Wednesday, September 26, 2007

The Future of Fermilab

This MSNBC Reporter got a closer look at Fermilab and its future as the LHC is about to go online. That report on Project X was covered in one of my previous blog entry here.

In the worst case scenario, the Tevatron will be shut down by the end of 2009, but Fermilab itself will continue as a research lab in many other areas.

Oddone also points to Fermilab's role in a plethora of experiments probing the mysteries of the neutrino, dark matter and dark energy, on Earth and perhaps in space. Elsewhere on the astrophysics front, Fermilab is a collaborator in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey as well as the Pierre Auger Cosmic Ray Observatory.


Still, it is a particle collider laboratory and I don't think anyone would be happy if it doesn't reclaim that role after the Tevatron.

Zz.

2 comments:

Stupac2 said...

I think that SLAC is going through a similar identity crisis, but from what I've heard it's shifting at least partly into biophysics (that could be entirely wrong, however).

ZapperZ said...

Not biophysics, but as a light source with construction of the LCLS.

SLAC has decided to change its "gender", and even the DOE funding has changed hands from High Energy Physics division of the DOE to the Basic Energy Science division. So it is truly changing its identity. It is no longer a high energy physics laboratory.

This is different than Fermilab where it plans to remain as a high energy physics laboratory, except that it won't be a particle collider after the Tevatron and without either the ILC or Project X.

Zz.