Large Hadron Collider

[RoyalShock]

I've been reading a little bit about this thing and was wondering if anyone who's been following its construction has heard any outrage from the left, particularly the environmentalists.

Some numbers:

Construction cost: $6+ billion
Quantity of liquid nitrogen for cooling: 10,800 tons
Quantity of liquid helium for cooling: 60 tons
Annual energy cost: $30 million (800,000 MWh)
Annual data accumulation: 15 petabytes (about 100,000 DVDs)

This seems like a monumental waste of money and energy. A whole lot of water wells could be built in Africa for just one year's energy costs.

http://science.howstuffworks.com/large-hadron-collider.htm

[TxShox]

But if we want to play God, we need to know how God did it...

I honestly don't know much about it, but yeah, it seems like a waste of money and energy. What benefits could come from this?

[t7017s]

I've been following this for years now. I don't think its a waste at all. I think its the most important thing thats ever been done. But I'm not one of those people that think its going to open up a black hole here on earth and suck us all up. People love to fear and hate what they don't understand.

[TxShox]

I'm just not educated enough to know the benefits of it...

[SB Shock]

Re: Large Hadron Collider

I've been reading a little bit about this thing and was wondering if anyone who's been following its construction has heard any outrage from the left, particularly the environmentalists.

I have been following it. There are the kooks who think it's going to end the world and create a black hole in the center of the earth.

Overall, it going to help the physicist understand more about the limitations of their theories and help expand on them and maybe look in other directions.

[1979Shocker]

Indian girl commits suicide over 'Big Bang' fear

[SubGod22]

I'm not sure it's worth it but I don't fear a black hole either. And lets not forget the term "black hole" is racist...

[CharlieHog]

The benefit is a better and more complete understanding of our universe.

[Indy23]

I built one of those LHC things back in fourth grade for my school science fair. Came in second to a baking soda volcano after someone (Jimmy Henderson) leaked to the judges that my parents helped (they did). That's what you get for experimenting with physics in Kansas.

I am at least slightly interested in this thing, if for no other reason than it's big, expensive, and will probably have a role in several future science fiction films.

[tropicalshox]

New scientific insights lead to practical applications. The Hedron Collider could bring applications that were only in science fiction books awhile back.

Now I admit I don't understand this stuff and sure somebody might shoot me down but we know energy and mass are really two sides of the same coin. Some of the collider's experiments will open further exploration of how energy becomes mass. If we get a handle on that just think about the application.

[rayc]

Or mass becomes energy -- beats the heck out of exercise.

[SpanglerFan316]

http://xkcd.com/474/

http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20080904

http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2008/03/oops.html

As usual, Scott, you made me laugh. Bad thing is that I'm in a computer lab with my freshman English class and they are all staring at me funny. You should see their "My God, the professor has finally gone insane!" faces...

http://xkcd.com/401/

http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1066

http://www.thepaincomics.com/weekly080709.htm

The U.S. was to have built such a supercollider in Texas, but congress cancelled funding for it back in 1993. Science is one of the stupider things I can think of to get jingoistic about—it's up there with art as one of the great collaborative intergenerational human undertakings--but it still disappoints me that my own country, which split the atom and landed a man on the moon, decided it didn’t have the money to resolve some of the profoundest questions about the nature of reality but did manage to come up with funds for the destruction of Iraq. This seems to me kind of like not being able to afford music lessons for your daughter but somehow always having enough cash on hand to buy cocaine every weekend. It was a symbolic turning of the tide in this country, receding from our high water mark of scientific preeminence. Now the Europeans are hosting the project instead, while we’re still debating the monkey trial.

It’s funny that evangelicals only stage really organized outcries over evolution, rather than, say, geology or particle physics. How come no picket lines in front of the moon rock repository, where scientists have blasphemously dated basalt back 4.5 billion years, well before the appearance of the moon on Day Four of Creation five thousand years ago? Why no demand for equal time for Creationism at conferences on string theory, which doesn’t acknowledge the hand of a divine creator in supersymmmetry? Perhaps I'm belaboring the point. It is because they are too stupid even to have ever heard of these things. None of their sources of information--their pastors, Good Morning America, USA Today, Time magazine--has told them about bosons or or branes or the electroweak force.

[RoyalShock]

. . . It is because they are too stupid even to have ever heard of these things. None of their sources of information--their pastors, Good Morning America, USA Today, Time magazine--has told them about bosons or or branes or the electroweak force.

I'm not sure I can respect the opinion of someone who resorts to petty insults of those whose points of view he doesn't understand. Spangler, I'm disappointed that you would even include that paragraph. I can only conclude that either you agree with the perspective or wanted to get a reaction. Neither of which I can respect.

[Snapshot9]

The cost was reported to be closer to 10 billion, and all to find out how blackholes are formed, among other things I suppose.

[rayc]

All that money to "find out how blackholes are formed"?

Wow, I could have told them that - simply create new government programs! :yes: