One year ago yesterday, the U.S. Congress passed the FY08 omnibus spending bill. This marked a moment of significant destruction to the particle physics programs in the U.S. Investment in future accelerator projects was cut or zeroed out. The B-factory program at SLAC was put on the chopping block, a situation that we managed to turn to our advantage before the inevitable shutdown (but ends don’t justify means). People lost their jobs at national labs, or were furloughed.
A year later, something very interesting is happening. Major car manufacturers, in the wake of the disastrous housing implosion and resulting credit crisis, are begging for a multi-billion dollar government loan to stave off their own furloughs, keep plants open, keep men and women employed through the holidays [1]. I doubt it’s a coincidence that companies are shutting down plants for weeks longer than normal over the Christmas holidays; a bunch of dough-eyed middle Americans wondering aloud how they’ll get presents for their kids while putting food on the table will surely bring the wrath of the American conscience on our crippled government. While Congress has refused to give the loan, the human face of the U.S. car industry will guilt them on their decision until the new Congress takes over.
I look back a year ago, when $100 million dollars (or even less) was all that stood between keeping people employed at national labs and casting them aside. I look back a year ago, when $100 million dollars could have launched the next generation of accelerator projects. The last generation have led to numerous cancer therapies; God knows what more curiosity driven research could do 10, 20, 50 years from now. I look back a year ago, when $100 million dollars would have been enough to keep the Tevatron going full blast while supporting the last doubling of the B-factory dataset at SLAC, securing the legacy of BaBar (as it had planned) in B-physics.
I remember how tired I was over the holidays in 2007. Christmas was my only day away from documenting and editing the physics case for the Upsilon(3S) running, my only day away from nail-biting shifts in the control room, from proto-data analysis and code development, from meetings where we discussed every day decisions about how to improve BaBar to keep physics from falling on the floor. I am so proud of that period, although I remember how exhausting it was. Somehow, in spite of millions of dollars of cuts U.S. particle physics limped along, dragging some success out of the jaws of failure at great cost to life and limb.
I see now these car companies, begging for billions. I think about how little concern the Congress had for the U.S. scientific workforce, how they couldn’t even spare the money to keep the budget flat and keep particle physics stable. Now they have turned aside a loan for the car companies, but there is talk of the Administration taking the money from the TARP fund. TARP. Money for failing banks who made bad decisions, but whose loss had dire ripple effects for the entire economy. TARP. $750 billion of poorly tracked loans to big finance, bad decision makers with no oversight and no plan.
Particle physics went through plan after plan, just to keep the enterprise alive long enough to actually SEIZE the huge scientific challenges that we know we face in this universe. What did those plans get us? Having to make more plans to deal with less money. Cold comfort.
I wish the economy were in better shape. I hope that the brutal process of layoffs and plant closures means something better in a few years. New jobs, better jobs, more jobs. Evolution at work – let the dinosaurs die and let the mammals rise. Maybe it will happen, maybe not – maybe this time, the dinosaurs will get an infusion of food and supplies and survive in spite of their inability to adapt. I hope that the auto industry, the banking industry, turn this disaster into their own version of the “eta_b discovery”. I hope they use their billions to turn layoff lemons into billion-dollar lemonade.
The B-factory turned a cut budget into an opportunity for discovery. Will banks and possibly car companies, with their government loans, do the same?
[1] http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=98467645
