If Budget Woes Continue, Panel Says DOE Should Shut Last U.S. Collider

摘要

This week a committee of nuclear scientists recommended that the cash-strapped Department of Energy (DOE) shut down the last grand U.S. atom-smasher, the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York. The closing would be necessary to free up money for a new nuclear physics facility, says a report to DOE's Nuclear Science Advisory Committee (NSAC). But the physicists whose project, the Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB), came out on top in the committee's report aren't gloating. Along with the rest of the nuclear physics community, they fear that any trade-off will lead to a massive contraction of U.S. nuclear physics.