US flagship neutrino project forced to downgrade

Nature : Because of budget constraints, plans for the Long-Baseline Neutrino Experiment (LBNE) at Fermilab are being scaled back. The original proposal for the LBNE involved firing neutrinos from its base near Chicago at a massive underground detector located at the Homestake mine in South Dakota. To keep costs down, however, Fermilab has proposed two less-expensive options: The first is to continue with the new neutrino beam but downsize the detector at Homestake and locate it on the surface rather than underground; the second is to aim an existing beam, called Neutrinos at the Main Injector, over a shorter distance to a surface detector at the Soudan lab in Minnesota. Both options would preclude one of the LBNE’s main goals, to watch for proton decay. More important, the downsizing of LBNE will restrict the US’s ability to remain competitive in particle physics.