The Cuts to LHCb – Guest Post by William Barter

The following is a guest post by William Barter, who recently finished a term as the ‘physics coordinator’ of LHCb-UK. –o– The European particle physics community recently undertook a two-year process to update our strategy – setting out the things that we, as a field, choose to prioritise. The highest priority in that update was “the full exploitation of the physics potential of the Large Hadron Collider”. Despite our consensus, UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) has decided to pull UK funding for the next-generation upgrade of LHCb, one of four large experiments at the LHC. This decision was made for financial reasons; the science case for the upgrade is not in question, and current LHCb operations are fully funded. With this cut, we are experiencing the same pain as many of our astrophysics colleagues. Our plans and ambitions have been hit by self-defeating decisions from the same funding body. For decades we have known that our current theory of fundamental quantum physics – the…