Nature:
The fate of three US particle colliders may be decided at a
7â9 September meeting between NSF and a
nuclear-science advisory committee to the Department of Energy.
In the event of flat funding for physics in next year's budget,
at least one of the three could get cut. If an earlier report
on scientific priorities is heeded, the most likely to face the
chopping block could be the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at
Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York. Its
record-setting temperatures were surpassed earlier this month
by the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Switzerland. The two
other contenders for elimination of funding are the Continuous
Electron Beam Accelerator Facility at Jefferson Lab in
Virginia, which is undergoing a major upgrade, and the Facility
for Rare Isotope Beams at Michigan State University in East
Lansing, which hasn't been built yet. However, if the committee
can convince Congress of the importance of funding US nuclear
science, it's possible all three facilities could continue as
planned.
