Posted for Ichiko Fuyuno

Japan’s science ministry has approved a 56.4-billion-yen (US$500 million) initiative, creating 14 projects which aim to strengthen the foundation of basic research and attract young researchers from around the world.

The biggest slice of the funding, 10 billion yen for three years, will go to the Japan’s High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK) to upgrade its B-meson factory in Tsukuba. Smashing electrons into positrons, the Super KEKB will pump out B-mesons and anti-B-mesons 40 times faster than the current collider.

Measurements taken at KEKB, together with results from the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park, California, were used to confirm an asymmetry in these matter–anti-matter pairs called charge–parity violation, which won the Nobel prize in physics in 2008.

The University of Tokyo was also granted a total of 9.8 billion yen under the scheme, to develop large direct gravitational-wave detectors capable of observing the creation of black holes as far as 700 million light years away.