Particle Physicists Want A New Collider To Study The Higgs
"It's a very curious time in high-energy physics," says Michael Peskin, a researcher at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in California. On the one hand, researchers have just made the most significant discovery in decades: In July of last year, they announced they had found the Higgs particle at a collider in Switzerland. The Higgs is part of the mechanism that gives mass to everything. It is so fundamental that without it, we wouldn't exist.
But at a time of intellectual highs, researchers are facing an economic low. Research funding is being squeezed by the economic crisis. The United States' main particle accelerator, the Tevatron, shut down in 2011.
"It's one of these things — it was the best of times, it was the worst of times," Peskin says.
Earlier this month, hundreds of high-energy physicists gathered in Minneapolis to discuss the future of their field. "Somehow we have to figure out how to put our dreams together with the reality," he says.
High on the agenda is a new collider to study the newly found Higgs particle. The Higgs was discovered at the Large Hadron Collider, a 17-mile underground ring that smashes protons together with an incredible amount of energy. The LHC is the perfect machine for finding the Higgs because when protons crash into each other, they create sprays of different particles, including the elusive Higgs.
But to study the Higgs in depth — and to produce only Higgs — researchers need to smash electrons and anti-electrons together, and this can only happen inside a new kind of collider.
That machine is expected to cost $8 billion, which means there can only be one. "What you want to do is have all nations contribute to a single project," Peskin says.
At the moment, that global project is likely to be built not in the U.S., but in Japan. The Japanese government is looking at the collider as part of a broader economic stimulus package, according to Lyn Evans, who heads the Linear Collider Collaboration, the global group that designed this new machine. But Evans says they won't build it if other countries don't pitch in.
"The problem is going to be convincing the U.S. government that they can find a pot of money in order to support this Japanese initiative," he says.
Evans has an economic argument: U.S. laboratories and high-tech manufacturers will supply parts to the machine. "The reality is that money will not flow to Japan. In fact, pieces of the machine will be built in Europe, in the U.S., and then installed in Japan," he says.
And it's not just about hardware. People are at the heart of these projects, says Chip Brock, a researcher at Michigan State University. And about half of his students take the skills they learn to other parts of the economy. "They've gone into finance; they've gone into teaching; they've gone into manufacturing of one sort or another," he says.
Researchers will likely endorse the Linear Collider project, but they're also hoping to keep America on the cutting edge with a facility of its own. At Fermilab, which once housed the Tevatron accelerator, researchers are developing an experiment to study neutrinos, the elusive subatomic particles that are nearly undetectable. Balancing investment in the domestic neutrino program with the international collider project will be tough.
Once they've agreed on the way forward, it will be up to the research community to convince politicians and the public. The economic arguments are there, researchers say, but at the end of the day, Peskin says the best argument may just be the fact that there's so much more to learn. "There's a huge amount we don't know about the universe," he says.
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Transcript
ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:
Fundamental physics asks really big questions - like, what's the universe made of? And it answers them with really big machines. Researchers built particle colliders miles long, then they sift through the debris from those collisions with detectors the size of buildings.
Such big instruments cost a lot of money and as NPR's Geoff Brumfiel explains, U.S. physicists are trying to figure out how to pay for the next generation of machines.
GEOFF BRUMFIEL, BYLINE: High-energy physics is abstract. So abstract, in fact, that when scientists discover something new, it's kind of hard to tell. Here's researcher Joe Incandela, announcing the discovery of the Higgs particle last summer.
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JOE INCANDELA: They combine to give us a - an - a combined significance of five standard deviations.
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BRUMFIEL: Researchers discovered the Higgs by smashing together other particles inside a huge collider in Switzerland. Finding the Higgs took decades, according to Michael Peskin, a researcher at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in California.
MICHAEL PESKIN: Now, the question is - we've discovered this particle; now, what's it about?
BRUMFIEL: The Higgs gives everything else mass, substance. It's a big part of the reason we even exist. Now that researchers have found it, they want to look at it really closely, to see how it works. But studying the Higgs is going to take a new collider, which is expected to cost $8 billion.
PESKIN: Somehow, we have to figure out how to put our dreams together with the reality.
BRUMFIEL: Times are tough. Budgets are tight. If this thing is going to happen, then physicists across the globe need to have a common vision.
PESKIN: You only need one in the world. And somehow, what you want to do is to have all nations of the world contribute to a single project.
BRUMFIEL: At the moment, that global project is likely to be built not in the U.S., but in Japan. The Japanese government is looking at the collider as part of a broader economic stimulus package, according to Lyn Evans. He's head of the Linear Collider Collaboration, the global group that designed the new machine. But Evans says they won't build it if other countries don't pitch in.
LYN EVANS: The problem is going to be convincing the U.S. government that they can find a pot of money in order to support this Japanese initiative.
BRUMFIEL: Evans has an economic argument. U.S. laboratories and high-tech manufacturers will supply parts to the machine.
EVANS: The reality is that money will not flow to Japan. In fact, pieces of the machine will be built in Europe, in the U.S., and then installed in Japan.
BRUMFIEL: And it's not just about hardware. People are at the heart of these projects. Chip Brock is a researcher at Michigan State University. He says about half of his students take the skills they learn to other parts of the economy.
CHIP BROCK: They've gone into finance. They've gone into teaching. They've gone into manufacturing of one sort or another.
BRUMFIEL: That's the economic case. But at the end of the day, Michael Peskin says the best argument may be just the fact there's so much more to learn.
PESKIN: We're not done. There are lots of questions out there. There's a huge amount we don't know about the universe.
BRUMFIEL: For example, Peskin says the new collider could help explain dark matter, a mystery material that holds galaxies together. Dark matter makes up about 85 percent of all the stuff out there. Compared to that, what's a couple billion dollars?
Geoff Brumfiel, NPR News.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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