Budget Cuts Smash Big Science Hopes

By: Michael C. Bradbury

LHC Machine in tunnel at CERN, photo by Maximilien Brice

Deep beneath the Franco-Swiss border, the Large Hadron Collider is smashing atoms in hopes of recreating the moments just following the big bang. And, in the process scientists are learning more about particle physics than ever before. They are even close to capturing the elusive Higgs boson, also known as the God particle.

Now the European Organization for Nuclear Research or CERN is facing something far less elusive—budget cuts. And those proposed cuts could slow down science, jeopardize the project and prevent important discoveries from being made.

Europe is going on a spending diet. In late August a meeting at CERN weighed the best way to proceed in the growing climate of fiscal austerity.

There the Director-general proposed cutting just over $430 million from the program between 2011 and 2015.

A spokesman for the research facility says, “Management felt it could slow things down without compromising the future.”

But Gianni Deroma, the head of CERN’s 2,200-member staff association says that deep cuts could lead to a repeat of the 14-month shutdown shortly after the large hadron collider went online in 2008.

“Budgetary cuts are going to slow down our accelerators.” — Gianni Deroma, President of the CERN staff association

In the last few months, scientists say the LHC is setting new milestones with the amount of data being collected from crashing particle beams at nearly the speed of light.

Any interruption to the progress, especially as the program ramps up its accelerators to full power, could pose a problem.

Deroma says, “Budgetary cuts are going to slow down our accelerators.”

On Labor Day, CERN officials released a statement saying that all nine particle accelerators would be put on ice for a year, beginning in 2012.

Director-general Rolf Heuer admits it will now take a little longer to answer some of these big scientific questions.

A planned shutdown of the LHC in 2012 was already in the works before this week’s announcement. The purpose of that was to upgrade the accelerator so it can reach its full power potential and dive deeper into the unknown corners of science. But that upgrade was intending to take just one of the nine accelerators offline for that year. Now all accelerators will sit idle, allowing scientists to catch up on their data analysis. And a new experiment set to begin in 2015 might also get pushed back a year or two, according to officials.

After the Greek debt crisis this summer, Europe is feeling the economic pinch and science is among the latest casualties.

Science has been somewhat of a sacred cow in Europe, which allows for expensive, internationally-funded mega projects, including the large hadron collider at CERN.

Other projects are also facing deep cuts.

According to the Washington Post, the new coalition government in Britain is leading the European austerity charge while other member nations like Italy and Spain just have no more money for science.

This threatens several planned projects.

Aerial View of Britain's Diamond Light Source, courtesy of Diamond Light Source

ISIS Muon Spectrometer, courtesy of ISIS Neutron Source

The Post reports that Britain may not be able to commit to another, more powerful telescope in Chile that can discern the atmosphere of distant planets. British officials also warn that planned science cuts could force the closure of either the Diamond Light source particle accelerator or the ISIS neutron source.

Germany has been covering shortfalls from other countries to maintain the European Space Agency. But the organization that runs the International Space Station is set to cut administrative costs by 25 percent. And it is unclear whether other European governments will agree to extend funding of the space station through 2020.

Scientists at CERN are particularly frustrated by the new budget climate, especially since they can practically taste one of the biggest achievements in atomic physics—the ability to trap a particle of antimatter long enough to study it.

Leading antimatter physicist Michael Doser says if that project goal isn’t met before the year-long shut down that 12 months may seem like an eternity.