Feds Set Priorities Based on “Quarks” Report

A federal government science group has issued recommendations based on the National Research Council’s 2002 report Connecting Quarks With the Cosmos: Eleven Science Questions for the New Century, and dark-energy research projects have received the strongest endorsement. The recommendations come from the Interagency Working Group on the Physics of the Universe (IWG), which was organized by the National Science and Technology Council’s Committee on Science to examine federal investments required by the NRC study (see Physics Today, July 2002, page 22 ).

Although the recommendations don’t have dollar figures attached to them, they are important because they define the priorities federal research agencies are placing on the NRC recommendations. The IWG included members from the US Department of Energy, NASA, NSF, the Office of Science and Technology Policy, and the Office of Management and Budget.

“The IWG recommends three highest priority investigations of Dark Energy by means of space- and ground-based astronomy, which should be enabled by coordinated activities of the [federal] agencies,” the report says. Under the category “ready for immediate investment” are the following dark-energy recommendations:

• ▸ The NASA/DOE joint dark-energy mission. This mission would best serve the scientific community if launched by the middle of the next decade, the IWG report says.

• ▸ The study of weak lensing produced by dark matter, currently the scientific goal of the ground-based Large-aperture Synoptic Survey Telescope. Significant technology investments to enable the proposed LSST are required, the IWG says.

• ▸ A coordinated NSF/NASA effort to use the number of clusters of galaxies observed by ground-based cosmic microwave background and space-based x-ray observations as a dark-energy probe.

To advance research on dark matter, neutrinos, and proton decay, the working group endorses the development by the end of 2004 of an NSF roadmap laying out the future of underground science. The group says that NSF and DOE “will work together to identify a core suite of physics experiments.”

The IWG also endorses the upgrade of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) and “execution of the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) mission.” NSF, NASA, and DOE efforts to “strengthen numerical relativity research” to simulate the sources of gravitational waves are also supported.

The report endorses the development of roadmaps to determine future investments in programs related to the origin of heavy elements, the birth of the universe, and high-density and high-temperature physics. The report, The Physics of the Universe: A 21st Century Frontier for Discovery, is available at http://www.ostp.gov/html/physicsoftheuniverse2.pdf .