CHEMICAL & ENGINEERING
NEWS
MARCH
8,
1965
High Energy Physics Research Cost Rising Congress takes a look at AEC's proposed 15-year program; total cost will be $6 billion High energy physics, which probes the basic nature of the atom, is an exciting research field. But it is expensive and promises to become even more expensive rather quickly. Since almost all research in this field is supported by government funds, Congress has a vital stake in determining whether high energy physics is getting more than its share of the available money to the detriment of other research programs. Last week the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy took its first look at the national effort in high energy physics proposed by the Atomic Energy Commission. Over the next 15 years, the program would call for a total outlay of $6 billion. Under this proposal, annual spending, which is $166 million for the current fiscal year, would double by 1970 and hit a peak of $490 million in 1978. Rep. Melvin Price (D.-Ill.), who chaired the hearings, expressed the committee's feelings this way: "The burden rests with the scientists in this field to communicate to Congress and the public the objectives, the needs,
High Energy Physics Research Costs May Triple Fiscal Year
1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981
Millions of Dollars
166 188 238 282 303 327 340 350 390 420 450 470 485 490 470 455 450
Source: Atomic Energy Commission
and the social benefits of high energy physics research. Scientists should not forget that if society pays for the research, there must be adequate repayment to society. To assist the public understanding, proponents of any field of federally supported research should make an effort to evaluate their research in terms of public benefits." Or, as Rep. Craig Hosmer (R.Calif.) put it more succinctly, "The program should be designed to give the maximum return on the taxpayer's dollar. " Dr. Glenn T. Seaborg, chairman of AEC, called the long-range research proposal a program "which realistically and conservatively expresses the basic needs of the U.S. high energy physics program of the future as they are foreseen at this time." However, he pointed out that no long-range program such as this will satisfy all the scientists, and that the direction of any research program as basic as high energy physics will change with time as a result of new discoveries. The fate of the AEC proposal rests with the joint committee and a final program will be hammered out in the next few months in committee sessions behind closed doors. At the moment, committee members are giving no clues about their feelings on the proposal. Program. AEC's proposal was prepared without widespread outside help. One reason is that reports of scientific panels in the past few years have provided a consensus of the needs of high energy physics. The other is that the proposal represents a national policy statement of the Executive Branch. There are three major items in the AEC program: Build a 200 b.e.v. proton accelerator; upgrade the intensity of the accelerator at Argonne
National Laboratory and convert the Brookhaven accelerator to a high energy facility; build a proton 600to 1000-b.e.v. ready for use in 1980. Unlike many scientific programs, the expanded high energy physics program is not expected to suffer from any lack of qualified manpower. In fact, AEC predicts that the available facilities will be insufficient to take up the supply and that high energy physics will be a source of Ph.D. physicists for other fields. President Johnson calls AEC's proposal "a well-considered program" but does not commit the Administration to follow it. "We will continue to compare the needs in this field with those of other scientific fields. In turn, the needs of science as a whole will be assessed in the light of other demands on federal resources," he says.
Graphite-Alkali Metal Compounds Superconduct Superconducting compounds of graphite and alkali metals have been made by scientists at Bell Telephone Laboratories (Murray Hill, N.J.). This is the first time that carbon structures, rather than interstitial oarbon atoms, have been directly involved in superconductivity. The superconducting compounds consist of layers of either potassium, rubidium, or cesium atoms interleaved with layers of carbon. For these compounds, the critical magnetic field required to destroy superconductivity depends on its direction through the material. Fields in the plane of the carbon layers must be stronger to quench superconductivity than fields cutting across the layers. This dependence of the critical field's orientation with respect to structure is greater in graphite compounds than in any other superconductor. Superconducting temperature range for the compounds is from 0.02° to 0.55° K. Members of the Bell Labs group are Dr. N. B. Hannay, Dr. T. H. Geballe, Dr. B. T. Matthias, Dr. K. Andres, Dr. P. Schmidt, and Dr. D. MacNair. MAR. 8, 1965 C & E N
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