It’s happened! A $13 million donation from the private sector has been given to continue operation of the Relativisitc Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory. The press release is here. RHIC’s generous benefactors are the Renaissance Technologies Corporation ( an investment firm dedicated to the use of mathematical methods) and members of the Board of Directors of Brookhaven Science Associates. Jim Simons, a member of the Board and President of Renaissance Technologies, initiated and led the drive to raise the money. Simons is a mathematician by training and is a rather famous one at that – physicists know him from his work with Shiin-Shen Chern. This boost in funds allows RHIC to operate a full schedule of 20 weeks this fiscal year.
Discoveries at RHIC were named the Top Physics Story of 2005 by the American Institute of Physics. The RHIC detectors discovered the long-sought-after quark-gluon plasma, but found that it behaves as a quark-gluon liquid instead. They have a list of important measurements yet to be performed to determine the properties of this liquid.
I have written a few posts (such as here and here) whining about the dearth of funding in the United States for basic research in the physical sciences. (OK, my whining usually focuses on particle physics, but that’s only because I’m closest to my own field.) I do so because I want to ensure that the public is aware that US science is hurting. A common thread in the discussion to these posts (pardon my paraphrasing here) is that if the science is really all that important and interesting, then why doesn’t the general public pony-up? Well, it is and they have. Today, Jim Simmons joined the Kavli Foundation in making substantial contributions to basic physical sciences research. I firmly believe that the majority of US citizens support a strong Federally-funded science program – this belief is generated from the number of cab-drivers, shop-owners, people sitting on airplanes, etc, that I have found to be genuinely excited about how the universe works. This donation should increase public awareness and I hope the Federal government takes note.
This is the best news I’ve heard in a long time. RHIC is making fundamental discoveries, and now they can continue to do so. At least for one more year.
January 13th, 2006 at 3:46 pm
Great news! This makes a very good case for the need for public outreach about scientific research.
January 13th, 2006 at 3:47 pm
Obviously great news for RHIC, which is doing fantastic science. I’ve visited Renaissance Technologies and talked to Jim Simons, who is quite the smart cookie and interesting guy. Not at all surprised that he would do something like this.
I’m less convinced of the impact on long-term funding. Nobody is going to donate $5 billion dollars to build a linear collider. But the government might get the idea that they should — a worry familiar from high-school bake sales is that every time you collect $x of external funding, your conventional funding is decreased by $2x to compensate. And of course, our beloved comment section will now be overrun by Ayn Rand acolytes who think that all science should be funded by private donations.
January 13th, 2006 at 4:10 pm
Poor Sean, can’t rejoice even for a minute without worrying about more people waking up to the realization that something which is really worth doing doesn’t require coercion to get done.
January 13th, 2006 at 4:26 pm
Wikipedia finished thier fundraiser not too long ago and raised ~250k. I couldn’t see private donations to a collider being more popular than with wikipedia. So that leaves us with 1m of the ILC. Only 19,999 to go!
Short of endowments or large donations, how else is this type of science going to get done except to rely on federal funding?
January 13th, 2006 at 4:37 pm
I think some private (non-government) investment in experiments can only be a good thing. Government control is ultimately down to political whims and of course the electorate, which is not always as sympathetic to spending billions on physics experiments when people are living in poverty, and education and medical problems exist. The growth of international corporations should ideally be used to to fund big physics experiments for prestige. Obviously, the amount of prestige for particle physics in the publicity is now rather limited, because the leading theory (ST) makes no predictions that are testable. However, just acquiring data itself is useful, and may help formulate new theories which predict other things.
January 13th, 2006 at 4:40 pm
I think it is a good thing what has happened there for obvious reasons
A word of caution though, because I like to watch what capitalism can do, when it can take over the way it would like to drive society. But enough of that. We have governmental watchdogs for this?
Other accomplishements?
The “Perimenter Institute” up in Canada, and the way in which the agendas have been pushed forwward in terms of science developement. Wiki is a good one too. Of course we have heard of the Templeton foundation over and over again, but lets consider the science shall we?
Who are on the board of directors and we don;’t want to digress to ID this and ID that and oh what string theorists are here, in that regard.
Very frustrating thing to hear, when you are trying to get to the bones of the issues? I know there are purer thoughts out there.
So any others?
January 13th, 2006 at 7:03 pm
Perimeter is privately funded? Wow. I had no idea. Then again, theory is cheap.
January 14th, 2006 at 4:59 am
I have a question… What has particle physics done for science and the world in the last 30 years?
January 14th, 2006 at 6:53 am
#8: If you had said “twenty years”, the case would be weaker, but with thirty you cover the nailing down of the Standard Model, which to this day remains The foundation for understanding the universe.
January 14th, 2006 at 7:32 am
Yes the Standard Model is a foundation but it involves complex and speculative models to describe particle masses with the Higgs field. There are also well known issues over how this mechanism allows electroweak symmetry to break down as a function of energy. These issues are absolutely pertinent to building a unified field theory. In addition, the Standard Model doesn’t include gravity or general relativity. Some speculations (which Plato feels should not have the honour of being mentioned here) claim to deal with these problems, but after 20 years mainstream analysis have failed to make any testable predictions! Nature has no strings attached, Plato!
January 14th, 2006 at 10:07 am
Libertopia Approaches?
The big news in physics yesterday was the announcement that a private donation has been made to support experiments at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider on Long Island. This is the accelerator that’s slamming gold nuclei into each other to…
January 14th, 2006 at 11:19 am
Just a ittle information to help see the history and developement on a set of criteria for operation. World class indeed.
January 14th, 2006 at 3:26 pm
[...] Update: More comments about this are from Joanne Hewett at Cosmic Variance and Chad Orzel at Uncertain Principles. [...]
January 14th, 2006 at 3:47 pm
Well, Wikipedia states the standard model was developed between 1970 and 1973… 33 years ago, so it doesn’t count.
January 14th, 2006 at 4:17 pm
Mag1KaL, ask Wikipedia when (and how) it was confirmed experimentally.
January 14th, 2006 at 5:10 pm
Ok then, what has the standard model done for the world? Who benefits from it besides to other particle physicists?
January 14th, 2006 at 5:56 pm
Hi Mag1KaL. What do you mean by “benefits”? I think most people yearn to understand what the world is made of and why it appears the way it does, from the smallest scales imaginable out to the furthest reaches of the Universe. In discovering the Standard Model (and many, many other wonderful facts about nature) we are pushing back the boundaries of human knowledge. When I go to parties, or talk to undergraduates, or get asked what I do by people who are fixing my car, or working on my house, staffing art galleries, midical professionals, working in stores I shop at … in fact when I’m asked what I do by pretty much anyone I meet (all of them non-physicists), they are fascinated by it and hungry to know more. The discovery of the Standard Model feeds this hunger. We are discovering how the world works.
If you’re talking about direct technological applications, then none spring to mind right now. But then again, General Relativity didn’t have any (that I’m aware of)until we started sending up space probes and built the GPS system, which was a long time after its discovery. Even if no such technological benefits exist, everything I wrote about in the preceding paragraph remains true.
January 16th, 2006 at 7:31 pm
the thing about private and government donations, or their lack, is that the parties don’t always pursue their stated principles in their choice to fund or not to fund.
by all rights, a private sponsor of the RHIC or any other comparable scientific endeavor, ought to be able to sway and move the results of such an investment towards consumers it chooses. IMO, RHIC would resist any suggestion such results be withheld from public fora, but an investor might request interested parties have, say, an early look. what’s interesting is if such an early revelation seemed to oppose the political interests of the United States government or whatever flash-in-the-pan administration occupied the chief office at the time.
does such a government, in the absence of its financial support, have any right to dictate the priority or totality of revelations of RHIC’s discoveries? does a partner have the right to dictate such merely because it provides a portion of its funding? might not a foreign government wish to make its own contribution to a facility like RHIC for its own reasons? if so, shouldn’t it have the right to sway priorities in revelation?
these are not matters which are pressing, but they are the principles which are affected by government choosing not to fund a major and important institution like RHIC, but private funds choosing to do so.
i, for one, would strongly argue that if a government does not choose to support an endeavor like RHIC and others do, that government cedes any right to specify how or when these results are publicized, revealed, and used. if they care, let them pay.