Fermi scientists ask Hultgren,  Biggert to back physics program

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Fermi employees and members of the media watch representatives from the Science, Space and Technology Committee and scientists discuss Department of Energy underground particle physics programs, Wednesday, Sep. 28, 2011 at Fermilab in Batavia. | Steven Buyansky~Sun-Times Media

Watch Tevatron shut down

Hundreds of scientists and engineers from around the world will gather at Fermilab in Batavia on Friday afternoon to watch as the last particle makes its way around the Tevatron accelerator and past the CDF and DZero detectors.

But since it’s impossible for just about anybody else to secure a spot in the control room, science junkies can watch live from home as the world’s leading accelerator for more than two decades powers down.

The event will be live-streamed beginning at 2 p.m. with remarks from Fermilab Director Pier Oddone. It is expected to last about 30 minutes. To watch live, go to http://1.usa.gov/ovCqUT.

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Updated: October 14, 2011 11:12AM

BATAVIA — It’s the eve of the shutdown of the Tevatron, the site of America’s most productive physics experiments, and physicists from Fermilab and all over the country are pleading for the funding to break ground on their next big project.

To that end, they met with U.S. Reps. Randy Hultgren, R-14th District, and Judy Biggert, R-13th District, both members of House Science, Space and Technology Committee, on Wednesday morning for a roundtable, pitching the Long Baseline Neutrino Experiment.

On Friday, the Tevatron — formerly the world’s largest particle accelerator — will shut down at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory here, because of U.S. Department of Energy decisions to divert funding to other projects. But scientists at Fermilab and its research partners at universities around the U.S. are asking not to build another high energy accelerator, but to push the intensity frontier, namely, researching dark matter and the nature of neutrinos, a little-understood particle.

The idea is to build the facilities to send a beam of Fermilab-produced neutrinos through the earth to a large detector deep underground in South Dakota.

“The proposed physics experiments address questions central to our understanding of the universe — what makes up the majority of the matter in the universe, and understanding the most perplexing particle in the universe, the neutrino,” said Kevin Lesko, physicist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

For the Long Baseline Neutrino Experiment, scientists would need funds from Congress to develop the underground laboratory in the retired Homestake gold mine in Colorado, which they said was ideal for its distance from Fermilab, as well as its solid rock structure and low background radiation. In addition to the particle physics experiments Fermilab would conduct there, other scientists would be able to research everything from cave-dwelling organisms to controlling air pollution.

Initially, the LBNE project would use protons that Fermilab now produces to produce the neutrino beams to be sent to South Dakota, but the useful life of that technology is running out.

“These front-end machines will be 50 years old in the early 2020s,” said Fermilab Director Pier Oddone.

To make the project useful for decades in the future, Fermilab would have to build something new.

The idea of moving more particles, rather than more energy, is what will make the LBNE project complimentary to, rather than competing with, projects like the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Europe.

Legislators and physicists at the table Wednesday shared the desire to regain America’s status as a world leader on the frontiers of particle physics. But Biggert and Hultgren fell short of committing to the $1.2 billion to $1.5 billion that would be required to get the South Dakota facility running.

Biggert agreed to take the proposal back to Washington, and convene a meeting of the Science, Space and Technology Committee there to make the LBNE project a funding priority, calling it, “the basic type of research that can have a dramatic effect on the world. It can change our understanding of matter, antimatter, and what we know about our universe.”

“First of all, we’ve got to make sure that money that is saved by closing down the Tevatron remains here and is in a project like this that benefits us for decades to come ... ,” Hultgren said. “That is something I am absolutely going to be fighting for.”

“Other countries are looking at doing this kind research,” he said. “If we slow or fail on this, they will catch up to us and be able to surpass us. And I think that’s a significant loss to our nation.”

Oddone tried to press home just how significant a loss it might be, alluding to a European proposal still in its infancy to conduct an experiment similar to LBNE from CERN to Sweden. That would cement the lead that Europe has taken in physics research.

But more close to home, Oddone warned that though Fermilab has many programs to keep it moving forward, should the federal government decide to not fund a major new project like the LBNE, the Batavia laboratory would face an uncertain future.

“Facilities like the one based on neutrino experiments take a decade to get developed,” said Oddone. “I’m worried if we don’t do something now, by the end of the decade, it’s a business plan to go out of business.”