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Needs versus means in high‐energy physics

JUN 01, 1980
To maintain the steady increase in collision energy achieved during the last fifty years, after the lifespan of currently planned accelerators and storage rings, will take new, still conjectural, ideas.
Wolfgang K. H. Panofsky

Some physicists have recently begun to voice their expectations that the “grand synthesis” of all physics is almost within our grasp. If only we had a little more of this or that, and if only some of the remaining nagging difficulties would go away… Here, however, I would like to turn from this sublime ambition to more down‐to‐earth considerations. Physics remains a science based on experience. How do we acquire that experience to determine whether or not particle physics is indeed on the right track to the “grand synthesis?”

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More about the authors

Wolfgang K. H. Panofsky, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center.

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This Content Appeared In
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Volume 33, Number 6

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