Giant tunnel beneath the Swiss countryside

[DerekLeung]

Into the unknownSomething extremely important is going on today in a giant tunnel beneath the Swiss countryside. But precisely what 'mysteries of the universe' are the scientists at Cern hoping to solve - and does it matter whether or not they succeed? Stuart Jeffries gets to grips with Higgs bosons, quarks, supersymmetric particles and miniature black holes


http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/sep/10/cern.particlephysics

 

[twochan]

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) costs around 5 billion euros. That would be around 10 billion SGD.

That is for a particle accelerator with no immediate economic benefit, other than supporting their local engineering companies. The money probably aided their local companies to develop advanced technologies. (detectors/sensors/superconducting magnets etc.) But then they're probing at the very edge of known science, where nobody has been before.

In contrast Biopolis was constructed at around 0.5 billion SGD. They probably had another 0.5 billion of spare cash to spend.

They probably spent it on getting overrated and expensive foreign talent to come here, and also buying equipment from overseas. Also to hire cheap postgrads from china, who will probably go elsewhere after a few years here. What do they do? Just repeat experiments that other people have "been there, done that" thousands of times over.

 

[nexus]

Sometimes, these things are better left untouch. You never know what are you getting into.... especially if you are trying to recreate the Big Bang Theory. When matter, space and time comes into play.

 

[Cestbon]

If they can solve the theory the return investment is more than 1000times. Even is they get nothing/result. The process of construction help them getting better knowledge how to build tunnel/vaccum/zero gravity/and many more in in electronic/electrical/machanical/software. There is no amount of money can compare to the knowledgr gain.

 

[zhihau]

Stuart Jeffries gets to grips with Higgs bosons, quarks, supersymmetric particles and miniature black holes

if Higgs boson is not found, does it mean the entire Higgs field theory would be totally washed out?