Megascience: The OECD Forum. Particle Physics

Abstract

Particle physics seeks to elucidate the ultimate structure of matter and to describe what happened in the Universe during the instants following the Big Bang. Its Standard model is one of the great scientific achievements of the twentieth century. Yet, particle physics research has also developed tools and techniques that have benefited areas as diverse as medicine, computing and electronics. Particle physics requires vast human and financial resources, rarely available in a single country. Today, in a climate of budgetary restraint, progress in aprticle physics requires ever more powrful accelerators and ever more complex detectors in order to answer the new questions raised by the most recent advances, wich will take us beyond the Standard Model. Finding those answers will mean even greater efforts ont he part of scientists and government funding agencies to plan the necessary facilities and to determine the best way to ensure effecive international co-peration. A recent Megascience Forum expert meeting discussed the needs of the discipline, the preparatory R&D work that is currently being done in laboratories throughout the world, and how the current or projected forms of international co-operation could be adapted for the construction and funding of the costly new facilities envisaged. This volume surveys the issues involved.