Hi Daniel,
I apologize, but I would like to speak against your message.
I believe that the sentiments you expressed are wrong and misguided - but I can identify with
how this view can appear when one works a large fraction of the time in international collaboration
as I have done. More directly, I believe the views that you express are a disease that would
eventually spell an end to our capacity to inspire new challenges for the next phase of energy frontier
research and discount heavily the value of large-scale international participation when it comes
to evaluating the return on investment from the US funding of HEP research.
US leadership means that the research funding provided by the US tax payers that go into supporting
a wide range of groups at universities and labs leads to new innovation and technology that produce
unique capabilities and strengths that excel above that any other national program is able
to bring to the table and that this is the payoff that originates from this investment.
Part of the payoff from this leadership is the ability to participate in large international science collaboration
in the manner which you describe - in which scientists are equally valued from wherever the originate,
country, background, or any other multi-national or fuzzy definition of who comes from where.
I want to emphasize that this is the payoff, not the leadership element (at least not the most important
aspect of it).
I worry that too many of the US HEP physicists have grown up in an environment where a
previous generation of physicists have handed them on a silver platter the ground-breaking ideas
and technologies to make a major impact in existing and previous colliders, and that the
current generation of physicists translate leadership as getting an analysis coordinatorship,
or being editor of a big paper where they have analyzed data from an existing experiment, or being
the chair of some statistics committee. These are leadership payoffs.
We certainly should share the chores of running ongoing experiments with our colleagues,
but when it comes to creating new ideas and new directions for research and technology
and the quality of the training our institutions provide to students - we need to strive to be the best.
If you point to excitement of build a super-plane as an example, look what happened to the
US space program. We (NASA0 can't even launch people into space anymore. Years of complacent
low Earth orbit flights drained the program with a complete lack of innovation and big steps
of development. This would be the equivalent of collecting low statistics at a medium energy
collider for 2 decades - it's a program that is doomed to end with no future to replace it.
In our day, children were still inspired to become astronauts and rocket scientists - children
of today are inspired to be Higgs physicists. What are we planning for this next wave of
scientists - and will be lose on the huge investment that has been made the way the space
program did. And I doubt that a SpaceX-type initiative could recover a lost HEP program.
Best,
Chris
On Aug 23, 2013, at 1:06 AM, Daniel Whiteson <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Chiming in late as I've just returned from an email-free vacation...
>
> Two points:
>
> (1) I think it's true that the VLHC concept has considerable support ... in the sense that a large fraction of the community would be excited to build and operate such a machine. But that's like asking Lockheed if they would be excited to build a new super-plane. It's what we like to do.
>
> The harder question is whether it's well-motivated compared to other expensive (non-EF or non-HEP) science projects. Clearly many LHC discoveries would provide compelling motivation for a higher-energy machine, but such a discovery has not yet materialized. We've tried to take a hard look in our NP report at the case in which _nothing new_ is seen at the LHC; you can judge for yourself how well we've done, but it's clearly a more slippery argument.
>
> (2) I've seen and heard some comments about "US leadership". This is probably just semantics, but the implications trouble me, because:
> (i) "US" is ill defined: is it work done by US citizens? Or profs at US institutions? Or at US facilities? Or with US-built parts?
> (ii) "leadership" is somewhat pejorative to the rest of the community. Isn't it enough that we work towards "continued US strength" rather than trying to make sure we have our elbows in front of our colleagues in other communities?
> (iii) Why is "US leadership" so important in such an international community with poorly-defined fuzzy borders? Is such nationalism just used cynically to sell the project to Congress, or is there a real argument to be made that it's critical that we are #1?
>
> Cheers,
> Daniel
>
>
> On Aug 20, 2013, at 11:26 AM, Peskin, Michael E. wrote:
>
>> Folks,
>>
>> I do agree that VLHC received wide interest at Snowmass.
>>
>> However, it is also important to recognize that the time scales for ILC and VLHC are
>> very different. On the practical side, no one today is entertaining a proposal for a
>> 100 TeV pp collider. On the physics side, we are just beginning the serious studies
>> of the capabilities of a 100 TeV collider. Only a few results were shown at Snowmass
>> for the 33 TeV machine, and only one, I think, for the 100 TeV machine. (There will
>> be more 100 TeV results in the final writeups.)
>>
>> In the summaries, Chip and I put a statement about ILC into the highest level
>> executive summary. P5 will need to make a statement about ILC, so this input, which
>> is strictly limited to the physics case and does reflect a consensus at Snowmass, is needed.
>>
>> There is a brief statement about the 100 TeV machine in the latest version of the
>> Executive Summary, and a longer statement in the 5-page Energy Frontier summary.
>> These reflect our attitude that the 100 TeV is important, but the issue is getting
>> ready for a proposal in 2020, not making a decision today.
>>
>> If you would like it another way, please send some explicit language to this group.
>> And, please take into account that space in the highest level executive summary is
>> extremely limited. We can make two points strongly -- which is what we tried to do --
>> or make many points of which none registers above background.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Michael
>>
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> Michael E. Peskin [log in to unmask]
>> HEP Theory Group, MS 81 -------
>> SLAC National Accelerator Lab. phone: 1-(650)-926-3250
>> 2575 Sand Hill Road fax: 1-(650)-926-2525
>> Menlo Park, CA 94025 USA www.slac.stanford.edu/~mpeskin/
>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>> ________________________________________
>> From: Jianming Qian [[log in to unmask]]
>> Sent: Tuesday, August 20, 2013 1:24 AM
>> To: Yuri Gershtein
>> Cc: Markus A. Luty; Raymond Brock; Tom LeCompte; Peskin, Michael E.; snowmass-ef
>> Subject: Re: [SNOWMASS-EF] Snowmass summary and Phone meeting request
>>
>> Hello all,
>>
>> I'd like to echo Markus and Yuri's comments. I think the support for an eventual 100 TeV pp collider is very strong, certainly not less strong than a Higgs factory.
>>
>> Cheers, Jianming
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Aug 20, 2013 at 1:30 AM, Yuri Gershtein <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
>>
>> On Aug 19, 2013, at 1:07 PM, "Markus A. Luty" <[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
>>
>> I believe it is imperative that the high-level Snowmass summary include a statement that VLHC also represents an exciting possibility for the next step forward.
>>
>> I strongly agree.
>> Even given different timescales for VLHC and ILC, the way Markus phrased it is right on.
>>
>> -y
>>
>>
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