LAST SMASH? A computer rendering shows the aftermath of a collision of gold ions inside the STAR detector at the RHIC collider, now threatened by tightening budgets.
Image: BNL
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In a narrowly decided vote, an advisory panel to federal nuclear science agencies has recommended closing a particle collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, N.Y., rather than eliminating other costly facilities. The reason: federal budget woes are hitting all types of government funding from classroom education to highway repair.
At a meeting this week of the Nuclear Science Advisory Committee, which provides guidance to the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation, physicist Robert Tribble of Texas A&M University in College Station unveiled the findings of an effort he led to identify priorities for an increasingly frugal U.S. nuclear science program. From the outset of the Tribble panel’s investigation, it appeared that one of three major projects would face elimination, and on January 28 Tribble announced that Brookhaven’s Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider, or RHIC, had drawn the short straw.
Tribble explained that under flat budgets or even with annual increases for inflation, it would not be possible to operate RHIC while also building the planned Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) at Michigan State University and completing upgrades to the Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility (CEBAF) at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Virginia.
The Tribble panel recommended finishing the CEBAF upgrades as the highest priority, and RHIC lost in a narrow runoff with FRIB for second place. “The subcommittee vote, while closely split, resulted in a slight preference for the choice that proceeds with FRIB,” Tribble reported.
The possibly soon-to-be-shuttered RHIC smashes gold ions or protons together at high speed to generate new particles or new states of matter. And although RHIC is much smaller than the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in Europe, and much less powerful, nuclear physicists argue that the U.S. machine has the capability to address science questions that are inaccessible anywhere else. “If we close RHIC now, we lose all collider leadership—not just the high-energy frontier—to CERN,” Tribble said, referring to the European particle physics laboratory that operates the LHC. After a series of closures in the past five years, RHIC stands as the only remaining particle collider in the U.S. The project, which costs the Department of Energy about $160 million a year to operate, employs some 750 people.
“It’s the most versatile collider in the world,” says Steven Vigdor, who recently stepped down as Brookhaven’s associate laboratory director for nuclear and particle physics. RHIC can accelerate and smash together beams of protons with aligned spins, much like two spiraling footballs colliding in midair. “That enables a program that is absolutely unique for trying to understand how the spin of the proton arises from its constituents, the quarks and gluons,” Vigdor says. The collider also may help determine how the hot, primordial soup of quarks and gluons produced in particle collisions condenses into the protons and neutrons that make up our world. “One would like to understand where the transition is between normal matter and quark–gluon matter,” Vigdor says, adding that some aspects of that transition “can only really be studied in the RHIC energy range.”
In his presentation, Tribble noted that closing any of the three large nuclear physics facilities would leave a gaping hole in the field. “If we are dealing with no-growth budgets, it’s pretty clear that we will lose a major facility that supports or will support more than a quarter of the nuclear science workforce,” he said. “We’ll leave on the table many discoveries that we hope to make in the next decade in our field.” Speaking for himself and not for the subcommittee, Tribble added that he felt such action would spell “disaster.”
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20 Comments
Add CommentWhy don't we shut down the war in Afganistan instead, so we can have money left for science?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNational Defense is the big target for anyone who wants more money for their pet rock. But let's face it, National Security and Defense is the only specific constitutional mandate for the federal government. So why don't you ask for money from Medicare or Medicaid or Social Security. Further, the fraction of our GDP that goes to National Security and Defense has been a constant or declining since WWII. So I would say get a life.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisClaiming that it's been declining since WW2 is disingenuous. The economy was on war-time footing, something it hasn't experienced since. In 1945, 90% of the federal budget went to the Defense Department (then known as the War Department). It ramped down rapidly after that, bottoming out at 31% in 1948 before going back up to 70% in 1953 and 1954 (coinciding with the Korean War). After that, the numbers moved around a lot, descening through 1966 then rising for a couple of years before declining until 1978, remaining steady through 1981, and then rising through 1987. After that, it declined until around 1996 where it reached about 16%. It stayed around that point until it went up in 2002, climbing back to 20% and staying there for a number of years. Percentage-wise, it has dipped some since peaking at 21% in 2008 largely due to sharply increased spending on things like economic stimulus and increased interest payments, but it's stayed well over $600 billion per year. (That $600 billion, BTW, does not include spending on overseas conflicts.)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn general, though, science has taken up a tiny portion of spending, averaging 1.3% of the budget outlays since 1955. Its peak was in 1966 when just shy of 5% of the federal budget went to science, a time when the US was an undisputed leader in the sciences. Federal spending on the sciences has been below 1% since 2005 with spending in 2008 coming in at a mere $28 billion. And within that range, we can't fit the basic research needed to set the foundations for the future, instead relying heavily on work being done in Switzerland (CERN), France (ITER), and other places. With Brookhaven being shut down, a major place of basic work comes to a halt, much as with happened with the Tevatron at Fermilab. It will take a decade or more to regain kind of ability.
I'm a backer of a strong military, but I can give a little bit of room to keep some of these things open. I'd like to see the US working to get basic research back to the forefront instead of treating it as optional. No research, no future.
Do not send the dismantled machine to the scrap yard.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMaybe the chinese will buy it.
Their legions of young academia could use a toy to play with until they come up with something far better.
But that is still some years ahead...
"...oh so perfect socialists..."? Please. Until you know what socialism and socialists really are it would be a good idea to stick to facts and not try to paint those whose policies aren't as conservative as yours as "socialists."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLet's see, you capitalize "Conventions" and "Solyndra," but not anything else. Not "egypt," not "muslim," not "democrats," and especially not "america." With that sort of contempt for whatever you don't agree with why do you bother even commenting?
Yes, you're correct, we should stop supporting repressive and corrupt regimes. But Egypt isn't alone. There are the extremely corrupt Trashcanistans we've gotten mired in, for example. Stop sending them a few billion every year and we could keep the RHIC going and could have kept the Tevatron going, and maybe even have completed the Superconducting Super Collider as well.
Otherwise, every politician has his/her favorite home town projects that always get first funding. That's one way they get re-elected. It would be wonderful to eliminate several of those (some actually do some good for the US), but it won't happen. Even your pet teabaggies have their own pork projects.
I'll stop. This is devolving into a flame war, with folks beating drums for and against their favorite targets, and has little to do with science or the proposed closing of the RHIC.
I'd like to see the country sell or lease the collider to private industry we may actually start to see real results much like we are now seeing with private industries' work with space flight.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn response to many previous commenters there are many places we can cut in both military and international gifts and even nationally. Everything could be cut 10% with very little pain if it. BTW has anybody thought that maybe a small collider is just not needed when we have the LHC.
Your info is not relevant, and your priorities are extremely skewed. Have you been in a cave since WWII? I am nearly 77, a veteran of the Vietnam war, and the costs of endless war, keeping the Generals and Admirals fat & happy at the Pentagon, and making their $100 per screwdriver suppliers rolling in profits have DRAINED our nation! We have all seen comparison charts showing that social services and vital repairs to infrastructure are a FRACTION of the Pentagon budget, and of course Social Security is paid for by us, during our working careers. As for medical expenditures, I worked in the health care industry for the last years of my working career, and costs will be increasing as long as the manipulating privateers of health insurance control the health economy & religious fanatics are allowed to attack women and opt out of providing vital life-saving services. Single payer, plus doing away with all donations to politicians from all pressure groups would ensure better legislators, bring costs under control, cure the budget & deficit quickly, and improve everyone's health. Most people know that. Why don't you?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMy reply was to Rod Michael and all his Ayn Rand supporters. Somehow that comment didn't go thru.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs with any challenge to current or possible change in money distribution, NO ONE AGREES. Revelation! As long as people continue to suffer from the"God complex," nothing will ever be accomplished. Everyone else is wrong and they're correct. When are we all going to grow up and put what is right ahead? Of course, that necessarily means a concensus, and when you know that you're right and everyone else is wrong, what concensus is there to be made?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisrodmichael, Some of us disagree and would point to the General Welfare clause. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Welfare_clause
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMajorities in Both Red and Blue Districts Favor Deep Cuts in Defense Spending
http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/articles/brunitedstatescanadara/719.php?lb=brusc&pnt=719&nid=&id=
The title of story is misleading because set back for RHIC, I think, does not mean set back for whole physics. In addition, many countries are backing out from H.E. Physics projects - not only U.S.A. In fact this situation reminds me of the cuts suggested by Sir John Kendrew to UK contribution in CERN, nearly 25 years back - see CERN faces Euro 250m budget cuts, on physics world, 26 August 2010.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisJust a modest question:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIs it remotely possible that the strangulating decrease
in funding for basic science research, otherwise known
as the "let's cut research budgets to the bone for those dangerous, godless and irreverent science-types, and
watch them scrabble and claw over the crumbs they do
find," might, just might be connected with the
crippling unequal shifting of wealth (and power) to
the already obscenely rich .01 %, since the late
1970s? You know… when congress started becoming an
almost wholly owned subsidiary of Wall Street and
Associates?
A modest hint: healthy science, the Enlightenment
and healthy egalitarian democracy go hand in hand. Crapulous billionaires sort of know that, in their
greedy little bones.
Just a thought. :-)
For sixty years, the United States led the world in accelerator physics. That era ended with the Superconduction Super Collider cancellation. Even before the Cold War, philanthropic organizations spent more on these monuments to the extremely small than on almost any other purpose. National Security was the justification for high-energy physics in the postwar era, and it is not coincidental that the end of the Cold War chilled Congressional enthusiasm for it. RHIC itself was a sort of consolation prize for Brookhaven, which lost ISABELLE and, like Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory had, substituted heavy-ion for proton acceleration. The relative costs of High-Energy Physics reflect a desire to understand nuclear forces, essential to the design of nuclear weapons. After $5 trillion was spent on that application, the U.S. has shifted to conventional and smart weapons that are relatively less expensive and actually used in combat. The dichotomous views expressed above reflect the political polarization of readers, not the historical complexities I have adumbrated above. We need to evaluate federal budgets through a complex political process. Recent years have shown that this process is broken, with ideological positions trumping analysis. Even the critics who defend national defense as the primary and/or sole function of the Federal Government ignore the Constitution, which specifies that the promotion of the arts and sciences, as well as the general welfare, are legitimate activities of the Federal government. Just as we no longer confine its military activity to equipping a militia, we no longer rely solely on the Patent Office. While we may have ceded leadership in high-energy physics and claims to create the God particle, we still have a scientific community which I presume all will agree are worthy of support. Foolish wars like the one we conducted in Iraq are perhaps less worthy, although they prop up an economy which relies more on arms manufacture than public goods and services for continued growth.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRe military spending. It should be what it 'needs' to be...1% or 99% of Federal spending. This, however, is no excuse not to cut waste. The USA is a democracy and the executive has made decisions on Afgahnistan, etc. No soldier should die because some decision was made to fly one less drone mission to save costs.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIf you don't like government decisions, run for office orvote for someone else.
Unfortunately 'get used to it'. The cookie jar is full of IOUs. If professional groups don't make a rational decisions where the cuts should be made in science funding, then government will make a less rational one. There is going to be no more funds aor less funds....no exceptions. Reality needs to dealt with...What collider scrubbed? What space mission taken off the table? Better to be proactive as the decision has been.
Security is much higher in the needs of a civilized society than academic advances. Without security progress is not secure which means everything could be lost if terrorists are allowed to have their kind of progress=attacks on our kind of society and our kind of progress. By staying in Afganistan and other places where terrorism can flourish America and the free world have in place a forward looking way of preventing those terrorists from getting a firm foothold.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn 1993 I was able to have fifteen minutes in a close discussion with Representative Maria Cantwell. I expressed that the SSC was a physicist's toy. In my view colliders combined with funding have had physicists building an elaborate "model" with many parameters. To what end has this evolved our fundamental understanding of the universe?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI believe physicist's time would better have been spent thinking about new paradigms. Far too many decades have been spent elaborating on a "model" that is not physical or fundamental. While some relationships may be helpful in deducing the true nature of the universe, too many simply keep the focus on finding more.
If the money were mine to spend, I would take twice the number of physicists with a fraction of the equipment and dump them into a number of rooms. Their job would be to follow their imaginations. In this manner we would avoid propogating more of the same with no real fundamental progress in discovering a true underlying physical model.
If we mainly fund that with which we are familiar, then how do we expect to move into a new paradigm?
They would just use it for entitlements.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSomewhere in among the criteria for what science funding should continue to be supported there needs to be consideration for the value of what is being discovered. What the hell do these old colliders contribute to our understanding of the universe? Seems like particle physics is approaching the problem of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. The arguments about String Theory, "M", etc. have become blood sport for overspecialized and add little of our knowledge of the Big Picture.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe objective of the terrorists was to bleed the US economy dry by forcing us to spend trillions on endless war preparations so there would be nothing left for anything else. It appears that they have succeeded.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe last time that unemployed physicists found jobs outside their field, they went to Wall Street and wrote the computer algorithms that helped to crash the economy. Would have been much cheaper to pay them to study atomic nuclei.
If your kid is interested in science, make sure he/she learns Chinese so he can find a job in his field when he graduates.
RHIC has not produced much since its inception. BNL has not produced much in particle physics in at least thirty years. BNL did well sucking money out of the taxpayer for accelerator expansions, but has not really produced anything to re-write the books. Getting rid of some sacred cows during a crisis has its place. What is left in US Nuclear Physics is hardly any better, but then nuclear physics is hardly a new area of science.
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