US particle colliders vie for funding

Nature : The fate of three US particle colliders may be decided at a 7â9 September meeting between NSF and a nuclear-science advisory committee to the Department of Energy. In the event of flat funding for physics in next year’s budget, at least one of the three could get cut. If an earlier report on scientific priorities is heeded, the most likely to face the chopping block could be the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York. Its record-setting temperatures were surpassed earlier this month by the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland. The two other contenders for elimination of funding are the Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility at Jefferson Lab in Virginia, which is undergoing a major upgrade, and the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams at Michigan State University in East Lansing, which hasn’t been built yet. However, if the committee can convince Congress of the importance of funding US nuclear science, it’s possible all three facilities could continue as planned.