At the Heart of the Matter

I don't know if any high-energy physics laboratory will eventually discover and explain the mysteries of the universe, but I do know that I am one-thousand percent behind spending the money to try. Unfortunately, my home country has decided to sit in the back seat and let the Europeans drive the search for the origins of everything.

Today Fermilab, the particle physics laboratory outside of Chicago, is shutting down its largest tool for high-energy exploration, the Tevatron. Those familiar with Fermilab (my mom works there and I worked there summers during college) call this three-mile round feature "The Ring," and on the surface it makes a great bike path. Underneath, it smashes protons and anti-protons together and studies the results. Fermilab itself is not shutting down, as they do many other experiments. And the Tevatron is no longer the world standard for high-energy physics -- that distinction belongs to the Large Hadron Collider on the French/Swiss border.

Physics, like many man-centered areas, prefers the newest, biggest, and shiniest, and the Tevatron is no longer those things. But it does have work left to do, at least for a few years. However, the bass-ackwards political climate in our country makes it hard to squeeze pennies out for disaster relief, so you can imagine where an atom smasher (in an indigo-azure-cerulean, true blue state) falls on the list of priorities. We should have told them Jesus told us to keep it open.

Speaking of Jesus, or men who look like him, there are people Occupying Wall Street this week. It's ironic that this is occurring at the same time as the killing of the Tevatron, and indicative of Failure All Around. Wall Street has failed, not just because of its focus on derivatives and other bullshit financial card tricks but because the titans fail to realize a basic economic principle: you need to spend money to make money. If I were protesting on Wall Street, my demand would be More Investment in Research and Development. That's not a sexy sign, I know. And it's spelled correctly.

More Failure All Around: our government, for being pussies and not telling the people the truth, which is that we need to spend money or we will implode. Our Supreme Court, for the monstrous Citizens United decision. And then there is We, the People. We have failed to care and to suck it up and demand the hard changes and now we are in decline. Nice going.

One more failure, although it pains me to say this. I have to ding the physics community for failing to find a new Leon Lederman. Lederman was the man who coined the term "The God Particle" and got everyone talking about physics in a way that was both intellectual and down-to-earth. Lederman had not only a way of talking to people who couldn't remember the basic parts of an atom but also the moneybag holders in government. Finding another someone like Lederman is a tall order, but it needs to be done (and if it was a woman, even better). We need people who can eloquently and passionately argue for America's future as a place where things get thought up, figured out, and done. Dare I say that today might not be last call for the Tevatron if our new physics standard-bearer were on the job.

Thank you for In These Times for the photo. I remember many days sitting in my library's quiet reading room with Mother Jones and In These Times.