Regardless of money being spent it is important work being done here for mankind.  We tend to look at the short instant gratification results of life.  The general public might think, "what is in it for me?" But the truth of the matter is that we have the potential to answer a few of the univers' mysteries that could potentially be used for the benefit and survival of mankind on the very long run.  If we could understand extra dimensions, dark matter, and black holes we could potentially unleash energy sources untapped by before.  The work of Einstein, Tesla, Plank, Newton, Galileo and many others was always questioned and critisized.  But where would we be if not for the fact that our high tech society stands of the shoulders of such giants?

So... the testing will continue until 2010.  One delay after another.  They could easily continue until December.  Could it be a coincidence that the Mayan calendar ends in December 2010?

I'm just saying... :)

[ALAN ADDS: Actually, I think the doomsday date is 2012, but it really doesn't make any difference because the Mayan calendar thing is pretty bogus whether it's 2010 or 2012.]

Well first, this was funded by EU... so why should Americans care? Second, if we put science on hold every time there is a financial downturn we would still believe the Earth was flat. Please do research on what the LHC is for [...]

To the first two posters: please bear in mind that, for the first fifty years or so of knowledge about electricity when folks like Franklin and Faraday were conducting their experiments, it would have seemed EXTREMELY unlikely that electricity would EVER have any practical applications. This new research could easily change the world fifty years from now as much as electricity has transformed ours.

As for the risks...I'd rather run the slight risk of destruction than be part of a species that was on the verge of solving the mysteries of the universe, only to back down and say "naah."

They say that the LHC can possibley create ultramicroscopic black holes. Are they absolutely certain that they will just "blip out of existence" ?
Sounds like something awfully risky to be playing with. Also, the machine broke down before it actually worked. Maybe god is trying to tell us something

Regina everything that you use in your home, at work and at play depended on scientists conducting pure science.  We do not yet know all of the implications of the LHC, but in years to come the knowledge that will be gained from the LHC will have major impacts on how people live their day to day lives.  Your TV depends on an understanding of particle physics, the list goes on and on.

Go back to the dark ages when we had no need for knowledge and we thought we knew everything.  Because that's where you outdated and scared people belong, along with scare-monger of George Noory who's on a mission to create paranoia where none needs to be.  Nature has already conducted experiments far more dangerous than anything we can possibly do, but that doesn't seem to matter to some people.   Find a hole in the ground and stick your head in it if you want to feel safe.  The world will continue to progress, with or without you.

The reason they don't release a way to run cars on water or air is because it would turn the economic base of the world (Oil/Petroleum) on it's head. Personally, I'd give anyting to see something like that happen in my lifetime...

Don't be such a philistine.  Scientific pursuits like this may someday solve your energy problems, create treatments for diseases, or enable us to take advantage of other climates to live.   Just think that all the cool tech in your little cell phone originated in lofty science labs with equally far-flug goals like spying on our enemies from space, putting a man on the moon, etc.

If the scientists 400 years ago had not studied the unknown, even those that didn't have any directly pinpointed practical use, we wouldn't have ANY of the technological advances we currently have. Sometimes by finding this stuff out you can put it to use...

Regina, Tom - you are both clearly not intellectual scholars with sound scientific backgrounds (or even basic electronic theory); I suggest you work on significant milestones in your own fields (you do possess advanced degrees don't you?) and allow these individuals to continue to pursue theirs. I for one will be eagerly anticipating the wealth of data to be analyzed from this incredible study. Do you condemn the space program? Are you afraid of disproving religion? And we are not going to be "crushed in a black hole" Tom - are you seven?

Oh, and $10 billion is barely enough to get you your $300 stimulus check - please notify your congressman that you would like yours to be donated toward a better use.

let's start smashing...yeeehawwww.  what are you talking about einstein, who cares about relativity and newton you're crazy focused on gravity dude, lighten up. long live science, errr intelligent design.

To be honest, I do not believe this collider will ever work the way they want it to. It all looks like a nice expensive toy for scientists. What a great way to suck funds out of European governments by fooling them into this useless thing.

This thing has already made a black hole - one into which huge amounts of money is poured, never to be seen again!  What a ridiculous waste.

No, theres an almost infitesimal chance of forming a black hole. If a black hole was to form, it would have the mass, and therefore the gravitic pull, of the two atoms that smashed together, essentially nothing. It would do nothing but sit around for millions of years.

It would also dissipear off into interstellar space, away from earth, given the speeds it would be travelling at.

0 risk.

Regarding the cost, this thing costs, day to day, a tiny fraction of the cost of the war in Iraq. once you split the funding between the multitude of countries funding it, its a drop in the ocean for any one.

Regarding the benefits, who knows? But to the person who mentioned cars running on water or air - moving our understanding of how matter works forward can only push us closer towards solutions to our energy crisis.

There's no reason to be afraid. There's no reason to be against this. Read up on it and don't jump aboard the paranoia train. This is an amazing achievement and the only bad thing about it is they havent worked out the kinks yet.

No, there is a possibility of making a microscopic blackhole with the LHC.  And to really simplify it for those whose primary source of knowledge from black holes comes from the crappy Disney movie, that means the black hole, if it is even created will quickly evaporate, which will probably be the sign that we detect that even tells us we've got a black hole.

As for it being a waste of money, so is athletic competition, and the rest of the entertainment industry, but I don't see anyone screaming for all those worthless yahoos to give up all their money to solve the worlds problems.

Unlike the movies things take time to fix.  Better to get it right than to rush things.

Right on, Regina L of Michigan. As with most matters (with or without mass) in the upper eschelons of academia, there seems to be little regard for the common man or common needs. The Big Bang Machine, like Big Corporations and Big Governments, is powered only by ego. And that is extremely costly fuel, literally and figuratively.

Regina: We don't "need" to know anything in particular.  But the last 200 years of science have taught us that the more we learn, the better we live.  We're hard-wired to be curious, and it's worked pretty well so far.  Let's not stop dreaming in my lifetime.

And, no, the cost of LHC is <<1% of the EU's total annual budget.  History also teaches us that, no, you actually cannot spend that money any better.  Any sufficiently advanced society must spend a few % of its GDP on basic science to feed the next generation of tech products.  The poor will always be with you, but learning enough science to, say, invent a fusion reactor just might trump all of today's ills.

Tom: No, LHC has nothing to do with "black hole" anything.  It's just a particle accelerator.  We plan to use it to rigorously test today's physics theories that predict various phenomena at energy levels that our older accelerators can't reach (~10^13 eV).  If we're right about any one of those, it's a jackpot.  If we prove them all wrong, that's great progress, too.

The "black hole" issue was just a (somewhat outlandish) counter-argument by a tiny minority of scientists who oppose the LHC and wanted us to cease all work on it.  Like Greenpeace vs. Japanese/Norwegian whalers, or South Koreans united against McDonald's.  IMHO, it was more scare tactic and legal filibuster than real science.  Cosmic rays much, much stronger than the LHC's max output have been bombarding the Earth every day for 4.5 billion years, and we're still here.

Yea, I mean you guys must be right. We didn't NEED to know the earth was round, or we didn't NEED to know exactly what gravity was .... In reality, the only reason you have vaccines or cars or houses or computers with internet is that scientific research led to a broader understanding of how materials behave. This leads to more practical designs and better engineered products.

This project is simply an example of the human need to understand, discover and invent.  Who now questions the use of MRI's, air travel, and irradiation of cancerous tumors.

While a lot of money no doubt has gone in to it yes, if not for science we'd still be hiding in caves. I'm sure people said relatively the same thing when it came to space flight. Through expanding our knowledge beyond the current limits of our known logic we're opening up new possibilities and perhaps even technologies.

Working towards understanding history and mysteries is of man's great drives. Technology is beneficial to our lives and the life of this planet.

The european community is spending huge amounts of money on alternate vehicles and medical solutions. I do believe they are already ahead of the "west" in regards to research and technology.

Thus, the ability to explore more exotic scientific boundaries.

Anyblack holes the LHC makes won't be large enough to do any damage to the Earth. Plain and simple. Learn about the physics and you'll understand. As for why people need to know about this.. Well, why do people believe in religion? For answers. Scientists are seeking answers and in a way, seeking God.

Why bother comment if you are not going to publish it. I commented yesterday on this article, primarily in response to the above comments. It is obvious to me that Regina and Tom do not have an understanding of why we do pure scientific research, and that positive and tangible knowledge can be obtained from such research that can be applied to real world problems. Our current advances against various diseases would not be possible without the technological achievements brought about by our going to the moon. Computers and the miniaturization of integrated circuit technology is a direct result of the moon shots. Go ahead and publish this dissenting view!

[ALAN ADDS: I apologize to Russ and other commenters ... I was otherwise occupied and fell behind on comment approvals.]

science is not for cars and they are aloud to spend thier money the way they want,the discoveries from science is why we are where we are in tech and life,just sit back and enjoy the ride of discovery

We need to know what the Collider can tell us simply for technological and scientific advancement. People said it was a waste of time and money to put a man into space as well, but look at the technology we got from it, look at the products and materials that came from it that we use every day, not to mention satellite television, GPS, and weather and communication satellites. There has already been new networking technology invented just for this collider, technology that could be used someday to make your internet or home network faster.
All scientists are not the same, physicists don't usually work on curing disease, it's not their field of study, however they may discover something that the medical field could use to research a cure for anything you can think of.
I think it's an awesome machine and can't wait to see what they discover.

Sarcastically after reading another's comments, "Why do we need to know if man can fly? Wouldn't the money be better spent on something else like feeding the hungry or clothing the naked?" Part of what makes us human is to inquire as a priority. Animals go about their day searching for food and shelter as their priority.

I am not saying it is bad to spend money on this,..  after all look what the space station has given us.  Oh wait a minute, never mind.

Surely there is a bright graduate student needing a doctoral thesis out there who could collect all the comments made by the readers of Cosmic Log over a period of say five years and analyze how those comments reflect what is happening around the world.

Right now we're in the midst of a global economic meltdown and the comments on this blog are becoming more and more focused on dollars and cents issues.  Why spend on this money to smash sub-atomic particles?
Build me a cheap reliable car that runs on air, etc.

Despite the downturn in the worldwide economy scientific research MUST continue.  Think of all the modern wonders that we take for granted and the benefits to humanity that they engender.

Who knows what future wonders will be possible when we fully understand dark matter or exactly how our universe was created?

Personally, I am very anxious to see the LHC in operation.  I am impatient to read their findings.
No, I am not a scientist and I do not claim to be able to understand a fraction of their discoveries. But it is fascinating.  I am EVERYMAN and I want to know.  I can't wait.

We must move forward, because we cannot move back, at least, not yet.  Who knows what we'll be able to do once the LHC has answered some of our fundamental questions?

We also don't "need" computers, or vaccines, or schools. The human race was getting along fine without all that stuff.

However, part of what makes us human is the urge to know why things happen and how things work. Once you quit caring about learning, you're not really living, are you?

What ever happen to research for the sake of research. Of course research has a possibility of financial gain in the end but people did research and experiments to understand something. To know something unique and wonderful about the universe. The problem with research today is that it costs more money then every before. Money that can be used for other things, things that some feel is more important. But history has shown that research in one area can provide breakthroughs in another. Breakthroughs that may very well cure diseases or make a more efficient automobile. Penicillin was discovered by accident and took many years of research to refine to what we now call medicine. I've read many posts questioning why the LHC was built and what good it will do. The reason why we built it is because we don't know. We could flip the switch on and only recreate things we already know exist, we could prove some radical theory about the universe, or something entirely different. Any way you look at it we learn something, we gain an incite into the workings of the universe. If we didn't do things like this then the very way in which we are communicating wouldn't be possible. Telephones, TVs, Computers, and the Internet where all started from research. Research at the time cost money, money that could have been used for something else.

Every one of the industries and services we have today were High Tech money "wasters" in the past.  

Wow, according to the last two comments, we never should have explored the moon, or ventured beneath the ocean.  What a complete waste of time to investigate the fantastic phenomena that allow our miniscule selves to exist.  Self-absorbed ignorance.

We "Need to know what dark matter is made of" for the same reasons we needed to know what was across the Atlantic centuries ago. We've been in a sort of knowledge ice-age for the last few decades... with our mastering of atom complete (which at it's time in the 30's and 40's was a FAR more expensive and audacious undertaking than the LHC) we now find ourselves at the limit of that mastery... i.e.: Nuclear power is still regarded as dangerous by the public, no solutions to nuclear waste disposal have been realized, and fusion is still at least decades away... Enter dark matter and the LHC. It is possible that new concepts and properties of sub-atomic particles may (and most agree probably will) be discovered, perhaps opening the door to solving some of those vexing probems of the nuclear age. A solid understanding of these now fringe areas of physics could even allow us to one day leave our planet. The simple fact is we don't know... and WE NEVER WILL unless poeple come together, like at LHC, and spend the money and time to figure these things out. Sheesh... I bet people would be alot less critical if they thought the LHC would bring them a cheaper Internet or a faster IPhone.

We NEED to know what dark matter is made of because we do not know how such knowledge will benefit mankind.  There are countless technologies in use every day that are based upon knowledge that did not seem any more important than our search for the understanding of dark matter.  You simply do not know where the next major breakthrough is going to come from.
If people can spend hundreds of millions of dollars worshiping ancient gods we can certainly as a society afford to spend some money to expand our understanding of the universe we live in.  If one truly believes that some god created this universe then one can say that we are honoring that god by studying the only thing we can be sure is created by said god.
As for the notion that "they're going to make a black hole with this thing and that's it, right?" well, rest assured that there are many more experiments they will conduct for many years going forward.  This is not a one-shot machine.
Please, if you are going to comment, please at least educate yourself about this machine.  It is truly an expression of all that it means to be human and is one of our greatest achievements.  Think about it.  The Egyptians built pyramids that in essence do nothing whatsoever to expand our knowledge; we build great machines that aid us in exploring the Universe from our own planet.  Yes, even in these hard times, we can afford to do these very worthy things.  Most of the money has already been spent anyway, so what difference does it make now?  BTW people earned most of that money working on the project and those people bought goods and food and so on which means the various economies involved had much benefit already.

Sciencophobes (?) shouldn't read these articles.

I agree with Tom, we are all here for a reason and it has taken millions of years to create. Why take a chance? I think the law or the billions of humans that live here on earth, should somehow force this thing to be destroyed.

   The Large Hadron collider is built to help answer one of the two most fundamental questions in all of science -- in short, the question of what is the material world itself is made of and how do matter and energy interact to make nature happen on its most fundamental level. (The question of life in the Universe being the other most important one, in my opinion.) Any thought that answering this question is a waste of money is seriously misguided, and here are a few reasons why.

In the late 19th and early 20th century science in general and physics in particular were doing great progress. At that time the idea that a hard brick of matter was actually made up of what today we call atoms was not a clear idea at all, at least when compared to our understanding of atoms today.
Scientists like Albert Eisntein, Ruterford, Plank, Pauli, as well as others were at that time at the forefront of theoretical physics much like the scientists working at the LHC are today. It is because of that gang of theoretical physicists that today we understand the structure of the atom and therefore benefit on a constant basis from advancements in chemistry, medicine,  computer engineering, material science, and a multitude of other fields.

  The most important thing to point out here is that those scientists could not even dream of the applications that their research would one day have. They were motivated by curiosity and a desire to understand nature, and the question of how that understanding would be applied later was simply not important to them scientifically. An MRI scan uses the response of atomic nuclei to magnetic fields to create a detailed image of soft tissue in the body. A few years ago one of these scans saved my wife's life by diagnosing a treatable cancer. This scan relies on a fundamental understanding of magnetism and atomic structure, as intially postulated by the physicists Maxwell and Rutherford, respectively. However had we asked these briliant guys to design an MRI machine, they would not have been able to do it because their ideas would still have to be further developed by others over the course of several decades. At the same time, a modern engineer would not be able to design an MRI machine without relying on the theoretical work done by these early physicists.

  So whenever someone asks "couldn't smart scientists be doing more useful things with all this money?" the answer is that they would not be able to do more useful things had someone not done basic scientific research first. The truth is we need both types of science. It is wasteful to focus solely on aplications or solely on basic research.

  So what sorts of advancements can we expect from the work being done at CERN today? As I mentioned before, we don't know, and if we took a guess that guess would probably by missguided. One of the beautiful things about nature is that it always seems to surprise us where we least expect it!

   I am sure glad Maxwell and Rutherford found the support they needed 100 years ago to condutct their research.

Serge
dieterich@chara.gsu.edu

If the human race had waited for either of you to invent the automobile I believe that we would be knee deep in horse feces. Just because you cant wrap your mind around the reasons for expanding human understanding because its not something overly simple like speghetti or chewing gum doesnt mean the entire species should sit on its thumbs. Stand aside and reap the benfit of your intellectual superiors.

A huge number of vital scientific discoveries that have revolutionized life over the past few centuries were "accidental" in that they weren't necessarily what the experimenters were looking for. Nothing is ivory tower in science. Every piece of research is a treasure trove. The Large Hadron Collider will produce the kind and amount of knowledge that will make the initial financial outlay seem insignificant.

It's through research like this that you now have cell phones that fit in your pocket, CD & DVD players on sale at Wal-Mart for $69, MP3 players the size of credit cards, digital cameras and flat screen TVs. Without this type of research, none of these would exist.
In regards to the expense, we spend over a billion dollars a month over in Iraq. So for less than the cost of one year in Iraq, we could have funded the entire construction and operation of this facility ourselves.
This facility will provide tremendous benefit to mankind in the future - I don't think anyone could make the same argument for Iraq.

"Couldn't the money being used for this project be put to better use?"

I loathe this type of logic. You can be GUARANTEED that practical uses and applications of any knowledge gained by this experiment WILL be beneficial.

We need to know how the universe is put together for the very issues that Regina L. raises - and more.  Understanding the properties of ALL matter will lead to eliminating all diseases - developing transportation systems that run on water, or air, or utilize other means that we, as of yet, have no clue about.  Scientists belive that the HLC will be an effective tool to help them determine the full nature of our physical existence.  When Ben Franklin discovered electricity, his discovery was of no use to his contemporaries.  How would you assess the value of his discovery now?

"If scientists can figure out how to build a particle smasher, can't they figure out how to make cars run on water or air?" -Regina

Interestingly, if the particle collider helps elucidate the physics of high temperature plasma interactions then making cars run on air and water may well be one of the many results. Though it is not probable that the particle collider will make important comtributions to fusion research, it's not all that unlikely, either.

There was an old science fiction story titled "Columbus was a Dope" by Roberh Heinlein.

Who needed to sail across the Atlantic then?

You never know what will come out of basic research and if we don't continue doing this type of stuff we will indeed live in the Decline of the West!

Tom an Regina - Your lack of understanding of this basic research is exacly why this country is in the mess it is in. Do you use a cell phone? Surely you submitted these comments using a personal computer.  Where do you think the knowledge to create these products came from.  [...]

It's impossible to predict what applications will come from this research.  The creation of fusion reactors, a way to tap into "dark energy", methods of quantum computing: all could be reality by the middle of the century from research started at CERN.  The same arguments were used in going to the moon but think of all the technology we gained from that effort.

Tom,
its not about making a black hole to gobble up the earth. its about finding out what everything is made of. and if you has read the article in its entirety, you would have read that it MAY create ultramicroscopic black holes - which they insist would blip back out of existence without harming anything. so what is the problem with learning more about space??

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