Patrick Looney addressed the Fermilab community yesterday at the Users' Meeting.

Looney said building the proposed International Linear Collider "is not impossible-not easy, but not impossible." And from the vantage point of a policy advisory body operating out of the Executive Office of the President, he outlined the political realities of Washington that would be involved in making the machine a reality.

"In DC, if you get 'No' as an answer, you're out of luck," Looney told the full house in Ramsey Auditorium, opening the Users Annual Meeting. "If you say, 'Can we have several billion dollars to build this machine?' you will get a 'No.' You want to try to ask a question that will not get a 'No,' such as, 'Can we keep this path going?' Then you need to make the decisions one at a time, and not try to make them all at once." He used the ITER fusion reactor project as an illustration of step-by-step decision-making, while admitting that ITER was hardly a paradigm: "The one thing ITER did right," Looney said, "was to make a

Director Mike Witherell also spoke yesterday at the end of the day. (Click on image for larger version.)

construction decision only after $1 billion had been spent on R&D."

Ironically, ITER also figured in Looney's assertion on the need for international consensus on US responsibility to take its "turn" in building a big machine. He said the US was pressed from the highest levels of other governments, by Prime Ministers and presidents, to rejoin ITER. "We need to have other countries press the US to step up to the plate," Looney said.
read more
-Mike Perricone

This interim web page will be published weekly and will then migrate to and evolve into a regular part of the ILC GDE website, which we are creating. We are working hard to develop our own operational GDE website in time for the Snowmass ILC Workshop. We plan to make it the working website for the meeting. We are putting considerable effort into designing what will be an informative and functional website for the GDE. This is essential for the functioning of such a widely dispersed collaboration. To design the website, we have contracted with Xeno Media, who recently created the new Fermilab and SLAC websites, and we are involving many persons representing different parts of our ILC community in reviewing their work and progress, to ensure that we will have the features and functionality we will need. A well-designed functional website will go a long way toward helping to bridge the great distances separating those of us that need to work closely together on a daily basis to develop the ILC design.
read more

Linear Collider News Archive

Pablo Bauleo, a postdoctoral researcher at Colorado State University, a top scientist in the project, said the full Auger Collaboration unanimously adopted a resolution naming the Colorado site as the Northern Hemisphere site during its meeting in Orsay, France. The resolution recommends Utah as a backup northern site and recommends continued contact with a third potential backup site in Idaho.
Read more