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Published online 4 June 2008 | Nature 453, 705 (2008) | doi:10.1038/453705a
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Physicists to target neutrinos
US switches focus from colliders.
The new focus for America's high-energy physics should be an elusive one: the zippy, chargeless, near-massless neutrino, according to a report that provides the US Department of Energy (DOE) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) with a roadmap for the next decade.
The report, written by the Particle Physics Project Prioritization Panel (P5) and endorsed on 29 May by a DOE and NSF advisory committee, suggests that the US physics programme should concentrate on the fertile terrain of neutrino physics rather than focusing all its efforts on the high-energy frontier explored by colliders.
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Anyone who is able to understand both physics and economics has to appreciate the obstacles the ILC faces. Until LHC does live up to some of the lofty expectations then governments and others are going to hesitate to commit to such a grand expense. docdeal
David is right. The LHC has NOT lived up to expectations. But physicists learned nothing and once again use models to set expectations: The new neutrino studies will discover "how the three known neutrino 'flavours' morph from one type to another." Neutrinos do NOT oscillate. That "discovery" was made to salvage the model of a Hydrogen (H) filled Sun fueled by H-fusion. In fact, measurements show that H-fusion provides only 35% of solar energy. The other 65% comes from neutron emission and neutron decay. See: [1] "Isotopes tell origin and operation of the Sun," AIP Conference Proceedings, volume 822 (2006) pp. 206-225. http://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/0510001v1 or [2] "The Sun is a plasma diffuser that sorts atoms by mass," Physics of Atomic Nuclei 69 (2006) pp. 1847-1856. http://arxiv.org/pdf/astro-ph/0609509v3
I think that neither physics nor economics have anything to do with it; this is pure politics. The US is going through yet another fit of feeling poor and not funding basic research at the level it should be funded. To put things in perspective, the entire yearly budget of high energy physics is equal to about three days of Iraq war. And if we had built the SSC, we'd known how the electro-weak symmetry is broken for seven years now.
The International Linear Collider in US has been made redundant by the much more powerful Large Hadron Collider at CERN. It is only natural that the current ILC project would be replaced by research focusing on high energy physics. Perhaps the US Department of Energy should reconsider if the fund thus available will be well spent in probing more into the ever elusive neutrino. Instead, DOE may want to refocus its attention to seriously seek for clean energy alternatives – the roadmap for the immediate future. Or the physicists are having something else in mind. (Tan Boon Tee)
Science funing in the American state will continue to decline as it continues it's economic and social collapse. The U.S. government will have a 10.5 trillion dollar debt on it's hands when the current occupant of the White House leaves office, and the U.S. economy has grown highly dependent on an infusion of borrowed money to keep it stimulated. Don't expect that to change any time soon. To make matters worse, the current American president has devalued the U.S. currency by almost 50% compared to other world currencies over the last 7 years. So on the international market the U.S. dollar only purchases about half of what it did before. For these reasons, Europe is rapidly becoming the principle source of science in the world.
_____________________________________________________ Then [Fermi] delivered his verdict in a quiet, even voice. "There are two ways of doing calculations in theoretical physics", he said. "One way, and this is the way I prefer, is to have a clear physical picture of the process that you are calculating. ..." A meeting with Enrico Fermi, Freeman Dyson (Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton), Nature 427, 297 (2004 _____________________________________________________ Therefore, ere all of those billions of dollars that are likely to go into the project, should we not have a clear physical picture of the neutrino in mind? Please take a few minutes to check out (1). This is not an ad hoc model, but is part of the ultimate and all-embracing theory for the unification of physics. Briefly, here, the electron originates from a pole of the nucleon; whereas, the neutrino (comparable to the electron in mass-energy) emanates radially from the nucleon equator, dropping in intensity with distance, the reason why it is difficult to detect. This is a corollary to the fact that the moving body contracts not only in the direction of motion (with implication to inertial force) BUT ALSO TRANSVERSE to motion (with implication to centrifugal force when motion is curvilinear). To those who would like everything on Page 1, a one-page summary is given in (2). If it whets your appetite for more, then the two-and-a-half-page preprint in (3) could prove well worth your while. Refute any aspect is fundamentally flawed to the satisfaction of ONLY your university physics department head, and US25,000 cash is all yours. The money is paid beforehand to the physics head, with his/her fee paid as extra. No joke; no scam; just an earnest appeal here to mainstream peers to resolve this matter for me early with your profound knowledge and expertise. (The money offered is the least I could do in gratitude; it would be worth every penny for me considering the time I would otherwise be wasting in trying to flog a fundamentally flawed worldview.) Thank you. (1) www.sittampalam.net/TheNeutrino.htm (2) www.sittampalam.net/Summary.pdf (3) www.sittampalam.net/LateralThoughts.pdf
Tan Boon Tee you make a great point about the funding for alternative energy. I'm a cynic. Until Big Oil (petrol producing nations and corporations) can determine how to control the field and generate funds then I have few hopes for a concerted U.S. or multi-national effort. It is most assuredly economic. If those who control the purse-strings do not see a return then few funds will be distributed. Sure I wish that science was for science sake. However in an age when demand is rapidly depleting those resources such as metals, minerals, etc. then you can expect more belt-tightening. Do not misunderstand; I'm just being realistic. Economics is politics. Any entity's first rule is self-maintenance. Keep in mind BT Tan is both a realist and visionary. However the old guard may prove to be neither!