No extra time for US particle lab

[Tank]

No extra time for US particle lab

The hunt for the elusive Higgs boson particle - crucial to current theories of physics - looks set to become a one-horse race after 2011.

A US "particle smasher" has been denied an extension that would have kept it running until 2014.

The Tevatron accelerator will now end operations this year as was originally planned.

After that, Europe's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will have a clear run at searching for the particle.

The Tevatron facility is operated by the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) which is in turn run by the US Department of Energy (DOE).

In October last year, an expert panel recommended extending the Tevatron's lifetime by three years, allowing physicists to continue using the accelerator in their hunt for the Higgs.

Fermilab employees have now been told that a difficult US budget situation means the panel's recommendation will not be followed, and the particle smasher will be closed this year...

Those greedy bastard bankers should be bloody hung!  

[Davin]

Yep, us here in merka land are always thinking in the long term... I mean short term

Like us dropping manned space missions... the bad economy isn't going to last as long as the damage of releasing even more of our failing hold on science.

[Ultima22689]

Guess science will have to take another one for the team....WHAT? NO! That's it, i'm moving to a country that understands science is important and isn't pet projects.

[The Magic Pudding]

China is doing moon shots. Plural. When I say "moon shots" I mean big, multibillion-dollar, 25-year-horizon, game-changing investments.

China has at least four going now: One is building a network of ultramodern airports; another is building a web of high-speed trains connecting major cities; a third is in bioscience, where the Beijing Genomics Institute this year ordered 128 DNA sequencers -- from America -- giving China the largest number in the world in one institute to launch its own stem cell/genetic engineering industry; and, finally, Beijing just announced that it was providing $15 billion in seed money for the country's leading auto and battery companies to create an electric car industry, starting in 20 pilot cities.

Not to worry. America has a multibillion-dollar, 25-year-horizon, game-changing moon shot, too: fixing Afghanistan.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10271/1090761-109.stm

An obvious defence to this would be US "moon shots" don't have to be financed by the government, but it is an interesting comparison.

[hackenslash]

That's crappy. One of my internet friends is currently doing his internship at Fermilab, though it will be finished by then. Still...

[Whitney]

I'm sure they could have made room in the budget if they had withdrawn more troops from occupying lands we should have never been invading in the first place.

[karadan]

I'm sure they could have made room in the budget if they had withdrawn more troops from occupying lands we should have never been invading in the first place.

That's exactly the way i feel.