A 27 November 2012 decision by the Italian government not to fund SuperB effectively killed the asymmetric-energy electron–positron collider that was to be built near Rome. Designated a flagship project by the Italian government just two years earlier, SuperB was canceled because its estimated cost grew from about €650 million (roughly $860 million) to nearly €1 billion and its schedule slipped by about three years. Ground had not yet been broken for SuperB.
The loss to science is likely to be small because of the similar Belle II experiment under construction at SuperKEKB in Japan. Both colliders were designed to produce large quantities of B mesons, D mesons, and tau leptons to study rare decays and to test mixing and CP violation among mesons bearing the charm quark.
One feature that would have been unique to SuperB was a polarized electron beam, says Caltech’s David Hitlin, a member of the...
