Barry Barish | 20 September 2012There are no official proposals for where the ILC could be located. Rather, our approach has been to develop an ILC design compatible with three “sample” sites that have different characteristics. In this process, we have by no means ruled out the possibility of housing the ILC in a shallow site, even though all three of our sample sites are deep underground. A new shallow site possibility has recently been suggested in Hanford, Washington in the US.
Category: Director's Corner | Tagged: cut-and-cover, DOE, ILC site, LIGO, United States
Barry Barish | 13 September 2012SLAC has had a remarkable first 50 years, which were celebrated in a special event this past month. Although the theme of that event focused on the next 50 years, the achievements of the past inform the future plans and prospects. In that regard, the physics achievements of SLAC were duly noted at the event because the American Physical Society named it an APS Historic Site and awarded the lab a plaque.
Category: Director's Corner | Tagged: anniversary, APS, SLAC, SLC
Barry Barish | 6 September 2012The particle physics communities worldwide are undertaking strategic planning processes that will set out the course of the field for the coming years. Recent science results, such as the discovery of the Higgs-like particle and the measurement of a relatively large value of theta13, open up exciting future possibilities. In Europe, the process of developing an update to the European Strategy for Particle Physics is under way. The next major step will be an open symposium in Krakow, Poland, from 10 to 12 September, for which a set of linear-collider input documents has been submitted.
Category: Director's Corner | Tagged: CLIC, European Strategy for Particle Physics, future, Higgs, ILC
Barry Barish | 23 August 2012The International Linear Collider Steering Committee (ILCSC) met in Melbourne at ICHEP12 to deal with the completion of its own mission and the initiation of a new organisation to pursue a future linear collider project. The ILC Technical Design Report (TDR) and companion Detailed Baseline Design (DBD) report will represent the final milestone in the mandate for the ILCSC. The ILCSC balanced its planning for receiving, reviewing and rolling-out of these reports over the coming year, with planning for the new organisational structure that will take the next steps toward a global linear collider project.
Category: Director's Corner | Tagged: Higgs factory, ICFA, ILCSC, Linear Collider Director, PAC, timeline
Barry Barish | 9 August 2012Last month, both LHC experiments at CERN announced the discovery of a new particle with mass of 125.5 GeV, which is likely the long-sought Higgs boson. It made headlines worldwide. This is indeed an exciting moment for particle physicists and it came just prior to our largest scientific meeting, the biannual International Conference on High Energy Physics ICHEP held in Melbourne, Australia. In Melbourne, the detailed and impressive scientific evidence was presented to the worldwide particle physics community.
Category: Director's Corner | Tagged: Higgs boson, ICHEP, Standard Model
Kaoru Yokoya | 26 July 2012With the news of the Higgs, public interest in particle physics in general and the ILC in particular is at an all-time high. Kaoru Yokoya, Asian Regional Director, says that now is the time to foster this interest and find the next generation of particle physicists in Japan.
Category: Director's Corner | Tagged: Japan, KEK, outreach
Barry Barish | 19 July 2012The Korean Physical Society recently celebrated its 60th anniversary in an impressive event in Daejean, South Korea. South Korea has made an astounding recovery from a country devastated by war to a struggling poor postwar country to a leading high-tech industrial country. The Koreans have embraced science and technology, are manufacturing high-quality cars and electronics for the world, and have become an important part of the international science community.
Category: Director's Corner | Tagged: ILC, Korea, LHC, neutrinos
