Harold Shapiro

The much awaited U.S. report is called "Revealing the Hidden Nature of Space and Time : Charting the Course for Elementary Particle Physics." It addresses the future opportunities in particle physics and gives recommendations for the U.S. program, in the context of the worldwide program.

The U.S. report provides a large and welcome boost to our aspirations for the ILC: " The results of the committee's analysis have led to its chief recommendation. The United States should remain globally competitive in elementary particle physics by playing a leading role in the worldwide effort to aggressively study Terascale physics."

They follow by defining the priorities to implement their recommendation that included to " Plan and initiate a comprehensive program to become the world-leading center for research and development on the science and technology of a linear collider, and do what is necessary to mount a compelling bid to build the proposed International Linear Collider on U.S. soil." I hope that this very strong priority statement for the linear collider will be followed by similar priorities statements emerging from Europe and Asia.

Long range planning for high energy physics in the U.S. has traditionally been done through HEPAP, an agency advisory panel. The last such subpanel report, carried out in 2001 and chaired by Jon Bagger (JHU) and myself, helped to establish a TeV scale linear collider as the long term goal of our field, in conjunction with similar reports from Europe and Asia.

Last year, it was decided that planning for the role of elementary particle physics required a different kind of study, one carried out by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences (the "gold standard" for such reports in the US). The objective was to form a very broad committee that would do an overall assessment of the field, its prospects and lay out priorities for its future.
Read more...

--Barry Barish

Director's Corner Archive