Sometime next year, the world’s attention will focus on Geneva, where scientists will switch on the Large Hadron Collider, an underground atom smasher more powerful than anything to come before it. By bashing protons together at ultra-high speeds, researchers hope to get closer to discovering the origins of the universe — perhaps leading to breakthroughs in our knowledge of matter and energy that will rival Einstein’s theory of relativity.

One milestone sure to occur when the LHC boots up: The United States will no longer be the leader in high-energy physics research.

Blame it on Congress. All this attention instead might have been lavished — and a few years earlier — on Waxahachie, Texas, the erstwhile site of the Superconducting Super Collider, which would have been a more powerful and, therefore, more scientifically bountiful device than the LHC. But back in 1993, despite the 15 miles of tunnel that had already been completed and the $2 billion already spent, lawmakers axed the super collider before a single atom came apart. Democrats, who were in charge then, wanted to demonstrate a willingness to curb a $266 billion deficit. It didn’t help that the project suffered from cost overruns and mismanagement. But few supporters doubted its importance.

“Our nation may very well kick itself several years from now,” Rep. Jim Cooper, a Tennessee Democrat, said at the time. “Basic science is extremely vulnerable right now. . . . But how else do you show the folks back home you care about the deficit?”

The kicking has begun: The vote “had a devastating effect on the U.S. science community, shifting the focus of particle physics research to Europe and Japan,” said physicist Samuel Ting, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, at a November hearing.

That vote, along with others that severely cut science funding for everything from biological research to the International Space Station, also sent a message that resonates to this day: The nation can no longer claim its once-cherished position as the leader in basic research.

Today, President Bush argues that federal research and development spending is nearly 45 percent higher than when he took office. But most of that money goes toward developing applied technologies, particularly in defense, rather than basic research, which emphasizes exploration and experimentation.

The Association of American Universities says basic research spending has been falling, or at best stagnating, for the past 20 years.

Meanwhile, lawmakers are raiding federal science budgets for their pet projects: Earmarks in the fiscal 2006 energy and water spending law are up 63 percent from the year before, to $130 million. One casualty: The Brookhaven National Laboratory’s Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider in New York, which shut down recently after a $40 million spending cut.

This inattention, according to an October report by the National Academy of Sciences, has led to declines in science education and the attractiveness of the United States as a destination for scientists. Examples: In 2003, only three U.S. companies ranked among the top 10 recipients of U.S. patents. And as U.S. companies cut R&D spending, China has expanded the number of research centers run by multinational corporations from 50 in 1997 to nearly 600 in 2004.

The report’s prescription includes boosting the federal investment in research by 10 percent a year for the next seven years, creating a new Advanced Research Projects Agency at the Energy Department and providing new grants for science education.

A bipartisan group of senators is backing legislation to carry out those recommendations. They’re hoping Bush will signal some kind of increased support for basic science in his State of the Union address. He probably will: House Democrats say they’re going to make the nation’s shortcomings in science funding a big issue in the midterm election campaign.

So the United States has handed its lead in physics to Switzerland. Is there any way to get it back? Maybe: A next-generation particle accelerator is already on the drawing board. Later this year, a global team of scientists will decide where to build the International Linear Collider, whose electron-positron collisions, the team says, “would give it the capability to answer compelling questions that discoveries at the LHC will raise, from the identity of dark matter to the existence of extra dimensions.”

Japan, Germany, Switzerland and the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, west of Chicago, are competing to host the project. A decision is expected within two years, according to the ILC’s design director, Barry C. Barish of the California Institute of Technology.

But Team USA has an uphill climb, he says. The 1993 vote will be remembered: Partner countries don’t like that Congress funds science projects a year at a time, which exposes them to political and budget pressures. And he cites other, more mundane concerns, like the difficulty scientists abroad now have getting U.S. entry visas.

Barish says the United States could overcome those obstacles by demonstrating a renewed commitment to basic science, and high-energy physics in particular. In his view, “If a country is aggressive about wanting it, that’s the most important first thing.”

Mike Mills is CQ’s executive editor for electronic publishing.