Global team keeps low profile as it works on next collider

A central part of a 25-kilometer-long Next Linear Collider (NLC) can be found at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, where its design, construction, and operation will be done by an international team of scientists, financed by governments around the world. The scientists hope the experiment will be running by early 1997, but the approach is low-key and very different from other big-physics projects. If built, the NLC would be a gigantic leap forward in the field of accelerator physics. The higher energy along with brighter synchrotrom radiation will allow researchers to explore the behavior and mass of several elementary particles. There are dauting technical challenges confronting the project but the toughest fights will be over funding. This article describes both the technology involved and the funding problems