🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <8070@sun13.scri.fsu.edu>, jac@ds8.scri.fsu.edu (Jim Carr) writes...
>In article <22528@dog.ee.lbl.gov> sichase@csa1.lbl.gov writes:
>>
>>  ... comments on value of investing in accelerator R&D deleted ...
>>
>>The reason that we don't is that the particle physicists are in a race against
>>time.  You don't do good physics by verifying someone elses result.  This
>>competative incentive to move fast is a strong driving force in the advancement
>>of science.  For the most part it is a very good thing.  However, in this case
>>I wonder if we are leaping just a little to soon, without looking quite enough.
> 
>Sometimes (?) you do not do good physics when you are in a hurry.  Shall we 
>forget the Oops-Leon particle (Lederman's miss on the Upsilon) among others? 

Lederman later got the Upsilon, did he not?  He also has been in on quite 
a few other of the most important discoveries in the last 30 years, such as
the proof of the existence of lepton families, for which he shared the Nobel
prize.  It's not quite fair to pull out one mistake from a career of excellence
matched by perhaps nobody currently living.  

>I think the competition is driving the field and not the physics.  If it 
>were the physics, the field would have said that we should turn off FNAL 
>as soon as top is found and put all of those resources into the critical 
>area, the SSC search for the Higgs.  It has not said this.  And do not 
>think I exaggerate: CERN has succeeded because it moved resources to attack 
>what it thought were the best physics problems, and it was correct. 
> 

But you have proved my point.  CERN was effective at winning the race.  They
chose well, focussed their resources, and got the big win.  It has driven the
field on to new and better things, opened up vast new research possibilities,
and been a haven for theorist and experimentalists to pursue the best
high-energy physics possible.  But it has not put ALL its eggs in one basket.
LEAR is running, and doing great hadron physics.  The SPS is still running 
protons and now runs heavy-ions for the high-energy nuclear physics community
as well.  And they have other machines on the drawing board.  They have a very
healthy program.  

>What will you do 2 years after the SSC is turned on and the Higgs found and 
>the race is over?  If the justification is the race, and not physics, it 
>will be hard to justify the field when the race is won or lost.

Surely you know that the Higgs (or whatever really breaks SU(2)xU(1))  is not
the end-all of particle physics at the SSC.  There are many other goals, and 
dozens of experiments which have been proposed to perform a broad program 
of fundamental research, including the possibility of running heavy-ions for
you and me, Jim, sometime far into the future.

-Scott