On the Hamming Up of Hadronic Collisions

I have recently been looking through the Register's articles on the Large Hadron Collider and related topics, the writers of which have grasped an important truth: that discussing a miles-wide apparatus solely devoted to smashing things together at inconceivable speeds, for purposes incomprehensible and arcane, under the direction of a technowizardly caste devoted to coming up with ever wilder and crazier theories as they plumb the mysteries of the universe, presents a glorious opportunity for hamming things up massively. Notable headlines and headlines:

Helium hole hiccup halts Hadron (subtitle: Problem-prone particle project postponed)

New antimatter atomsmashers 'may destroy themselves' ("'Imagine there are all these huge bells, see,' says prof"):

A top British atom-smasher boffin says that next-generation antimatter accelerators being planned to replace today's Large Hadron Collider (LHC) are at significant risk of "destroying themselves", as they rend the very fabric of the universe apart in their search for cosmic secrets.

The LHC has already shown that rashly turning up the Big Knob on such machines can lead to trouble, with a faulty electrical connector on the mighty underground proton-punisher melting last year - not only bringing the titanic magno-doughnut grinding to a halt, but also releasing a fearful tide of helium superfluid, deadly stuff which crawls up walls, eels through the tiniest crack etc. Only by lucky hap did bystanding boffins escape being transformed into frosty stalagmite statues.

Botanist sues to stop CERN hurling Earth into parallel universe ("Hawaiian in lawsuit against particle billiards rig"):

A particularly violent game of proton billiards, for instance, of the very sort the LHC's superpowered seven trillion electron-volt atomic cues are designed to play, might lead to all sorts of trouble. Quarks might get mixed up into "negatively-charged strangelets" which would turn everything else they touched into strangelets as well. The Earth, and then perhaps the entire universe, could be turned into a fearful strangelet soup; or perhaps custard.

Scientists, of course, insist these fears - as well as fears of microscopic black holes, or quantum vacuum collapse - are overblown: Hadron boffins: Our meddling will not destroy universe; CERN declares Large Hadron Collider perfectly safe. But that's not the only potential problem...

'Something may come through' dimensional 'doors' at LHC ("Attack of the Hyperdimensional Juggernaut-Men"):

A top boffin at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) says that the titanic machine may possibly create or discover previously unimagined scientific phenomena, or "unknown unknowns" - for instance "an extra dimension".

"Out of this door might come something, or we might send something through it," said Sergio Bertolucci, who is Director for Research and Scientific Computing at CERN...

...it seems a racing cert that we're looking here at an imminent visit from a race of carnivorous dinosaur-men, the superhuman clone hive-legions of some evil genetic queen-empress, infinite polypantheons of dark nega-deities imprisoned for aeons and hungering to feast upon human souls, a parallel-history victorious Nazi globo-Reich or something of that type.

We took the matter up with Dr Mike Lamont, a control-room boffin at the LHC.

"We're hoping to see supersymmetry and extra dimensions," he confirmed.

Pressed on the matter of doors through which something might come, as hinted at by Bertolucci, Lamont rather elliptically said "well, he's a theorist"...

Large Hadron Collider scuttled by birdy baguette-bomber:

A bird dropping a piece of bread onto outdoor machinery has been blamed for a technical fault at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) this week which saw significant overheating in sections of the mighty particle-punisher's subterranean 27-km supercooled magnetic doughnut.

(It was this article I came across first, linked to from here; best comment of which. It's particularly notable coming on the heels of a new and curious theory recently proposed: that the Higgs boson cannot exist on its own; therefore physical conditions that would isolate and detect the Higgs boson cannot and will not occur; and therefore all possible timelines will and must diverge from allowing the conditions that would create a detectable Higgs boson. Or, in the words of one of the proposers: "It must be our prediction that all Higgs-producing machines shall have bad luck.")

Boffinry bitchslap brouhaha: Higgs and Hawking head to head ("Proton cannons for two, coffee for one"):

Hawking is well known to have bet $100 that Higgs' boson brainchild, the so-called "god particle", doesn't exist.

It's thought among boffins that if the elusive deiton - postulated by Higgs back in 1964, but never yet detected - is real, it ought to appear in coming years among the variegated debris to be produced at the LHC by smashing up protons with extreme violence. If it does, Higgs will be in line for a Nobel Prize.

Hawking, however, reckons that instead a number of "partner" particles will appear. These would potentially torpedo the Standard Model on which modern physics is based, and snatch away Higgs' long-awaited Nobel laurels to rest instead atop Hawking's eminent brainbox.

It would seem that the duelling boffinry heavyweights will have to settle the matter in the only honourable way open to men of their sort: with enormous hyper-powered magnetic proton cannons at fifty paces. Higgs for one seemed confident about the result, telling the Times that he has champagne waiting on ice to celebrate victory.

Boffins: Stop trying to monetise us, you don't know how ("Bitchslap for gov profitable-science plans"):

British boffins have cast doubt on government plans to reorient the nation's scientific and technical research so as to benefit the economy. They say that the connection between research and economic impact is poorly understood, and suggest that the government resists the temptation to meddle until it knows what it's doing...

They argue that it's already hard enough to attract bright students into science/tech/engineering/maths (STEM) subjects. If the kids see nothing ahead but a lifetime of dull but worthy toil producing possibly profitable new kinds of geriatric medicines, low-energy lightbulbs, ecologically friendly paint etc, they may not be willing to accept the massively higher student workload required to qualify in STEM subjects. Instead they will be likely to drift into parasitical, useless fields such as rap music, law, financial services or journalism. Thus it's vital to keep funding glamorous sexy research involving colossal atomsmashers, space telescopes, interplanetary probes and suchlike.

Absolutely. Although some claim that colossal atom-smashers can hold their own in the profitability stakes as well - CERN Proton-smashers: We are economically valuable ("Bitchslap for Drayson 'research to benefit economy' call"):

"...When you get a big group of highly intelligent people together trying to achieve difficult things, if they need something they just sit down and invent it. And those inventions are often very useful...

"Now the medical imaging industry are looking at what we've done, with a view to making combined PET/MRI scanners," adds Gillies. "Of course, it won't make us any money."

(This article also contains the noteworthy description of the LHC as full of magnetism, using a 27km doughnut-shaped field generated by liquid-helium-chilled superconductor magnets to channel its brutally powerful beams of protons.)

Further opinions on the subject are given in Hands off our boffins!. One scientist states:

"But we are keeping up research that isn't economically relevant... there are cosmologists doing really great inquiry into the origins of the universe. That doesn't have any real benefit to the economy, but we think it's worth doing. It's about curiosity, it fulfils a basic human need."

And the article closes with the writers offering their own opinion - that basic science, or "blue sky" research, should continue to be funded, maybe even get more money -

And we say this money should be spent on proper science and ultra-technology that has absolutely no obvious benefit - space probes (ideally packed with scientifically questionable but pleasingly dramatic astronauts), mighty atomsmashers, telescopes and the like. There should also be legions of premier-league brainboxes kicking scientific arse for old Blighty, engaging in totally incomprehensible boffinry deathmatch arguments, reaping a glorious harvest of Nobel prizes and generally making the world a more interesting place.

If the odd spin-off economic benefit should occur then well and good, though we feel on the whole this would work better if published for the benefit of the entire human race than if held as intellectual property - the web, to name one such development, would probably never have worked if it had been someone's property. But trying to deliberately make such things happen in a direct and visible way is foolish and probably damaging at best, shortsighted and venal at worst.

Amen to that.