The long awaited P5 report is out! … and, speaking for myself here, it is not exactly what I imagined, but it is a formidable piece of work, which is bold and cautious at the same time. In big strokes it reflects the discussions and desires of the community and balances it with the expectations for the available budget. Maybe the most important conclusion that it acknowledges the wishes and desires of the youngest leaders in the community and cracks open the door for the US to regain its leadership position in High Energy Physics with a daring project: the Muon Collider.
What the Moon Shot was to the US astronauts in 1969 and the space race, might be what the ‘Muon Shot’ will be for US physicists and the Energy Frontier on a day far into the future of the 21 century.
The P5 committee and by extension the HEP community is wise enough to realize that a commitment to such a daring and exciting project comes at a cost because we cannot just live for the future but have to complete the projects we started and continue our next future before we can come to the next-to-next future.
An investment into serious R&D for the muon collider now, will limit other efforts during the next phase and it seems that P5 has compromised on the location of the next future project, the Higgs factory, which is stated to be offshore. Offshore Higgs factory options right now are the FCC-ee and the ILC and their implementation would limit cost to the US, so the budget situation will allow to build up the expertise and installations to prove that the muon collider concept can be made to work.
This is exciting, a bright future lies ahead: The FCC-ee is hopefully the option chosen to implement the
Higgs factory as the next big project and eventu