Particle physicists offer a roadmap for the next decade

“The US will have to relinquish leadership in certain areas of particle physics,” said Karsten Heeger, a physicist at Yale University and vice president of P5. “That would have an impact that would be felt both on the field and beyond.”

If all else fails, the draft report urges the federal government to stay the course on projects it has already committed to, including boosting the brightness, or collision rates, of the Large Hadron Collider for deeper studies of the Higgs and other rare phenomena. ; continued construction of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, a telescope in Chile designed to make 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 shift its focus to gaining support for the plan, both within and outside the physics community. Dr. Murayama especially hoped it would catch the attention of staff members who communicate with members of Congress about how to vote on the department’s budget.

“Basic research is a hard sell,” said Dr. Murayama. “It provides no immediate benefit to society.” But the reward is worth it, he added: Particle physics has led to revolutions in medical applications, materials science and even the creation of iPhones and the World Wide Web.

But according to Dr. Murayama, the benefits exceed the impact the field has on society. “Particle physics is really at the core 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. .”