29 March

The budget for the Department of Energy’s Office of Science would increase by 2.4 per cent to $4.992 billion, but high-energy physics would be reduced by 1.8 per cent to $777 million. …The proposed cuts in high-energy physics would hit two long-term programmes the hardest: the Long-Baseline Neutrino Experiment (LBNE) and the US R&D programme for the International Linear Collider (ILC).

Bill Brinkman, director of the DOE’s Office of Science, wrote to Oddone to ask that Fermilab build the LBNE in stages. “I would like Fermilab to lead the development of an affordable and phased approach that will enable important science results at each phase,” he wrote.

At a projected $1.5 billion, the Long-Baseline Neutrino Experiment (LBNE) at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab) in Batavia, Illinois, is not affordable, says William Brinkman, director of DOE’s Office of Science. So this week he asked physicists to come up with a cheaper way to do the same science.