Since 2014, the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) has been conducting studies to gather information to decide whether Japan is interested in hosting the ILC. The summary report of the ILC Advisory Panel set up by MEXT for this purpose was outlined in the last edition of NewsLine. In addition […]
The Summary Report explained
Let me start by explaining the context of this summary report. In September 2013, the Science Council of Japan (SCJ) submitted a report on the study of the International Linear Collider to the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) (see LC NewsLine from 10 October 2013). The SCJ report recommended the government to […]
Ten Years and Counting…
Former GDE Director Barry Barish revisits the project he led for eight years
Many of the striking advances in particle physics during the particle collider era have resulted directly from the complementarity of hadron-hadron and electron-positron colliders. Unfortunately, it is not practical to build a complementary circular electron-positron collider for the LHC capable of reaching center-of-mass energies of about 1 TeV (tera electronvolt) because of the large amount of […]
Addressing the known unknowns
I am sure that my readers will remember that in my last Director’s Corner, in April, I threatened to write at some future date about the new Project Implementation Planning (PIP) document. Those of you with an even longer memory, going back to my Director’s Corner of April 2014, may even remember what it is. […]
Two Linear Collider events in Whistler, Canada this autumn
As the summer conferences are kicking off, providing more and more complete 8 TeV LHC (Large Hadron Collider) results and the very first glimpses of 13 TeV data, it is also time to start thinking about the autumn linear collider programme. The highlight for the linear collider community is the yearly international Linear Collider Workshop […]
ILC the discovery machine
It is often said that the ILC is a precision machine. One should note, however, that the ILC is actually a discovery machine that can find new phenomena and new particles LHC at CERN would not be able to discover. This capability is made possible by a few unique features of the ILC. First, at […]
ILC starts at 500 GeV and goes down in energy
ILC operation is still some years away, but physicists are already gearing up to find the optimal way to operate the ILC to harvest as much physics as we can. One of the great advantages of the ILC over circular machines is that the energy of the machine is tunable, and can also be upgraded […]
Japanese diet members go to Washington
There was a visit by Japanese Diet members to Washington DC from 26 to 29 April (see “Discussions at the political level over the ILC in US and Europe” in this issue of LC NewsLine). I attended two of those meetings, one on 28 April at the Hudson Institute and one on 29 April at […]
Field trip to a model lab
A delegation from Kesen-Numa City, from Japan, led by the Mayor Mr. Shigeru Sugawara, visited CERN and the area around it from 18 to 20 May. The group consisted of 16 representatives from the city’s Council, the Commercial and Industry Association, the Board of Education, the Reconstruction and Policy Planning Division and many other official bodies. […]
LHC commissioning continues in spite of obstacles
It is exciting to watch the LHC operations team slowly switch the machine back on step by step, encountering problems, solving them, encountering new ones and still breaking records while getting the machine running again. It is also educational. When the linear collider goes into operation it won’t be at the push of one button […]