Neutrinos Faster Than Light? U.S Physics Funding Down, Int'l Collaboration Up?

 On September 23rd researchers at CERN, Europe's main physics laboratory, announced that subatomic particles called neutrinos had apparently sped from the lab's headquarters near Geneva, through the Earth's crust, to an underground detector 730km (450 miles) away around 60-billionths of a second faster than light would take to cover the same distance (see article). The difference in speed is tiny, but the implications are huge. 

---"Faster than the speed of light: What does an experiment that seems to contradict Einstein's theory of relativitiy really mean?" The Economist, Leaders section (10.1.11)

A foundation stone of modern physics and Einstein's special theory of relativity is that nothing is faster than the speed of light, and more, that its speed remains constant regardless of the place or moving speed of an observer. Well, now an experiment at CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has called that into question. There will likely be other experiments to confirm or deny these findings, of course. This is something they will want to be certain about because much in physics could change or be seen differently based upon the results. Consider these implications offered by the Economist article:

If the result is true, though, it does change everything. In particular, the likely explanation is that the neutrinos are taking a short-cut through one of the extra dimensions which string theory postulates are hidden among the familiar four of length, breadth, height and time. Measured along this five-dimensional route, Einstein might still be right. (It would not so much be that he made a mistake as that he did not know the whole story.) Indeed, moving beyond four dimensions in this way would also allow physicists to try to integrate Einstein's work with quantum theory, the other great breakthrough of 20th-century physics, but one which simply refuses to overlap with relativity. A unified theory of everything, including perhaps as many as 11 dimensions, would then beckon. 

Now that's very exciting stuff, at least for physicists, lots of other scientists, and those who have a rough idea of what that means for our understanding of the universe. So naturally, many would think the U.S. would be contesting the primacy of place in these research efforts, that funding would be flowing and optimism for more would be rising. But not so.

In fact, on September 30th the U.S. closed the facility and ended the work of Fermilab's Tevatron particle accelerator outside Chicago, long the standard setter for physics research on subatomic particles. In a feature story in the same addition of The Economist:

At 2pm on September 30th, the last day of the American fiscal year, Helen Edwards, a septuagenarian American physicist, will press a red switch, and then a green one. By doing so, she will kill the Tevatron—a particle accelerator (pictured above), with a circumference of 6.3km, that she helped, in her younger days, to build. 

[...] For a quarter of a century before CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) began working in earnest in 2009 the Tevatron, at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Batavia, near Chicago, dominated high-energy physics. It was the first machine to smash particles together with energies in excess of 1 trillion electron-volts—or 1 TeV, whence its name. This led to the discovery of the top quark, the heaviest elementary particle seen to date and the penultimate piece of the jigsaw puzzle known as the Standard Model that is the best description physicists have of the basic components of the universe. 

For a few months in 2010 it looked as though the Tevatron might get a reprieve in order to find the last (and heaviest) missing bit of the model—the Higgs boson, which is thought to give other particles their mass. That would have been a delicious victory, as the LHC's first goal is the discovery of the Higgs. In the event, though, Congress pulled the plug. 

---"So long and thanks for all the quarks," The Economist, Science and Technology (10.1.11)

But it turns out that the Fermilab may have a new lease on life in high-energy physics. Quite apart from the Tevatron, Fermilab has the capability to "whip up the world's most intense beams of neutrinos," and a new project NOVA beginning in 2013 places it in a good position to replicate the experiment at CERN's LHC, and affirm or not their recent stunning results. And follow-up neutrino research is already planned well beyond that. But the price tag will be $1 billion, and the recent budget climate raises concerns about U.S. enthusiasm for unilateral funding of  leadership research in this field again. It is very clearly another sign of America's contracting capability or willingness to lead in areas and ways this country and world once expected of us.

So we now appear to be entering a new era with a new U.S. attitude of unwillingness to dominate funding for scientific research--but it is also a time when other global research centers appear more willing to step up to more collaborative efforts and shared funding. And that likely implies a new role for U.S. physicists: being more a partner, or perhaps even a role player on a larger stage with Europe's CERN and other emerging centers leading or sharing the lead. And likely that's progress, a better, more realistic model for international physics research and our role in it. From The Economist article:

Though it may gall those Americans who would like their country to continue to go it alone in matters physical, [multinational research partnerships and funding] may represent the future. It already looks likely that the successor to the LHC, a device called the International Linear Collider (ILC), will be built in Japan (if it is built at all). Most physicists agree it would be America's for the asking if Americans wanted it, but the current Congress seems not to, because it would entail doling out half of the $20 billion the ILC is expected to cost. 

Even if it ends up on the other side of the Pacific, though, America will be expected to make some sort of financial contribution to the ILC. And the odd American accent is not unknown even in the corridors of Geneva. In matters of particle physics, then, patriotism is passé. The "E" in CERN originally stood for "European", but the organisation already boasts Israel as a member, and India, Japan and the United States as observers. Moreover, more than two dozen other non-European countries have co-operation agreements with CERN. The passing of the Tevatron may cause the shedding of a manly (and womanly) tear or two among America's physicists. But physics belongs to no one country. That said, you can bet the lads and lasses at Fermilab will be happy to grab any credit they can for helping dethrone relativity. For in their heart of hearts, even the sceptics who say they think the result from OPERA must be a mistake hope that it is not.

A new world, perhaps? Perhaps, a better one?