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In genera], it may be said that tlie field has been firmly established 

 as a discipline of high scientific i)riority. Many witnesses in congres- 

 sional hearings have expressed the view that the field has character- 

 istically attracted the cream of the crop of yonng scientists. Although 

 the impact of research in high-energy physics on science and tech- 

 nolog}' generally is not considered or claimed to be preeminent, its 

 intellectual appeal and challenge are undeniable. 



Direct rewards of national investment in high-energy physics 



The goal of the researchers in high-energy physics is the exploration 

 of a complex and mysterious world, difficult of access, whose relation 

 to the world of human experience is extremely remote and perhaps 

 totally irrelevant. For them, the exploration of this world is both an 

 intellectual challenge and an esthetic experience. Presumably, the 

 reward to those who pay the rising costs of this research is in the 

 vicarious sharing of the excitment and the gratification of the general 

 curiosity about the remote places of the universe. However, the grow- 

 ing complexity of this world has tended to separate it further and 

 further from the comprehension of those who pay these costs, as well 

 as of those who must decide on the allocation of resources for national 

 research and other national purposes. And the growing costs of the 

 research makes increasingly relevant the cpiestion as to the social re- 

 turns of an activity so reliant on social resources. 



Man's enormous curiosity about his physical universe, the micro- 

 cosmos and the macro-cosmos, may or may not ever be essentially 

 gratified. However, the quest goes on in both directions; discoveries 

 are made and pondered upon; another layer of the cosmos, above or 

 below, is laid bare and examined. As the search becomes remote and 

 costly, the role of Government in supporting the quest remains un- 

 defined, but unmistakably more essential and more onerous if the 

 search is to continue. 



There appears to be no end to the quest to identify and catalog new 

 particles, or new excited states of previously identified particles. The 

 question as to whether this particulate population explosion is the 

 correct view of the ultimate composition of matter or whether all these 

 particles will utimately be reduced to a coherent and simplifying set of 

 two or three ultimate-ultimate forms of matter is today one of the 

 most engaging problems facing high energy physics. The further awk- 

 ward ])ossibility has not yet been hinted at that when and if this sim- 

 plifying set is revealed, it will in turn be found — by some enormous 

 engine of still vaster power and cost — to consist of a further complex- 

 ity of constituent particles of undreamed-of ])roperties and minuteness. 



National security aspects of high-energy physics 



The implications of the field for the national security appear to 

 warrant separate discussion. It was from early experiments wdth the 

 atomic nucleus that the way was found to release energy from the 

 atom. High energy physics is an extension of this same kind of re- 

 search. It enlists the interest of the same kinds of scientists who were 

 instrumental in producing the atomic bomb, who manned the Man- 

 hattan District and the subsequent Atomic Energy Commission. The 

 modest dollar investment in studies of the atomic nucleus before 1940 

 resulted in a tremendous impact on science, technology, and strategic 

 warfare. The analogy is clear: an area of pure science unexpectedly 



