HUNDREDS of millions of pounds of backing from countries including the United States and Japan look set to pour into Europe's particle-smashing project at Cern in Geneva.
Funds had been under threat because of Germany's insistence on an 8.5 per cent cut in its annual subscription to Cern. It was feared this would delay beyond 2005 completion of the Large Hadron Collider, a giant sub-atomic particle smasher under construction at Cern. Delay would jeopardise the involvement of the US and Japan.
But at a meeting last week the Cern council of 19 member states decided that the LHC should be completed on time. Cern director general Christopher Llewellyn Smith said; "It is a very major step forward for Cern, European science and world particle physics." By recreating the kind of energies in the LHC that existed in the early universe, physicists hope to gain a better understanding of how matter was created.
Cern's annual budget total is around Pounds 500 million. It has now been agreed that there should be a general reduction in the member states' annual subscription to the laboratory. There will be a total annual reduction of 7.5 per cent in 1997; 8.5 per cent in 1998-2000 and 9.3 per cent in 2001. At a total cost of around a billion pounds, the LHC will take up the lion's share of the Cern budget over the next few years.
Ken Pounds, chief executive of the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council, said the agreement is "very positive". The reduction in the United Kingdom's subscription will help "very considerably" in enabling PPARC to fund the involvement of British particle physicists in the Cern programme. Professor Pounds added: "Cern staff face a 2.5 per cent cut in basic salary as part of the deal. In compensation they will receive 5.5 additional days of leave."