FermiLab is in Trouble
FermiLab (Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory) is the premier High Energy Physics research facility in the US. Located outside Chicago, it is named for the renowned Italian-American physicist Enrico Fermi. SLAC is the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, the second most important center in the US for High Energy Physics. Both institutions are in deep trouble due to budget cuts mandated by Congress. FermiLab is planning to lay off 100 `permanent’ PhDs, a total of 200 employees; those remaining will be subject to a `rolling furlough’, amounting to a 7% wage cut. SLAC will experience an RIF of 250 employees, which ought to hurt more as its total size is smaller.
Cutbacks at Argonne National Laboratory (also near Chicago) and to Fusion research are even more drastic. If the current proposals are to become law, the US will also default on commitments to international agreements to create the next fusion research reactor.
FermiLab is experiencing what Los Alamos went through about ten years ago. At that time, conventional wisdom was that even after the end of the cold war, the US would not dare cut the crown jewel of its weapons research. Los Alamos was a major employer in New Mexico, and its Congressional representatives were in powerful positions in Washington. How can they lay off employees who know many of the nation’s deepest, darkest secrets?
Well, it happened. Los Alamos is just a shell of what it used to be. Many of the leading scientists left for universities, industry and Europe. Those who remain have to prove their usefulness to the new national imperatives in Homeland Security or Water Conservation or whatever. There is still a small amount of fundamental research being done as it helps attract young minds to the Lab. The salaries are still high, but it hardly makes up for the loss of the research atmosphere.
As with Los Alamos, Fermilab is unlikely to be shut down outright. But in ten years it will be barely recognizable.
It is not. Some of the nation’s finest minds work at FermiLab, for a fraction of what they could make in industry. They deserve better. It is an inspiring place, a cathedral to scientific knowledge. Once destroyed, it can never be recreated, at least not in the US. So why is it happening?
When physics was central to national defense (i.e., designing nuclear bombs) scientists were rewarded with huge budgets to pursue their interests. In that phase, forming large teams constructing huge apparatuses was the way to attract even more funding. Prestige, even in science, is often associated to the size of the team you are leading rather than its accomplishments. In this growth phase, there were many major scientific discoveries. Brookhaven National Laboratory was perhaps the most successful, being awarded no less than six Nobel prizes for advances made there. That great breakthrough of fundamental physics, the standard model of elementary particles, came out of this period.
FermiLab was started in the early seventies at the end of this heroic period. By then the scientific teams were growing from dozens to hundreds of physicists. Although it attracted the best and the brightest, FermiLab never quite lived up to its early promise. It discovered two quarks (known by the dreary names top and bottom) but they were, to be honest,not surprises: they had to be there, only their masses were unknown. Unlike at Brokhaven, no revolution in our understanding of the world came out of these discoveries. These are hard truths, even harder to digest at a time of retrenchment.
It is not that physics did not progress in this time. A smaller and more nimble Laboratory in Japan snatched a Nobel Prize for observing neutrinos from a Supernova. Cosmology became a science, after millenia of religious speculation. The Bose-Einstein Condensate was achieved. Only, none of this was accomplished at FermiLab or SLAC. Was it because there was nothing to discover, or because they were not innovative enough?
Certainly, the bureaucratic management style at the large Labs was resented by physicists. The building that houses the administration at FermiLab is nicknamed the Curia, after the secretive bureaucracy that controls the Vatican. People were rewarded for amorphous `leadership’ qualities rather than concrete scientific accomplishments.
Meanwhile, the size of the experimental collaborations continued to grow, from dozens in the seventies to hundreds in the eighties to thousands now. The Curia grew as well. Although not growing exponentially, the budgets were still healthy in this period. Large projects were still safer, as they had a built in army of dependents who could lobby Congress for their funding. Experimental High Energy Physicists started to lose the support of other scientists for their expensive projects, most notably the Superconducting SuperCollider.
There is a report of the National Academy recommending that funding be increased. Earlier this year it looked as if this was going to happen. The President’s budget as well as the separate budgets passed by the House and Senate were optimistic. The cuts came when they had to be reconciled at the conference committee with the overall spending limits imposed by the President. The current cutbacks have not produced unified outrage among scientists at large. This is in part because Experimental High Energy Physics is still relatively well funded; a 10% cut does not look terrible to someone struggling to get a grant at all.
There were previous attempts at cutbacks. One reason why this year is different could be the retirement of Dennis Hastert, the former speaker of the House. Fermilab was part of his Congressional District. Without a strong patron supporting its interests, Fermilab is just another item in a huge Federal budget. A distinguished physicist, retired from Fermilab, is running for Congress to replace Hastert. Even if he wins, it will take some time for him to acquire the kind of clout that Hastert had. But, having a successful scientist in Congress will benefit all of us. Not only from the point of view of protecting the flow of money. Defense, Military Intelligence, Heath Care, Climate Change, Stem Cell Research,… the list of issues facing Congress that require a sound scientific judgment is long. It covers almost everything that Congress does.
American members of Congress make, by and large, the right decisions. It is no accident that this is the most powerful and prosperous nation in the world. The Congress relies on expert opinion when the members are not themselves knowledgeable on an issue. Still, having a scientist in their midst is a whole other level of understanding. Whatever happens to Fermilab, supporting Bill Foster for Congress is the right thing to do.
There is reason to hope that Congress will restore some of the funds cut out of this year’s budget. That is the way Washington system seems to operate. Depending on the severity of protests they always dole out a bit more each year. The long-term trend is clear though.
Instead of there being safety in numbers, in a time of contraction, large collaborations become targets. The reason is simple: that is where the money is. Why did Willie Sutton rob banks?
The age of the dinosaur is not over though. The monstrous collaborations of a thousand or more physicists are still growing in size. But there are signs that the smart money should shift to the mammals now. Smaller more imaginative projects are the way to do even high energy physics in the future. Even a `small’ collaboration these days has 300 PhDs. The field needs to ask itself if this is sustainable.
Feb 6: There are reports that next year’s budget will restore some of these cuts. Too late for this year. Furloughs of some Fermilab employees are set to begin tomorrow. Hard to know what will happen in the long term.
