The central problem is the bread and butter of Fermilab, operating an accelerator to push the frontiers of physics, is reaching its limit. At some point one must admit the place has discovered what it's going to discover and decide to shut the place down.
This problem is facing particle physics as a whole, world wide, since accelerators have become increasingly expensive as the needed energy has increased.
> In the new whistleblower report, the group claims there are “too many deficiencies in the culture and behavioural areas” at Fermilab. They point, for example, to the lab’s dismissal of an early-career researcher in 2023 who had alleged sexual assault in 2018, and raised several cover-ups by management of dangerous behaviour. The report also highlights a case of guns being brought onto Fermilab’s campus in 2023; a male employee’s attack on a female colleague using an industrial vehicle in 2022; and retaliation against an employee who had predicted and warned management about the failures of beryllium windows.
What do these things have to do with the state of particle physics?
An organization that is under increasing existential pressure will exhibit all sorts of dysfunction. For example, they will lowball bids for projects that are necessary for their survival, from which one can then expect "surprise" cost overruns.
Exactly. There was the famous quote from a US presidential candidate who couldn't even remember what the DOE was called, even though he wanted to abolish it[1].
I don't know all the details, but I think they are starting to do novel work with the accelerator to produce neutrinos in an experiment called Dune. So there actually is important stuff being done that isn't just superceded by Cern.
Yes, they are squeezing as much juice as they can out of the lemon. But there's diminishing returns. It can't continue forever, and the budget will be under inexorable pressure as the scientific returns become increasingly marginal.
This is a problem with science, particularly particle physics: discovering is like mining. Eventually the "ore body" of new phenomena is used up. The period of rapid discovery (up to say the mid 1970s, with a decreasing trickle to 2012 with the discovery of the Higgs Boson) in particle physics will look very atypical and transitory in historical hindsight.
To be honest, you can't know exactly where you are going to find things. I think the rapid discoveries that particle physics were known for within the last centuries maybe are the limits of our current technology. It is not that we lack the ideas, it maybe that we have squeezed the remaining bits of hanging fruits left.
When considering how vacuum tubes were used for a lot of discoveries in physics (nuclear physics in particular) and compare it with the technologies we had to use for things after that you will find a huge gap. Maybe we are pushing the limits of our current technology but the problem is that we don't know. If we know then it wouldn't be research. The only way to find out if something is going to work is at least do R&D work and design a plan and maybe execute it. In the current scheme this is expensive projects. Although if you divide the cost per personnel you will find that it is comparable to other fields.
Lets not talk about how the R&D benefit whole industries because this is a cliche by now (although it is a valid argument in itself). But the only way to advance is to try new things. When people actually say a crisis in particle physics, they usually mean in terms that we did not discover the whole big new thing. But each day we gain more understanding on details of standard model and how interactions work. These things are not sexy enough to be reported by the mainstream media. I post some of these on HN and rarely they get any traction and I get why. It is usually hard to explain and very specialized. But this is not excuse for people to claim that we are not advancing.
That sounds right to me. I don't work in physics, but have many colleagues who have left it for that reason.
~The said, I think Dune still does seem useful. Hard to say whether the cost overruns are a lack of good management or if the experiment is just a quagmire, though. Guess I lean towards the scientists here that it's the former~
EDIT:
Doing some research it seems the Hyper K experiment might just be better, and funding might be better directed there than Fermilab.
Fermilab operated the Tevatron until the LHC was online. They then pivoted to emphasize neutrino research, which is perfectly doable with the linac and the main injector ring. There is a lot to learn about neutrinos. I certainly do not foresee any future where Fermilab is shuttered. There are always frontiers in physics worth exploring.
This problem is facing particle physics as a whole, world wide, since accelerators have become increasingly expensive as the needed energy has increased.