The Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois has a newly renovated circular collider called the Tevatron. And in five years, CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, will bring online the Large Hadron Collider, a circular collider that smashes protons together. But circular smashers have problems, Swartz says. To significantly speed up electrons sent whizzing through its tunnel, a circular collider must tremendously increase the amount of energy it applies. Swartz and other workshop participants favor an electron-positron linear collider.
Linear machines are smaller and can achieve higher speeds with much smaller increases in energy.
The central dilemma is that this is Big Science, which carries a hefty price tag in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Swartz says that German scientists are about to submit a proposal to build a linear collider under Hamburg, and that Japanese physicists also have an effort under way. A large part of our community is moving to Europe. It's a question whether we can get them to come back again. Inside are chunks, slices, and dust from every corner of the Earth and even some places beyond, each neatly labeled, cataloged, and filed away.