Thursday, February 08, 2007

ILC to Cost $6.7 Billion

It has been formally announced that the International Linear Collider will cost $6.7 billion in terms of FY2007 dollars.

Yes, it is a shipload of change.

For the US high energy physics community, this is the ONLY project that they are pushing to host right now on US soil. The Tevatron, as have been mentioned earlier, will cease operation at the end of 2009. After that, there will be no high energy physics collider experiment in the US. Several institutions, including Fermilab and Argonne, are trying to get support for ILC to be built at Fermilab by incorporating the existing facilities into the new design. I'm guessing that people in Texas have learned their lessons from the failed SSC and won't try to bid for this again.

To me, the only serious competition to the US in hosting the ILC is China. With almost unlimited financial resources and the hunger to be a more important player in the international scientific scene, they will be a very serious and viable candidate to host such a facility. The fact that this announcement is made during a meeting in China is not a mere coincidence.

Zz.

No comments: