Editorial: US may collide with success yet

A TRUISM of modern physics is that you have to build big to explore the small. That is how a succession of ever-larger accelerators, particularly in the US, laid the foundations for the standard model of particle physics after the second world war. Since then the cutting edge has moved outside the US. Particle physics in the US today is languishing. Cancellation of the Superconducting Super Collider in 1993 left the US without a next-generation accelerator. The Tevatron at Fermilab, outside Chicago, is due to make its final lap in 2010 and jobs are migrating to CERN, the European centre…