How Trump’s “America First” Administration Could Shut U.S. Scientists Out of the Next Nobel-Worthy Discovery

For decades, physicists wrestled with a fundamental mystery of the universe. They wanted to know why certain particles — like the protons in atoms — have mass, while particles of light do not. Whatever the reason was, it was crucial to understanding the origins of planets, galaxies and life itself. The leading theory stated that particles got their mass from interacting with an invisible field, later dubbed the Higgs field, but no one had ever been able to prove it existed. Doing so would require one of the most ambitious international collaborations in scientific history. Starting decades ago, thousands of scientists from dozens of countries worked side by side, even though some of their nations considered one another adversaries. The United States contributed a quarter of the workforce a