Cern considers building huge physics machine (BBC)

[eppur_se_muova]

By Roland Pease
Science writer

The possibility of building an underground "atom-smasher" four times the size of the Large Hadron Collider is to be explored by experts.

The decision follows a high level meeting of scientists last week in Geneva, near the European particle physics centre, Cern.

The proposal is for a 100-km tunnel which would encircle the Swiss city.

It would reach to the Alps in the east, the Jura mountains in the west and even go under Lake Geneva.

Maps showing the proposed route reveal that it dwarfs the existing LHC, which is itself a world record beater as a science facility.
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more: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-26250716

[Scuba]

1. A giant lever?

Oh, atom smashing. Um, smashing idea old chap.

[Travis_0004]

2. Sounds expensive

I also find it interesting that the haldron collider shuts down for about 3-4 weeks in the dead of winter, because there is not enough electricity to go around when everybody is heating their homes. Can the infustructure support an even bigger collider?

Also, with the cost billions, what are we going to discover? Yeah we could learn about dark matter, but will that improve our lives? I'm not against science, but I wonder if spending a few billion to fight global hunger or search for cures for cancer is money better spent.

[PoliticAverse]

3. Don't worry, there's apparently only a small probability it might destroy the earth...

by creating a black hole or something.

[longship]

4. CERN is using the LHC to study fighting cancer, RIGHT NOW.

And as for the payback for spending the billions at CERN, you are communicating with people all over the world using the World Wide Web. That's right. It was invented at CERN by Tim Berners-Lee who saw a need for the internet to be able to handle linked hypertext documents. He invented the HTTP as well as the HTML (the communication protocol and the markup language, respectively).

In other words, a vast proportion of the world's economy is now based on money well spent at CERN on this primary research.

Plus, we get to know cool, awesome stuff about the universe.

Big astronomy killed film photography and put cameras into the hands of everybody. It won a Nobel Prize for doing that. Now digital cameras are everywhere and (hardly) nobody uses film.

Primary research changes the world.

I think that fairly well answers your post.

[xocet]

5. To answer your question "What are we going to discover?", you should answer the following question:

Why was it historically important to try to understand how to produce an efficient light bulb?