With the future of experimental particle physics in the US already looking bleak (see Physics Today, May 2005, page 26), yet another major experimental project has been canceled. In August, NSF announced the cancellation of the RSVP (Rare Symmetry-Violating Processes) experiment just before its construction was slated to begin at Brookhaven National Laboratory.
RSVP was actually a pair of proposed experiments—called KOPIO and MECO—that were jointly to avail themselves of an intense proton beam from Brookhaven’s venerable Alternating Gradient Synchrotron (AGS) to make K0 mesons and muons in unprecedented profusion for the investigation of extremely rare processes. Such processes are particularly sensitive tests of the standard model of particle theory; they might well point the way to a more unified theory of the fundamental forces.
Three years ago, the Department of Energy canceled two major experiments then in progress at Brookhaven: a charged-kaon precursor of KOPIO and...
