“The United States will have to give up leadership in certain areas of particle physics,” said Karsten Heeger, a physicist at Yale University and vice president of the P5. “That would be an impact that would be felt on the field and beyond.”
Failing to achieve all that, the draft report urges the federal government to stay the course on projects it is already committed to, including increasing the luminosity, or collision rates, of the Large Hadron Collider for deeper studies. of the Higgs and other rare phenomena. ; continuation of the construction of Vera C. Rubin Observatory, a telescope in Chile designed to create time-lapse movies of the cosmos; and a limited version of DUNE.
Because the lifespan of these projects spans decades, the committee emphasized support for early-career scientists who will eventually take over the projects. “They are the future,” said Dr. Murayama.
The Department of Energy's High Energy Physics Advisory Panel will vote on the draft report Friday afternoon. If the report is accepted, the committee will turn its attention to gaining support for the plan, both within and outside the physical community. In particular, Dr. Murayama hoped he would catch the attention of staff members who communicate with members of Congress about voting on the department's budget.
“Basic research is a hard sell,” Dr. Murayama said. “It's not an immediate benefit to society.” But the payoff is worth it, he added: Particle physics has sparked revolutions in medical applications, materials science, and even the creation of iPhones and the World Wide Web.
But according to Dr. Murayama, the benefits transcend the impact the field has on society. “Particle physics is really at the heart of what we are, who we are,” he said, adding that all of us, physicists or not, “would like to understand why we exist, where we come from and where we are going.” .”
