The CFTC is considering its first regulation for prediction markets, as arrests over "insider trading" on everything from military operations to Google Search data continue to stack up. As CoinDesk reports, a notice of proposed rulemaking says "the proposal would establish a structured framework for evaluating whether such contracts involve an activity enumerated in Section 5c(c)(5)(C) of the Commodity Exchange Act -activity that involves terrorism, assassination, war, gaming, or conduct that is unlawful under federal or state law-and, if so, whether that contract is contrary to the public interest."
(L-R) Sen. Mike Rounds, Pamela Brown, Chris Malachowsky, Kevin O'Leary, Gabriele Caccia, Tammy Haddad, Michele L. Jawando, Sen. Mark Warner, Michael Kelly and Major General Patrick Ellis attend the Second Annual AI Honors. | Getty Images for Washington AI N
Hello and welcome to Regulator, a newsletter for Verge subscribers about tech politics, tech influence, and tech shenanigans in Washington, DC. (If you're not a subscriber, you can get on board here.) We're back after a two-week hiatus, during most of which I was gallivanting in the Netherlands for a family wedding, and a trip to the Heineken Experience, which is, truly, an ~experience~.
Before I left, I asked everyone in Washington to please chill out while I was gone. This clearly did not happen, and I have returned to a political landscape that can be best described as that meme from Community where the room is on fire. Let's get into th …
A group of independent musicians is suing Google claiming it trained Lyria on their uploads. | Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge
If you've uploaded a song to YouTube, Google almost certainly considers your video fair game for training its Lyria music AI, it just won't admit it right now.
Their lawsuit is based on the unsupported hypothesis that Google trained on their specific works. Even accepting their untested allegations as fact, the Complaint cannot stand. Plaintiffs each granted YouTube, and Google - which provides the service-a broad license to use the uploaded con …
Across the stories today, a common thread emerges: the growing gap between urgent environmental realities and the systems—political, economic, and social—struggling to keep pace with change.
This tension plays out most starkly in the realm of climate health impacts. New research warns that heat-related hospitalizations could double by 2040, while a super El Niño threatens to deepen global economic inequality through cascading climate disruptions. Behind the numbers are real communities adapting in real time. In Pacoima, a working-class Los Angeles neighborhood sandwiched between highways and heavy industry, residents like Jose Luis Salas are mounting their own defense against air pollution, installing shoebox-sized monitoring devices that track what they breathe daily.
Yet the day’s coverage also points to growing momentum around practical solutions gaining real traction. Solar energy quietly surpassed coal in U.S. electricity generation for the first time this May—a milestone that arrived not through grand announcements but through the steady accumulation of rooftop panels and utility-scale installations. Britain cleared a major bottleneck by offering grid connections to over 700 clean energy projects, while new data reveals the country’s green economy now employs over one million workers across a £100 billion sector.
The stories reveal how environmental challenges are increasingly driving innovation at the community level. In Guatemala’s Western Highlands, approximately 60 communities are reviving ancient Maya agricultural wisdom, creating homemade biopesticides from aromatic plants to replace expensive chemical alternatives. Similarly, 120 women farmers in Malawi’s Chiradzulu district have transformed traditional maize cultivation by adding organic fruits and vegetables now in high demand from urban buyers—though their success is shadowed by a troubling reality: their bees, crucial pollinators for food security, are mysteriously disappearing.
It’s a reminder that progress and pressure often arrive together. Colombia enacted groundbreaking legislation requiring detailed cattle tracking to prevent deforestation-linked beef from reaching markets, while Indonesia’s magnificent hornbills face accelerating threats from both habitat loss and an illegal online pet trade. The contrast illustrates how conservation gains in one area can be undermined by emerging threats in another.
Perhaps most telling is how wealth continues to complicate climate action. New research from Greenpeace reveals that the ultra-rich drive a quarter of global emissions not through private jets—their visible symbols of excess—but through their investment portfolios and asset ownership. Meanwhile, chemical companies are quietly pushing “immunity laws” across 15 states to shield themselves from health-related lawsuits, even as communities bear the costs of environmental damage.
The space program offers its own metaphor for these broader tensions. NASA’s latest astronaut selections for Artemis missions reflect both ambition and limitation—crews training for missions that won’t reach the Moon, while hundreds of women gathered at the AeroWomen conference to prepare for space careers in an industry still taking shape.
As the week unfolds, all eyes will be on whether these parallel tracks—accelerating environmental pressures and emerging solutions—can converge into the systemic changes scientists say are necessary. Today’s stories suggest we’re living through a period when local innovation and global challenges are both intensifying, creating opportunities for breakthrough and breakdown in equal measure.
Meta has been ordered by the European Commission to restore free WhatsApp access for chatbots made by rival AI providers while the regulator finishes its antitrust investigation. The rare interim measure announced on Tuesday was deemed necessary "to prevent serious and irreparable damage to competition" in the general-purpose AI assistant market.
This is only the second time that the EU has used the emergency power in more than 20 years, Politico reports. It follows the launch of a formal investigation in December 2025 into whether Meta was abusing its market dominance by banning third-party AI chatbots from its WhatsApp messaging platform. …
Paramount Skydance is accusing Netflix of maintaining a campaign against its proposed acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD).
In a June 5 letter (PDF) addressed to Jared A. Hughes, acting section chief of the Media, Entertainment, and Communications Section of the US Department of Justice's (DOJ's) Antitrust Division, and A. Maya Kahn, a trial attorney for the Antitrust Division, and first reported on by Politico today, Paramount chief legal officer Makan Delrahim accused Netflix of trying to influence stakeholders about the merger. The letter reads:
Indeed, Netflix’s panic-level response and scorched-earth campaign to try and poison regulators and other stakeholders against the Transaction shows just how seriously Netflix takes Paramount as a scaled competitor.
The letter from Delrahim, a former assistant attorney general for the Antitrust Division, is a response to a letter that The International Brotherhood of Teamsters sent to the DOJ in March. The teamsters' letter argued that Paramount and WBD's merger would threaten film and TV workers. The union, which has 1.3 million members, asked the DOJ to block the merger "unless substantial and enforceable safeguards are put in place to increase domestic production and protect jobs," per an announcement from the group.
One day after WIRED revealed that Meta had quietly embedded an unreleased face-recognition system into an app installed on more than 50 million phones, the company removed it, according to a WIRED analysis of the latest version’s code.
The most recent version of Meta AI, a companion app for its line of smart glasses, strips out the unactivated software components that powered the system Meta internally called NameTag. The version published the day of WIRED’s report included several code libraries explicitly named for face recognition. Friday’s release includes none of them.
Andy Stone, Meta's vice president of communications, told WIRED on Monday that the feature is purely exploratory, adding: “No final decision has been made on what to do here, if anything.”
Across the stories today, a common thread emerges: the growing tension between our rapidly expanding digital world and the natural systems struggling to sustain it. From AI data centers planned for drought-stricken regions to coal plants getting emergency extensions, we’re witnessing the collision between technological acceleration and environmental limits.
The numbers tell a stark story. Two-thirds of new AI data centers are slated for areas already grappling with water scarcity, while these facilities demand massive amounts of both electricity and cooling water. Meanwhile, Florida’s coal plant—scheduled for retirement as part of a clean energy transition—gets an emergency lifeline to keep the lights on. It’s a reminder that progress and pressure often arrive together, forcing difficult choices between immediate needs and long-term sustainability.
The day’s coverage points to growing momentum around accountability, particularly in how we fund and regulate resource-intensive industries. Australian lawmakers are pushing for fair taxation of AI infrastructure, determined not to repeat what they see as mistakes with gas exports. North Carolina legislators face their own paradox, crafting bills that simultaneously curb data center expansion while boosting fossil fuel development. These policy tensions reflect a broader reckoning: how do we harness technological progress without overwhelming the ecosystems that support us?
Yet signs of genuine environmental recovery punctuate today’s more challenging headlines. Water voles have returned to an English nature reserve after four decades, while marine protected areas now cover 10% of the world’s oceans—a significant milestone toward the 30% goal by 2030. In Sumatra’s hills, coffee farmers like Sri Atmiatun are proving that conservation and community prosperity can grow together, restoring forests while securing livelihoods through innovative social forestry programs.
Behind the numbers are real communities adapting in real time. Alaska’s fishing industry faces uncertainty as critical ocean monitoring systems face budget cuts, while Arizona’s San Carlos Lake sits closed indefinitely after drought and dam releases killed all fish life. These aren’t abstract environmental statistics—they’re disruptions to ways of life, forcing entire communities to reimagine their relationships with changing landscapes.
The financial flows reveal where power and priorities truly lie. The world’s largest banks poured a record $906 billion into fossil fuels despite climate commitments, an 8% increase that environmental researchers call “unfathomable.” Meanwhile, China launched the world’s first wind-powered underwater data center, signaling that sustainable technology infrastructure is possible when political will aligns with innovation.
Perhaps most troubling is what we’re losing while focused on these larger battles. Wildfire smoke has erased four years of air quality progress across the United States, while sea levels are now rising at twice the rate recorded just a decade ago. Scientists are racing to record forest sounds before wild spaces fall silent—a poignant reminder that some losses can’t be reversed.
The day’s stories also illuminate the gap between good intentions and effective action. Louisiana legislators unanimously approved expanding their wood pellet industry despite the bill’s sponsor admitting he knows little about the sector. FIFA appears unprepared for wildfire smoke threats at upcoming World Cup venues. These moments reveal how quickly environmental challenges can outpace institutional readiness.
As the week unfolds, all eyes will be on whether emerging solutions—from underwater data centers to marine protection expansions—can scale fast enough to match the magnitude of the challenges. The central question remains: can we innovate our way toward sustainability, or will the pace of environmental change force more fundamental reckonings with how we live and build in a resource-constrained world?
Mariana Mazzucato’s new book setting out the case for ‘managed capitalism’ fails to address the risks of government over-reach identified by Friedrich Hayek (who isn’t even in the index), says Dr Tilak Doshi.
Across the stories today, a common thread emerges: the gap between environmental promises and practice is forcing communities to take matters into their own hands, even as powerful interests dig in their heels.
The day’s coverage points to growing momentum around local action filling spaces where larger systems have failed. In Iowa, farmer James Hepp is breaking ranks with agricultural tradition, calling for mandatory water quality standards after voluntary programs fell short on his 1,600 acres. Meanwhile, in Ghana, marine biologist Issah Seidu has convinced fishing communities to trade endangered guitarfish for giant snail farming—creating economic opportunity that doesn’t depend on depleting the ocean.
These grassroots shifts are happening against a backdrop of institutional retreat. The aviation industry quietly admitted its 2050 net-zero pledges will likely miss the mark, just five years after making them. Democratic politicians are avoiding climate messaging despite electoral benefits, a phenomenon researchers call “climate hushing.” And the Trump administration invoked wartime powers to pour $700 million into coal revival, framing fossil fuels as national security.
Yet nature itself is sending mixed signals that complicate neat narratives about environmental decline. UK waters are experiencing an unprecedented octopus population boom that’s reshaping marine ecosystems from England to Scotland. Tuna populations are showing remarkable recovery through strict international fishing regulations. But for every success story, there’s a reminder of fragility: critically endangered Chinese pangolins discovered thriving in Nepal’s community forests, or 119 sailors’ graves from 1801 now threatened by Norfolk’s rising seas.
It’s a reminder that progress and pressure often arrive together. The same regulatory changes that created UK electric vehicle loopholes will pump an extra 17 million tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere by 2030. North Carolina legislators are simultaneously curbing data centers’ massive electricity consumption while boosting fossil fuel incentives—an environmental paradox wrapped in a single bill.
Behind the numbers are real communities adapting in real time. Over 600 Thai residents just completed a 42-mile “peace walk” demanding government action on heavy metal river pollution. In the Dominican Republic, 65-year-old Leoncia Ramos wants to leave the home she’s known her entire life, fleeing gold mine pollution while Canada’s corporate watchdog office sits empty. Long Island residents in Brookhaven are discovering that decades of landfill contamination now threatens their groundwater.
These stories reveal something crucial about this environmental moment: when institutions fail or retreat, communities don’t wait. They organize marches, develop alternative livelihoods, break with traditional alliances, and demand accountability. Whether it’s Michigan’s farm training program addressing agricultural crisis through hands-on education, or Malawi’s Elephant Marsh feeding thousands while facing conservation pressures, local knowledge and local action are filling critical gaps.
The tension between extraction and protection remains fierce—Shell operated leaking Nigeria pipelines for years despite knowing the risks to mangrove forests, while Colorado opens 156,000 acres of critical wildlife habitat to oil drilling. But today’s coverage also suggests that the most durable environmental progress might be happening at smaller scales, in communities that can’t afford to wait for global agreements or corporate promises.
As the week unfolds, all eyes will be on whether these grassroots innovations can scale up fast enough to match the challenges revealed in today’s headlines.
Across the stories today, a common thread emerges: the growing tension between ambitious climate goals and the messy realities of making change happen on the ground. From Colorado’s largest-ever oil lease sale to federal subsidies flowing toward aging coal plants, the gap between environmental necessity and economic momentum has rarely felt more stark.
The day’s coverage points to growing momentum around innovation, but also the persistent pull of established systems. While virtual power plants gain traction in Massachusetts and Minnesota as states seek clean energy solutions, the federal government simultaneously allocated $700 million to support the struggling coal industry through the Defense Production Act. It’s a reminder that progress and pressure often arrive together, creating policy landscapes that can feel contradictory but reflect the complex economics of energy transition.
Perhaps most telling are the stories of communities caught between these larger forces. In Colorado’s northwestern wilderness, the Bureau of Land Management is opening 156,000 acres of critical wildlife habitat — including migration corridors for the nation’s largest elk herd — to oil and gas drilling. Meanwhile, in the Dominican Republic, 450 families near the Pueblo Viejo gold mine are demanding relocation from what they describe as dangerous pollution, while Canada’s corporate watchdog office remains unstaffed and unable to respond.
These human-scale impacts reveal how environmental challenges increasingly operate across borders and timescales. The Middle East conflict now threatens global food security through fertilizer trade disruptions, while mangrove forests — nature’s carbon guardians for tens of millions of years — face existential pressure from rising seas happening faster than these resilient ecosystems can adapt.
Behind the numbers are real communities adapting in real time. In Nepal’s fertile southern plains, farmer Dhruba Prasai stands guard over his crops every night as wildlife emerges from nearby forests, highlighting the complex relationship between conservation success and agricultural livelihoods. In Norfolk, authorities must consider exhuming a 200-year-old mass grave of sailors as coastal erosion — accelerated by climate change — threatens this historic site.
Yet today’s stories also showcase remarkable resilience and ingenuity. A Kent village transformed itself into a living solar system model to inspire environmental awareness. The stunning turquoise dwarf gecko has rebounded from near-extinction thanks to trade bans and conservation efforts. Amazon communities are pioneering new models for sustainable resource management while protecting some of the world’s last intact forests.
The juxtaposition feels particularly acute in water policy, where federal officials prepare to impose Colorado River management plans if seven states can’t reach agreement, while a Labour politician calls for public ownership of Thames Water amid ongoing environmental concerns. These parallel struggles — one over scarcity, another over stewardship — underscore how water governance has become a defining issue for both climate adaptation and democratic accountability.
As the week unfolds, all eyes will be on whether the Biden administration’s mixed signals on energy policy — supporting both clean innovation and fossil fuel infrastructure — represent a pragmatic transition strategy or a failure to fully commit to climate goals. The stories emerging from frontline communities, from Nepal’s fields to Colorado’s wilderness, suggest that the window for managed, equitable change continues to narrow, making each policy choice increasingly consequential for both people and planet.
Internal company documents reveal that oil giant Shell knowingly continued operating a severely compromised pipeline in Nigeria’s Niger Delta for years, despite being aware it posed significant pollution risks to the region’s precious mangrove ecosystems. The communications show that senior executives were informed as early as 2008 about the deteriorating conditions of the 97-kilometer Nembe Creek Trunk Line, yet chose to keep the oil flowing rather than shut down operations for repairs.
The pipeline, which carries 150,000 barrels of oil daily to export terminals, became a source of repeated environmental disasters as thieves tapped into the line through illegal connections, causing massive spills into the surrounding wetlands. Company documents from 2013 classified such compromised pipelines as requiring immediate shutdown or urgent remedial action, yet operations continued. The resulting oil contamination has devastated the region’s mangrove forests, which are home to diverse species of Rhizophora and Avicennia trees that form critical coastal ecosystems.
Local communities have paid a devastating price for Shell’s decision to prioritize profits over environmental protection. Residents of the nearby Bille community report that approximately 2,000 hectares of mangrove swamps have been killed by oil spills, with contamination affecting a total area of 13,200 hectares. The pollution has destroyed fish populations and other aquatic life that local communities depend on for their livelihoods. Satellite imagery confirms the massive scale of mangrove degradation around affected villages, showing the long-term environmental consequences of operating damaged oil infrastructure in sensitive coastal ecosystems.
Five leading scientists were ousted from the annual meeting of the American Diabetes Association (ADA) in New Orleans on Friday. Their crime: handing out copies of an editorial, published in the journal Diabetes Care on April 29, sharply criticizing the Trump administration's ongoing attacks on scientific research.
Those ousted were Steven Kahn, professor of medicine at the University of Washington and editor-in-chief of Diabetes Care, who co-authored the published editorial; former ADA President Desmond Schatz of the University of Florida, Gainesville; Aaron Kelly, pediatrics professor at the University of Minnesota; Justin Ryder of Northwestern University; and Irl Hirsch, also of the University of Washington. The five were handing out reprints of the editorial outside a room where NIH director Jay Bhattacharya had been scheduled to speak. Bhattacharya canceled and another NIH official spoke in his stead.
"They physically grabbed us, forced us out of the conference center, and now are telling us we can no longer attend this meeting," Kelly told MedPage Today, which first reported the incident. "They're taking our lanyards. It really has come to this in America. Censorship is real. America needs to stand up. Scientists, stand up. Physicians, stand up."
Across the stories today, a common thread emerges around the growing tension between humanity’s expanding footprint and the natural world’s capacity to sustain it — and the innovative ways communities are responding to that pressure.
From Nepal’s sleepless farmers standing guard against crop-raiding elephants to New York’s groundbreaking moratorium on data centers, the day’s coverage points to growing momentum around a fundamental question: How do we balance human needs with environmental limits? In Nepal’s fertile plains, farmer Dhruba Prasai embodies this struggle in the most personal terms, spending nights protecting his livelihood from wildlife that has nowhere else to go as habitats shrink. His story reflects a global pattern where conservation success — healthy animal populations — creates new challenges for the communities living alongside recovering ecosystems.
Meanwhile, the United States is grappling with its own version of this tension through energy infrastructure. New York’s proposed data center freeze represents the first state-level recognition that the digital economy’s physical infrastructure carries real environmental costs. As artificial intelligence development accelerates — highlighted by upcoming presidential meetings with tech leaders — states are being forced to confront whether unlimited growth in energy-hungry facilities aligns with climate commitments.
The policy landscape reveals a surprising role reversal that challenges conventional wisdom about climate action. While traditionally blue states like California retreat from aggressive environmental policies, red states are surging ahead in renewable energy development. This shift suggests that economic opportunity, not political ideology, may increasingly drive clean energy adoption. Virtual power plants are gaining traction in states like Massachusetts and Minnesota, signaling that grid modernization is becoming a bipartisan priority as electricity demand soars.
But perhaps the most encouraging thread running through today’s stories is the remarkable capacity for recovery when protection efforts succeed. Tanzania’s turquoise dwarf gecko has rebounded from near-extinction after trade bans halted the illegal capture of 40,000 individuals. Mangrove forests worldwide are staging unexpected comebacks after decades of destruction. Even in crisis, there are signs of resilience: curlew chicks successfully hatched from eggs rescued during wildfires, and New Mexico’s “reforestation pipeline” is training climate-resilient seedlings to heal wildfire-devastated landscapes.
It’s a reminder that progress and pressure often arrive together. The same technological advances driving data center construction are also enabling virtual power plants to balance renewable energy. Conservation successes that allow wildlife populations to recover create new management challenges for rural communities.
Behind the numbers are real communities adapting in real time. From Nepalese farmers developing night watch systems to Native American tribes seeing their bison restoration efforts threatened by new federal grazing rules, the human dimension of environmental change continues to play out in deeply personal ways.
The contrast between immediate local impacts and longer-term recovery stories suggests we’re in a pivotal moment where short-term adaptation strategies must align with longer-term restoration goals. As the week unfolds, all eyes will be on how policymakers balance competing demands — from Alaska’s Arctic refuge lease sale to Albania’s luxury resort controversy — while communities continue innovating at the intersection of human needs and environmental health.
In Nepal’s fertile southern plains, farmer Dhruba Prasai hasn’t had a good night’s sleep in years. Every evening, he stands guard over his fields as nilgai antelopes, wild boars, deer, and Asian elephants emerge from nearby forests to feast on his crops. Without constant vigilance, these animals devour not only his standing harvest but also his stored grain supplies.
Prasai’s struggle reflects a growing crisis across Madhesh province, Nepal’s agricultural heartland. From mid-2024 to mid-2025, authorities recorded nearly 15,000 human-wildlife conflict incidents in the region alone, resulting in 134 human deaths and 457 animal fatalities. The problem is escalating as wildlife habitats shrink and animals increasingly venture into farming areas seeking food.
Despite government promises of relief for crop damage, farmers face bureaucratic obstacles that make compensation nearly impossible to obtain. When wild boars destroyed Prasai’s stored maize last year, forest officials directed him to obtain recommendation letters from local municipal offices before applying for relief. The process proved so complex and time-consuming that Prasai abandoned his claim entirely. “We simply don’t have the time,” he explains, noting that even farmers who completed the paperwork still haven’t received compensation.
This administrative maze leaves farmers caught between protecting endangered wildlife and securing their livelihoods, highlighting the urgent need for streamlined relief systems that can address both conservation goals and rural economic survival.
On Thursday, President Donald Trump announced his administration's latest attempt to prop up the US coal industry during an incoherent press event that randomly oscillated between energy issues and Trump's fixation with building and renovating monuments in DC. The energy portion of the events was also frequently disconnected from reality.
"Today we're taking historic action to bring down the price of energy and the cost of living for all Americans with the power of clean, beautiful coal," said Trump, apparently unaware that coal is one of the most expensive means of generating electricity in the US.
With wind and solar power getting cheaper, coal has become the second-most expensive way of producing electricity, trailing only the cost of building a new nuclear plant. As a result, no new coal plants have been completed in over a decade, and coal has gone from powering over half the electrical grid to producing only about 15 percent of the nation's electricity. That's before the indirect costs of coal use are considered. It produces the most greenhouse gas emissions per unit of energy, releases dangerous particulates and chemicals into the atmosphere, and leaves behind ash that has high levels of toxic metals.
This is the second part of our coverage of the P5 report and its implications for particle physics. To read the first part, click here
One of the thorniest questions in particle physics is ‘What comes after the LHC?’. This was one of the areas people were most uncertain what the P5 report would say. Globally, the field is trying to decide what to do once the LHC winds down in ~2040 While the LHC is scheduled to get an upgrade in the latter half of the decade and run until the end of the 2030’s, the field must start planning now for what comes next. For better or worse, big smash-y things seem to capture a lot of public interest, so the debate over what large collider project to build has gotten heated. Even Elon Musk is tweeting (X-ing?) memes about it.
Famously, the US’s last large accelerator project, the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC), was cancelled in the ’90s partway through its construction. The LHC’s construction itself often faced perilous funding situations, and required a CERN to make the unprecedented move of taking a loan to pay for its construction. So no one takes for granted that future large collider projects will ultimately come to fruition.
Desert or Discovery?
When debating what comes next, dashed hopes of LHC discoveries are top of mind. The LHC experiments were primarily designed to search for the Higgs boson, which they successfully found in 2012. However, many had predicted (perhaps over-confidently) it would also discover a slew of other particles, like those from supersymmetry or those heralding extra-dimensions of spacetime. These predictions stemmed from a favored principle of nature called ‘naturalness’ which argued additional particles nearby in energy to the Higgs were needed to keep its mass at a reasonable value. While there is still much LHC data to analyze, many searches for these particles have been performed so far and no signs of these particles have been seen.
These null results led to some soul-searching within particle physics. The motivations behind the ‘naturalness’ principle that said the Higgs had to be accompanied by other particles has been questioned within the field, and in New York Times op-eds.
No one questions that deep mysteries like the origins of dark matter, matter anti-matter asymmetry, and neutrino masses, remain. But with the Higgs filling in the last piece of the Standard Model, some worry that answers to these questions in the form of new particles may only exist at energy scales entirely out of the reach of human technology. If true, future colliders would have no hope of
A diagram of the particles of the Standard Model laid out as a function of energy. The LHC and other experiments have probed up to around 10^3 GeV, and found all the particles of the Standard Model. Some worry new particles may only exist at the extremely high energies of the Planck or GUT energy scales. This would imply a large large ‘desert’ in energy, many orders of magnitude in which no new particles exist. Figure adapted from here
The situation being faced now is qualitatively different than the pre-LHC era. Prior to the LHC turning on, ‘no lose theorems’, based on the mathematical consistency of the Standard Model, meant that it had to discover the Higgs or some other new particle like it. This made the justification for its construction as bullet-proof as one can get in science; a guaranteed Nobel prize discovery. But now with the last piece of the Standard Model filled in, there are no more free wins; guarantees of the Standard Model’s breakdown don’t occur until energy scales we would need solar-system sized colliders to probe. Now, like all other fields of science, we cannot predict what discoveries we may find with future collider experiments.
Still, optimists hope, and have their reasons to believe, that nature may not be so unkind as to hide its secrets behind walls so far outside our ability to climb. There are compelling models of dark matter that live just outside the energy reach of the LHC, and predict rates too low for direct detection experiments, but would be definitely discovered or ruled out by high energy colliders. The nature of the ‘phase transition’ that occurred in the very early universe, which may explain the prevalence of matter over anti-matter, can also be answered. There are also a slew ofexperimental ‘hints‘, all of which have significant question marks, but could point to new particles within the reach of a future collider.
Many also just advocate for building a future machine to study nature itself, with less emphasis on discovering new particles. They argue that even if we only further confirm the Standard Model, it is a worthwhile endeavor. Though we calculate Standard Model predictions for high energies, unless they are tested in a future collider we will not ‘know’ how if nature actually works like this until we test it in those regimes. They argue this is a fundamental part of the scientific process, and should not be abandoned so easily. Chief among the untested predictions are those surrounding the Higgs boson. The Higgs is a central somewhat mysterious piece of the Standard Model but is difficult to measure precisely in the noisy environment of the LHC. Future colliders would allow us to study it with much better precision, and verify whether it behaves as the Standard Model predicts or not.
Projects
These theoretical debates directly inform what colliders are being proposed and what their scientific case is.
Many are advocating for a “Higgs factory”, a collider of based on clean electron-positron collisions that could be used to study the Higgs in much more detail than the messy proton collisions of the LHC. Such a machine would be sensitive to subtle deviations of Higgs behavior from Standard Model predictions. Such deviations could come from the quantum effects of heavy, yet-undiscovered particles interacting with the Higgs. However, to determine what particles are causing those deviations, its likely one would need a new ‘discovery’ machine which has high enough energy to produce them.
Among the Higgs factory options are the International Linear Collider, a proposed 20km linear machine which would be hosted in Japan. ILC designs have been ‘ready to go’ for the last 10 years but the Japanese government has repeated waffled on whether to approve the project. Sitting in limbo for this long has led to many being pessimistic about the projects future, but certainly many in the global community would be ecstatic to work on such a machine if it was approved.
Designs for the ILC have been ready for nearly a decade, but its unclear if it will receive the greenlight from the Japanese government. Image source
Alternatively, some in the US have proposed building a linear collider based on a ‘cool copper’ cavities (C3) rather than the standard super conducting ones. These copper cavities can achieve more acceleration per meter than the standard super conducting ones, meaning a linear Higgs factory could be constructed with a reduced 8km footprint. A more compact design can significantly cut down on infrastructure costs that governments usually don’t like to use their science funding on. Advocates had proposed it as a cost-effective Higgs factory option, whose small footprint means it could potentially hosted in the US.
The Future-Circular-Collider (FCC), CERN’s successor to the LHC, would kill both birds with one extremely long stone. Similar to the progression from LEP to the LHC, this new proposed 90km collider would run as Higgs factory using electron-positron collisions starting in 2045 before eventually switching to a ~90 TeV proton-proton collider starting in ~2075.
Designs for the massive 90km FCC ring surrounding Geneva
Such a machine would undoubtably answer many of the important questions in particle physics, however many have concerns about the huge infrastructure costs needed to dig such a massive tunnel and the extremely long timescale before direct discoveries could be made. Most of the current field would not be around 50 years from now to see what such a machine finds. The Future-Circular-Collider (FCC), CERN’s successor to the LHC, would kill both birds with one extremely long stone. Similar to the progression from LEP to the LHC, this new proposed 90km collider would run as Higgs factory using electron-positron collisions starting in 2045 before eventually switching to a ~90 TeV proton-proton collider starting in ~2075. Such a machine would undoubtably answer many of the important questions in particle physics, however many have concerns about the extremely long timescale before direct discoveries could be made. Most of the current field would not be around 50 years from now to see what such a machine finds. The FCC is also facing competition as Chinese physicists have proposed a very similar design (CEPC) which could potentially start construction much earlier.
During the snowmass process many in the US starting pushing for an ambitious alternative. They advocated a new type of machine that collides muons, the heavier cousin of electrons. A muon collider could reach the high energies of a discovery machine while also maintaining a clean environment that Higgs measurements can be performed in. However, muons are unstable, and collecting enough of them into formation to form a beam before they decay is a difficult task which has not been done before. The group of dedicated enthusiasts designed t-shirts and Twitter memes to capture the excitement of the community. While everyone agrees such a machine would be amazing, the key technologies necessary for such a collider are less developed than those of electron-positron and proton colliders. However, if the necessary technological hurdles could be overcome, such a machine could turn on decades before the planned proton-proton run of the FCC. It can also presents a much more compact design, at only 10km circumfrence, roughly three times smaller than the LHC. Advocates are particularly excited that this would allow it to be built within the site of Fermilab, the US’s flagship particle physics lab, which would represent a return to collider prominence for the US.
A proposed design for a muon collider. It relies on ambitious new technologies, but could potentially deliver similar physics to the FCC decades sooner and with a ten times smaller footprint. Source
Deliberation & Decision
This plethora of collider options, each coming with a very different vision of the field in 25 years time led to many contentious debates in the community. The extremely long timescales of these projects led to discussions of human lifespans, mortality and legacy being much more being much more prominent than usual scientific discourse.
Ultimately the P5 recommendation walked a fine line through these issues. Their most definitive decision was to recommend against a Higgs factor being hosted in the US, a significant blow to C3 advocates. The panel did recommend US support for any international Higgs factories which come to fruition, at a level ‘commensurate’ with US support for the LHC. What exactly ‘comensurate’ means in this context I’m sure will be debated in the coming years.
However, the big story to many was the panel’s endorsement of the muon collider’s vision. While recognizing the scientific hurdles that would need to be overcome, they called the possibility of muon collider hosted in the US a scientific ‘muon shot‘, that would reap huge gains. They therefore recommended funding for R&D towards they key technological hurdles that need to be addressed.
Because the situation is unclear on both the muon front and international Higgs factory plans, they recommended a follow up panel to convene later this decade when key aspects have clarified. While nothing was decided, many in the muon collider community took the report as a huge positive sign. While just a few years ago many dismissed talk of such a collider as fantastical, now a real path towards its construction has been laid down.
Hitoshi Murayama, chair of the P5 committee, cuts into a ‘Shoot for the Muon’ cake next to a smiling Lia Merminga, the director of Fermilab. Source
While the P5 report is only one step along the path to a future collider, it was an important one. Eyes will now turn towards reports from the different collider advocates. CERN’s FCC ‘feasibility study’, updates around the CEPC and, the International Muon Collider Collaboration detailed design report are all expected in the next few years. These reports will set up the showdown later this decade where concrete funding decisions will be made.
For those interested the full report as well as executive summaries of different areas can be found on the P5 website. Members of the US particle physics community are also encouraged to sign the petition endorsing the recommendations here.
Particle physics is the epitome of ‘big science’. To answer our most fundamental questions out about physics requires world class experiments that push the limits of whats technologically possible. Such incredible sophisticated experiments, like those at the LHC, require bigfacilities to make them possible, bigcollaborations to run them, big project planning to make dreams of new facilities a reality, and committees with big acronyms to decide what to build.
Enter the Particle Physics Project Prioritization Panel (aka P5) which is tasked with assessing the landscape of future projects and laying out a roadmap for the future of the field in the US. And because these large projects are inevitably an international endeavor, the report they released last week has a large impact on the global direction of the field. The report lays out a vision for the next decade of neutrino physics, cosmology, dark matter searches and future colliders.
P5 follows the community-wide brainstorming effort known as the Snowmass Process in which researchers from all areas of particle physics laid out a vision for the future. The Snowmass process led to a particle physics ‘wish list’, consisting of all the projects and research particle physicists would be excited to work on. The P5 process is the hard part, when this incredibly exciting and diverse research program has to be made to fit within realistic budget scenarios. Advocates for different projects and research areas had to make a case of what science their project could achieve and a detailed estimate of the costs. The panel then takes in all this input and makes a set of recommendations of how the budget should be allocated, what should projects be realized and what hopes are dashed. Though the panel only produces a set of recommendations, they are used quite extensively by the Department of Energy which actually allocates funding. If your favorite project is not endorsed by the report, its very unlikely to be funded.
The P5 report also created an awesome graphic that contains symbolism for the different aspects of the plan. The left side depicts oscillating neutrinos and the shape of the Higgs potential. The right side depicts dark matter and the large scale structure of the universe. The central ball of light is supposed to represent discoveries of the unknown. Source
Particle physics is an incredibly diverse field, covering sub-atomic to cosmic scales, so recommendations are divided up into several different areas. In this post I’ll cover the panel’s recommendations for neutrino physics and the cosmic frontier. Future colliders, perhaps the spiciest topic, will be covered in a follow up post.
The Future of Neutrino Physics
For those in the neutrino physics community all eyes were on the panels recommendations regarding the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment (DUNE). DUNE is the US’s flagship particle physics experiment for the coming decade and aims to be the definitive worldwide neutrino experiment in the years to come. A high powered beam of neutrinos will be produced at Fermilab and sent 800 miles through the earth’s crust towards several large detectors placed in a mine in South Dakota. Its a much bigger project than previous neutrino experiments, unifying essentially the entire US community into a single collaboration.
DUNE is setup to produce world leading measurements of neutrino oscillations, the property by which neutrinos produced in one ‘flavor state’, (eg an electron-neutrino) gradually changes its state with sinusoidal probability (eg into a muon neutrino) as it propagates through space. This oscillation is made possible by a simple quantum mechanical weirdness: neutrino’s flavor state, whether it couples to electrons muons or taus, is not the same as its mass state. Neutrinos of a definite mass are therefore a mixture of the different flavors and visa versa.
Detailed measurements of this oscillation are the best way we know to determine several key neutrino properties. DUNE aims to finally pin down two crucial neutrino properties: their ‘mass ordering’, which will solidify how the different neutrino flavors and measured mass differences all fit together, and their ‘CP-violation’ which specifies whether neutrinos and their anti-matter counterparts behave the same or not. DUNE’s main competitor is the Hyper-Kamiokande experiment in Japan, another next-generation neutrino experiment with similar goals.
A depiction of the DUNE experiment. A high intensity proton beam at Fermilab is used to create a concentrated beam of neutrinos which are then sent through 800 miles of the Earth’s crust towards detectors placed deep underground South Dakota. Source
Construction of the DUNE experiment has been ongoing for several years and unfortunately has not been going quite as well as hoped. It has faced significant schedule delays and cost overruns. DUNE is now not expected to start taking data until 2031, significantly behind Hyper-Kamiokande’s projected 2027 start. These delays may lead to Hyper-K making these definitive neutrino measurements years before DUNE, which would be a significant blow to the experiment’s impact. This left many DUNE collaborators worried about its broad support from the community.
It came as a relief then when P5 report re-affirmed the strong science case for DUNE, calling it the “ultimate long baseline” neutrino experiment. The report strongly endorsed the completion of the first phase of DUNE. However, it recommended a pared-down version of its upgrade, advocating for an earlier beam upgrade in lieu of additional detectors. This re-imagined upgrade will still achieve the core physics goals of the original proposal with a significant cost savings. With this report, and news that the beleaguered underground cavern construction in South Dakota is now 90% complete, was certainly welcome holiday news to the neutrino community. This is also sets up a decade-long race between DUNE and Hyper-K to be the first to measure these key neutrino properties.
Cosmic Implications
While we normally think of particle physics as focused on the behavior of sub-atomic particles, its really about the study of fundamental forces and laws, no matter the method. This means that telescopes to study the oldest light in the universe, the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), fall into the same budget category as giant accelerators studying sub-atomic particles. Though the experiments in these two areas look very different, the questions they seek to answer are cross-cutting. Understanding how particles interact at very high energies helps us understand the earliest moments of the universe, when such particles were all interacting in a hot dense plasma. Likewise, by studying the these early moments of the universe and its large-scale evolution can tell us about what kinds of particles and forces are influencing its dynamics. When asking fundamental questions about the universe, one needs both the sharpest microscopes and the grandest panoramas possible.
The most prominent example of this blending of the smallest and largest scales in particle physics is dark matter. Some of our best evidence for dark matter comes analyzing the cosmic microwave background to determine how the primordial plasma behaved. These studies showed that some type of ‘cold’, matter that doesn’t interact with light, aka dark matter, was necessary to form the first clumps that eventually seeded the formation of galaxies. Without it, the universe would be much more soup-y and structureless than what we see to today.
The “cosmic web” galaxy clusters from the Millenium simulation. Measuring and understanding this web can tell us a lot about the fundamental constituents of the universe. Source
To determine what dark matter is then requires an attack from two fronts: design experiments here on earth attempting directly detect it, and further study its cosmic implications to look for more clues as to its properties.
The panel recommended next generation telescopes to study the CMB as a top priority. The so called ‘Stage 4’ CMB experiment would deploy telescopes in both the south pole and Chile’s Atacama desert to better characterize sources of atmospheric noise. The CMB has been studied extensively before, but the increased precision of CMS-S4 could shed light on mysteries like dark energy, dark matter, inflation, and the recent Hubble Tension. Given the past fruitfulness of these efforts, I think few doubted the science case for such a next generation experiment.
A mockup of one of the CMS-S4 telescopes which will be based in the Chilean desert. Note the person for scale on the right (source)
The P5 report recommended a suite of new dark matter experiments in the next decade, including the ‘ultimate’ liquid Xenon based dark matter search. Such an experiment would follow in the footsteps of massive noble gas experiments like LZ and XENONnT which have been hunting for a favored type of dark matter called WIMP’s for the last few decades. These experiments essentially build giant vats of liquid Xenon, carefully shield from any sources of external radiation, and look for signs of dark matter particles bumping into any of the Xenon atoms. The larger the vat of Xenon, the higher chance a dark matter particle will bump into something. Current generation experiments have ~7 tons of Xenon, and the next generation experiment would be even larger. The next generation aims to reach the so called ‘neutrino floor’, the point as which the experiments would be sensitive enough to observe astrophysical neutrinos bumping into the Xenon. Such neutrino interactions would look extremely similar to those of dark matter, and thus represent an unavoidable background which would signal the ultimate sensitivity of this type of experiment. WIMP’s could still be hiding in a basement below this neutrino floor, but finding them would be exceedingly difficult.
A photo of the current XENONnT experiment. This pristine cavity is then filled with liquid Xenon and closely monitored for signs of dark matter particles bumping into one of the Xenon atoms. Credit: XENON Collaboration
WIMP’s are not the only dark matter candidates in town, and recent years have also seen an explosion of interest in the broad range of dark matter possibilities, with axions being a prominent example. Other kinds of dark matter could have very different properties than WIMPs and have had much fewer dedicated experiments to search for them. There is ‘low hanging fruit’ to pluck in the way of relatively cheap experiments which can achieve world-leading sensitivity. Previously, these ‘table top’ sized experiments had a notoriously difficult time obtaining funding, as they were often crowded out of the budgets by the massive flagship projects. However, small experiments can be crucial to ensuring our best chance of dark matter discovery, as they fill in the blinds pots missed by the big projects.
The panel therefore recommended creating a new pool of funding set aside for these smaller scale projects. Allowing these smaller scale projects to flourish is important for the vibrancy and scientific diversity of the field, as the centralization of ‘big science’ projects can sometimes lead to unhealthy side effects. This specific recommendation also mirrors a broader trend of the report: to attempt to rebalance the budget portfolio to be spread more evenly and less dominated by the large projects.
A pie chart comparing the budget porfolio in 2023 (left) versus the projected budget in 2033 (right). Currently most of the budget is being taken up by the accelerator upgrades and cavern construction of DUNE, with some amount for the LHC upgrades. But by 2033 the panel recommends a much more equitable balance between different research area.
What Didn’t Make It
Any report like this comes with some tough choices. Budget realities mean not all projects can be funded. Besides the pairing down of some of DUNE’s upgrades, one of the biggest areas that was recommended against were ‘accessory experiments at the LHC’. In particular, MATHUSULA and the Forward Physics Facility were two experiments that proposed to build additional detectors near already existing LHC collision points to look for particles that may be missed by the current experiments. By building new detectors hundreds of meters away from the collision point, shielded by concrete and the earth, they can obtained unique sensitivity to ‘long lived’ particles capable of traversing such distances. These experiments would follow in the footsteps of the current FASER experiment, which is already producing impressive results.
While FASER found success as a relatively ‘cheap’ experiment, reusing detector components from and situating itself in a beam tunnel, these new proposals were asking for quite a bit more. The scale of these detectors would have required new caverns to be built, significantly increasing the cost. Given the cost and specialized purpose of these detectors, the panel recommended against their construction. These collaborations may now try to find ways to pare down their proposal so they can apply to the new small project portfolio.
Another major decision by the panel was to recommend against hosting a new Higgs factor collider in the US. But that will discussed more in a future post.
Conclusions
The P5 panel was faced with a difficult task, the total cost of all projects they were presented with was three times the budget. But they were able to craft a plan that continues the work of the previous decade, addresses current shortcomings and lays out an inspiring vision for the future. So far the community seems to be strongly rallying behind it. At time of writing, over 2700 community members from undergraduates to senior researchers have signed a petition endorsing the panels recommendations. This strong show of support will be key for turning these recommendations into actual funding, and hopefully lobbying congress to even increase funding so that more of this vision can be realized.
For those interested the full report as well as executive summaries of different areas can be found on the P5 website. Members of the US particle physics community are also encouraged to sign the petition endorsing the recommendations here.
And stayed tuned for part 2 of our coverage which will discuss the implications of the report on future colliders!
In December, the Trump administration abruptly announced it would shut down the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), a Boulder, Colorado-based facility that helps researchers perform studies of weather, climate, atmospheric chemistry, and more. The news came as a shock, given that the government had never identified serious deficiencies in the management of NCAR and its associated supercomputing center in Wyoming.
Nevertheless, the government ordered the University Consortium for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), which manages NCAR on behalf of the National Science Foundation, to help it prepare to transfer the Wyoming facility to a different operator. UCAR sued the government and, on Monday, won a preliminary injunction that places the transfer of the facility on hold.
Is that your final decision?
NCAR is what is termed a "Federally-Funded Research and Development Center" meant to support researchers in the academic community. Rather than having its own research agenda, it provides facilities, equipment, and expertise to support projects that are too large or complex for researchers to pursue on their own. NCAR has been around since the early 1960s and has become a critical resource for the global atmospheric science community.
Over the past few years, China has invested heavily in its renewable energy sector. In 2025, the country built enough energy capacity to power Germany twice over, with the vast majority of that capacity coming from solar and wind power. But while it’s invested in green energy, Beijing has also continued building coal and nuclear power plants – this dichotomy has led to some people hailing China
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