Bulletin of the American Physical Society
APS April Meeting 2016
Volume 61, Number 6
Saturday–Tuesday, April 16–19, 2016; Salt Lake City, Utah
Session X6: The New Big Science and the Transformation of ResearchInvited Undergraduate
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Sponsoring Units: FHP Chair: Cameron Reed, Alma College Room: 150ABC |
Tuesday, April 19, 2016 10:45AM - 11:21AM |
X6.00001: The New Big Science: What's New, What's Not, and What's the Difference Invited Speaker: Catherine Westfall This talk will start with a brief recap of the development of the ``Big Science'' epitomized by high energy physics, that is, the science that flourished after WWII based on accelerators, teams, and price tags that grew ever larger. I will then explain the transformation that started in the 1980s and culminated in the 1990s when the Cold War ended and the next big machine needed to advance high energy physics, the multi-billion dollar Superconducting Supercollider (SSC), was cancelled. I will go on to outline the curious series of events that ushered in the New Big Science, a form of research well suited to a post-Cold War environment that valued practical rather than esoteric projects. To show the impact of the New Big Science I will describe how decisions were ``set into concrete'' during the development of experimental equipment at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Newport News, Virginia. [Preview Abstract] |
Tuesday, April 19, 2016 11:21AM - 11:57AM |
X6.00002: The New Big Science at the NSLS Invited Speaker: Robert Crease The term "New Big Science" refers to a phase shift in the kind of large-scale science that was carried out throughout the U.S. National Laboratory system, when large-scale materials science accelerators rather than high-energy physics accelerators became marquee projects at most major basic research laboratories in the post-Cold War era, accompanied by important changes in the character and culture of the research ecosystem at these laboratories. This talk explores some aspects of this phase shift at BNL's National Synchrotron Light Source. [Preview Abstract] |
Tuesday, April 19, 2016 11:57AM - 12:33PM |
X6.00003: European Neutrons form Parasitic Research to Global Strategy: Realizing Plans for a Transnational European Spallation Source in the Wake of the Cold War Invited Speaker: Thomas Kaiserfeld Studies of Big Science have early on focused on instrumentation and scientific co-operation in large organizations, later on to take into account symbolic values and specific research styles while more recently also involving the relevance of commercial interests and economic development as well as the assimilation of research traditions. In accordance with these transformed practices, this presentation will analyze how an organization with the purpose of realizing a Big-Science facility, The European Spallation Source, has successfully managed to present the project as relevant to different national and international policy-makers, to the community of European neutron researchers as well as to different industrial interests. All this has been achieved in a research-policy environment, which has been the subject to drastic transformations, from calls to engage researchers from the former eastern bloc in the early 1990s via competition with American and Asian researchers at the turn of the century 2000 to intensified demands on business applications. During this process, there has also been fierce competition between different potential sites in the U.K., Germany, Spain, Hungary and Sweden, not once, but twice. The project has in addition been plagued by withdrawals of key actors as well as challenging problems in the field of spallation-source construction. Nevertheless, the European Spallation Source has survived from the early 1990s until today, now initiating the construction process at Lund in southern Sweden. In this presentation, the different measures taken and arguments raised by the European Spallation Source project in order to realize the facility will be analysed. Especially the different designs of the European Spallation Source will be analysed as responses to external demands and threats. [Preview Abstract] |
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