Though the sub-panel has not yet issued areport, Feldman says he thinks they will support aU.S. contribution to the LHC, "both to do thephysics, and also to establish firmly theprinciple of international cooperation in projectslike this."
The cancellation of the supercollider has notonly affected the future prospects of physicsprofessors, but also those of their graduatestudents.
While most graduate students did not work onthe supercollider because of the long-term natureof the project and were not directly affected byits cancellation, the general message sent byCongress--that basic science is becoming less of anational priority--was depressing.
"These [events] are most significant, because[they] decrease the potential jobs for physicists,both experimental and theoretical," says George M.Michael, a third-year graduate student in physics.
Many recent physics PhDs have been forced totake jobs in financial institutions on WallStreet. "The training carries over amazinglyreadily," Mann says.
Ironically, Glashow says that despite thediminishing jobs in physics, he has seen a markedrise of undergraduates in introductory physicscourses.
"What we see is a very strange phenomenon," hesays. Students are "taking substantive physicscourses to fulfill the Science A requirement."
Glashow says that while there wereapproximately 120 students in the Physics 15acourse he taught this past fall, there were only alittle more than ten students in the equivalentcore course.
As Huth says, "Some people are very depressedby the prospects, some are undaunted."
And since "the undaunted" will probably be thenext generation of physicists, maybe thosesubatomic particles should start worrying again.