From: jac@ds8.scri.fsu.edu (Jim Carr)
Newsgroups: sci.physics
Subject: Re: People against Supercollider???
Date: 8 Apr 92 13:56:53 GMT
Reply-To: jac@ds8.scri.fsu.edu (Jim Carr)
Distribution: na
Organization: SCRI, Florida State University

In article <22552@dog.ee.lbl.gov> sichase@csa2.lbl.gov writes:
>In article <8070@sun13.scri.fsu.edu>, jac@ds8.scri.fsu.edu (Jim Carr) writes...
>
>>Sometimes (?) you do not do good physics when you are in a hurry.  Shall we 
>>forget the Oops-Leon particle (Lederman's miss on the Upsilon) among others? 
>
>Lederman later got the Upsilon, did he not?     ...

Yes, and I would be the last to say he is not a good physicist.  But that 
was my point: they got in a hurry and were sure the b was lighter than it 
turned out to be, and saw something by overmassaging the noise.  A good 
physicist in a hurry may not do good physics. 

>>I think the competition is driving the field and not the physics.  If it 
>>were the physics, the field would have said that we should turn off FNAL 
>>as soon as top is found and put all of those resources into the critical 
>>area, the SSC search for the Higgs.  It has not said this.  And do not 
>>think I exaggerate: CERN has succeeded because it moved resources to attack 
>>what it thought were the best physics problems, and it was correct. 
>
>But you have proved my point.  CERN was effective at winning the race.  They
>chose well, focussed their resources, and got the big win.  It has driven the

FNAL could have had the W, but chose not to do it, so Carlo did it at CERN. 
The Fermilab folks focussed on the long run, and were correct to push for 
where they are today.  They would have found the W and Z if CERN had not 
existed and have the added plus of a capability to find the top. 

The _real_ reason CERN won one of the races, for the width of the Z, is 
that SLAC got in a big hurry to win the race and botched the design of 
the SLC.  Those are also very good physicists, but they made a big mistake 
while rushing to win the prize.

>>What will you do 2 years after the SSC is turned on and the Higgs found and 
>>the race is over?  If the justification is the race, and not physics, it 
>>will be hard to justify the field when the race is won or lost.
>
>Surely you know that the Higgs (or whatever really breaks SU(2)xU(1))  is not
>the end-all of particle physics at the SSC.  There are many other goals, and 
>dozens of experiments which have been proposed to perform a broad program 
>of fundamental research, including the possibility of running heavy-ions for
>you and me, Jim, sometime far into the future.

I do indeed know that (although I might be more interested in the p-pol + 
p-pol physics that may get done at RHIC) but I do not count.  It will be 
easy to keep running for some time, after all, it cost a ton of money to 
build.  But in the longer run, the politicians will remember why it was 
sold to them -- and it was not sold to do fundamental research of interest 
to a small community of physicists.  

This is a very tricky business.  We might be excited if the Higgs is not 
there and something unusual happens, but Congress expects to be delivered 
a Higgs particle on its silver platter.  They do not understand science. 

--
J. A. Carr                                    |  "The New Frontier of which I  
jac@gw.scri.fsu.edu                           |  speak is not a set of promises
Florida State University  B-186               |  -- it is a set of challenges."
Supercomputer Computations Research Institute |   John F. Kennedy (15 July 60)