America’s most famous particle physics lab will almost certainly cease to develop key projects, due to a drastic cut in funding voted by the Congress.

Fermilab currently employs more than 1,900 scientists, but will have to lay off at least 200 in order to cope with the smaller budget. The 17% shrinking expected for the fiscal year 2008 (translated into $90 million less for the research department) will force the Batavia, Illinois-based Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory to interrupt the work at some critical international programs, most importantly the International Linear Collider.

The International Linear Collider is a joint project involving the US, European countries like France, Germany or Britain and Asian nations like China, South Korea or Japan. Its purpose is to give physicists a new cosmic doorway to explore energy regimes beyond the reach of today’s accelerators. When completed, the ILC will stretch for about 35 kilometers in length, but the current baseline design allows for an upgrade to 50 Km. The beams of electrons and their anti-particles (positrons) will collide 14,000 times every second at extremely high energies- 500 billion-electron-volts (GeV)- creating an array of new particles that could answer some of the most fundamental questions of all time.

Piermaria Oddone, Fermilab’s boss, said that Congress’ omnibus spending package is a set-back for US science in general, and for physics in particular: "There's a policy question for the government and for Congress," he said. "Do we want to stay in particle physics or not?"

President Bush had previously asked the Congress to reduce domestic spending in an effort to cope with the expenses brought by the new national security policy and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Democratic Congress later agreed to vote a scaled down budget, out of which $22 billion were removed, mainly from government-related domains. This affects the Department of Energy too, which was expecting to receive around $3.8 billion in 2008. Since the DOE funds the Fermilab, the latter’s expenses for research have been reduced from $372 million to $310 million, a $62 million (10%) cut that is likely to affect scientific progress in key areas.

“The budget proposed in their report is devastating for High Energy Physics at a time when we have the most promising program in generations. The report is especially punishing of Fermilab's programs,” said Pier Oddone.

“In the first major cut, the R&D on the International Linear Collider and the R&D on Super Conducting Radio Frequency (SCRF) Accelerators are cut back to 25 percent of the planned budget for FY08, a level far below FY07. Since a quarter of the fiscal year has already gone by, this essentially means a shutdown of the R&D on ILC and SCRF for the rest of the fiscal year. This is a body blow to the future of the ILC, the U.S. role in it and Fermilab. The second major cut is in NOvA, a cut whose implications we are still trying to understand but that causes enormous harm to our future neutrino program. These proposed cuts, which come on top of the very limited particle physics budgets of the last few years, are destructive of our field and our laboratory. There is no way to sugar-coat this,” Oddone added.

Besides the ILC, Fermilab will also have to indefinitely postpone a project called NOvA, for which Fermilab scientists were expecting to receive $36 million next year, and for which this year were spent $16 million.

To meet the new budget, remaining scientists will have to endure pay cuts, while those who will leave will have to accept that there will be no compensations. Moreover, the remaining physicists will have to take off two unpaid days a month.

“While I am doing everything possible to steer the ship away from the iceberg, we must be prepared for an extremely difficult situation in 2008,” said Oddone.” Until then, I and many others who understand this disaster in the making are trying to inform Congress and the Administration of the dire consequences to the U.S. particle physics research program.”

According to the White House, this year most of the GDP will be redirected to the Defense Department, which will “swallow” more than $439.3 billion (a 45.2% increase compared to 2001). Additionally, $50 billion are prepared for the “global war on terror”, while the Homeland Security (non-Department of Defense) has requested $33.1 billion. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the National Science Foundation have been allocated $16.8 billion, $ 6.0 billion respectively for 2007.

By comparison, Europe is investing 7 billion Euros annually (approximately $10 billion) in research and development only. A panel from the National Academy of Sciences had already warned back in 2006 that American physicists will have to go to Europe (at CERN, in Switzerland) to do their research if the International Linear Collider faisl to become reality on US soil. The panel’s report, called "Revealing the Hidden Nature of Space and Time, Charting the Course for Elementary Particle Physics," stated that “the price the United States would pay by forfeiting a leadership position in particle physics is too high. Leadership in science remains central to the economic and cultural vitality of the United States."

The most powerful accelerator now operating at the Fermi National Laboratory, the Tevatron, is scheduled to shut down in 2010, leaving Fermilab with an uncertain future.