Italy Cancels €1Bn Superb Collider - Physicsworld.Com 30/11/12 20.01

Italy cancels €1bn SuperB collider - physicsworld.com 30/11/12 20.01

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Italy cancels €1bn SuperB collider

Nov 28, 2012 11 comments

Path not taken: the planned route of SuperB

Physics World can confirm rumours that the Italian government is to withdraw €250m from the €1bn SuperB particle accelerator, which was set to be built at the University of Tor Vergata on the outskirts of Rome. The decision, which effectively cancels the project, was made yesterday when Fernando Ferroni, president of the National Institute for Nuclear Physics (INFN), met Italian science minister Francesco Profumo to discuss funding for the project. "Given the difficult economic conditions of the country, the government is willing to confirm the contribution of €250m but not [for] the project," says a government statement, which was released today and seen by Physics World.

As outlined in the statement, the INFN, which was set to build SuperB, will keep the €250m but will now spend the money on other projects. The INFN has already appointed two committees to look at what options it has, which includes converting SuperB into a scaled down "tau-charm factory" (called SuperC) or using the money elsewhere. The committees will report by 20 December, with a decision set for early January. Rumours of the funding cancellation first emerged on the blog A Quantum Diaries Survivor, which is written by the CERN-based researcher Tommaso Dorigo.

Mystery of antimatter

SuperB was designed to produce beams of electrons and positrons inside a linear accelerator to an energy of 6.7 GeV before injecting them into two rings each more than 1 km in circumference, where they would have then been collided to allow the decay of particles such as B mesons. The accelerator was expected to study the subtle differences in how particles and their antiparticles decay and could help shed light on the mystery of why there is so much more matter than antimatter in the universe.

One of the first things physicists were planning to look for is "charged lepton flavour violation" such as a tau lepton decaying into three muons without producing any neutrinos. The observation of such decays would point to new physics beyond the Standard Model. Indeed, earlier this year, physicists announced plans to add a free-electron laser to the facility, which would allow a range of research in materials science, biology and medicine, at a cost of around €75m.

Thumbs up?

Adrian Bevan from Queen Mary University of London – who is part of the UK's SuperB contingent – told Physics World that the funding and construction plans for the project had only just undergone an independent review, which seemed to have given the project the thumbs up. Theoretical physicist Giorgio Parisi from the Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati,

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Rome, who has been a supporter of the project, told Physics World that he was "very disappointed" by the news.

SuperB was set to be built at a new site at the University of Tor Vergata called the Cabibbo Laboratory in honour of Italian particle physicist Nicola Cabibbo, who died in August 2010. The project would have been a competitor to Japan's SuperKEKB – an upgrade to the existing KEKB collider – that is expected to come online by 2014 and will be able to produce more than 50 billion pairs of B mesons.

About the author Michael Banks is news editor of Physics World

11 comments Add your comments on this article

1 M. Asghar Nov 28, 2012 4:25 PM

Collaboration with other machines

This is a sad but not unexpected news, given the deep economic problems in Europe. In this difficult situation, one has to set up collaboration wiht the Japanese machine that is going to come up in 1914 or other other machines in other countries.

2 Ragtime Nov 28, 2012 7:16 PM Prague, Czech Republic Italy is the country with A) highest dependency on fossil fuels in the EU B) the cradle of cold fusion finding. I'm sure, Italians could find a way more meaningful usage for their €1bn, if they're really interested about scientific research...

3 takanis Nov 28, 2012 8:11 PM

Well done!

A totally useless machine that, even under the most optimistic assumptions, would have arrived too late.

4 JLConawayII Nov 29, 2012 4:17 AM Melbourne, United States "...the cradle of cold fusion finding" Funny thing, "finding" generally implies that you actually found something. This is also the country that locked away a group of seismologists for failing to accurately predict an earthquake, I have serious doubts as to whether they care at all about actual science.

Quote: Originally posted by Ragtime Italy is the country with A) highest dependency on fossil fuels in the EU B) the cradle of cold fusion finding. I'm sure, Italians could find a way more meaningful usage for their €1bn, if they're really interested about scientific research...

5 Dileep Sathe Nov 29, 2012 6:15 AM Pune, India

Good Decision

I am happy to see a good decision of Italians.

6 John Duffield Nov 29, 2012 9:20 AM United Kingdom Me too, because I think "big science" is getting in the way of scientific progress coming from say optics and condensed matter physics. People tend to end up peddling mystery to justify it, like "the mystery of mass" which contradicts Einstein's E=mc², and "the mystery of antimatter" which fails to note that positronium can be regarded as a sort of light hydrogen atom. We've even had CERN pandering to the myth that antimatter falls up.

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With Wakefield accelerators offering the prospect of a benchtop collider, I just can't see how billion-euro colliders can be worthwhile. Mind you, I would have been happier if all the funding had gone to some other physics research.

Edited by John Duffield on Nov 29, 2012 9:21 AM.

7 takanis Nov 29, 2012 9:41 AM

Cradle of cold fusion

The cradle of cold fusion is the U.S. since Fleischmann and Pons made their "discovery" at the University of Utah in 1989.

8 M. Asghar Nov 29, 2012 11:16 AM

Only Vatican

The liturgy of the "cold fusion" cannot be taken up by Italy, but by Vatican for its spiritual implications.

9 M. Asghar Nov 29, 2012 11:46 AM

Some points

John: 1.The scalr Higgs field and its scalar boson compactify/freeze the other fields(energies)into different masses.The E= mc°2 relation just underlines their equivalence. 2. The mystery of antimatter is that it does no seem to exist in natutre knowing that there should be as much as matter based the Dirac equation. Moreover, a positronium IS treated like a hydrogen atom to caculate its binding energy. 3. It is true that condensed matter (atomc physics) and light and matter interaction, are very rich, when one eneters the QM domain, and we see this everyday. 4. There is a lot of work being done on the Wakefield accelerators to overcome the different technical problems. We shall see how far one can go here. 5. The big science is a part of the adventure to treat big problems for understaing. However,it seems to be reaching its technical limits.

Quote: Originally posted by John Duffield Me too, because I think "big science" is getting in the way of scientific progress coming from say optics and condensed matter physics. People tend to end up peddling mystery to justify it, like "the mystery of mass" which contradicts Einstein's E=mc², and "the mystery of antimatter" which fails to note that positronium can be regarded as a sort of light hydrogen atom. We've even had CERN pandering to the myth that antimatter falls up. With Wakefield accelerators offering the prospect of a benchtop collider, I just can't see how billion-euro colliders can be worthwhile. Mind you, I would have been happier if all the funding had gone to some other physics research.

10 Ragtime Nov 29, 2012 12:59 PM Prague, Czech Republic Quote: Originally posted by takanis The cradle of cold fusion is the U.S. since Fleischmann and Pons made their "discovery" at the University of Utah in 1989.

I talked about economically viable cold fusion of hydrogen at nickel, although this finding has probably its predecessors too (i.e. R. Mills from BlackLightPower Inc.). Quote: Originally posted by M. Asghar The liturgy of the "cold fusion" cannot be taken up by Italy, but by Vatican for its spiritual implications.

I'm considering you an ignorant crackpot already - so that this post cannot change my opinion about you in substantial way. The whole mainstream physics suffers from senile conservatives separated from reality like you.

Edited by Ragtime on Nov 29, 2012 1:05 PM.

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11 M. Asghar Nov 29, 2012 5:01 PM

In spite of damners

The people who do daily a tough job on the ground on different research subjects including the hot fusion, are not disturbed much by these creationist damners. However, the research cannot be a liturgical ritual anywhere.

Quote: Originally posted by Ragtime Quote: Originally posted by takanis The cradle of cold fusion is the U.S. since Fleischmann and Pons made their "discovery" at the University of Utah in 1989.

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