$1 billion Plan to Make US Particle Physics Hub

A panel of physicists urged the United States to build a billion-dollar neutrino project that would make the country a major hub for particle physics - a plan that would attract international support and cooperation.

The Particle Physics Project Prioritization Panel, or P5, announced Thursday their 10-year plan for projects that would occur over the next two decades, the Associated Press (AP) reported. The plan would involve building a high-power accelerator that would beam ghostlike subatomic particles, called neutrinos, 800 miles underground from Chicago to South Dakota.

"We want the US to become the leaders in neutrino science," Joe Lykken, a P5 group member and particle theorist at Fermilab, said, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Objectives in the P5 report included searching for dark matter, understanding dark energy and cosmic inflation, and discovering new particles and physical principles. But members particularly advocate that the United States make a name for itself in neutrino research.

Neutrinos are strange, chameleon-like particles that have almost no mass and hardly ever interact with matter - billions pass through your fingers each second. Lykken believes that neutrinos hold the key to understanding our own existence, and the making of matter and anti-matter.

The 25-member panel started talks in September 2013 following a community-wide report called "Snowmass," which identified 11 groups of particle-physics questions that could be addressed. P5 eventually whittled these down to those detailed in the report, PhysicsWorld.com reported.

In light of declining funding and tightened budgets for particle physics, the report presents a strategy that would allow the US to "invest purposefully in areas that have the biggest impacts and that make most efficient use of limited resources."

Although three budget plans are outlined, P5 is quick to point out that the most conservative costs would be "precarious," and possibly would keep the United States from reaching its project goals.

If the United States does follow through, the panel's chairman Steven Ritz said this would be the biggest American particle physics project in many years.