the detector at CERN and are active in analyzing the results.
When big multibillion-dollar science projects are discussed, there are inevitably questions as to whether the United States can afford such expensive experiments. Wouldn't the money be better spent building schools or providing health care? Yet America's dominance in science and technology has been the result of past investment in science. There will doubtlessly be byproducts of any such efforts -- just as the Tevatron helped with medicine and NASA research led to better sneakers, runways, solar panels and so on.
Big science projects have always faced such questions. One of the best answers was given by Robert Wilson, the first director of Fermilab. In 1969, Wilson was quizzed by Congress about the value of particle accelerators and asked to justify the expenditure. Would it be important to defend the country?
He responded that it only did from the long-range perspective of developing technology. He said, "It has to do with: Are we good painters, good sculptors, great poets? I mean all the things that we really venerate and honor in our country and are patriotic about. In that sense, this new knowledge has all to do with honor and country, but it has nothing to do directly with defending our country except to help make it worth defending."
