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Following various controversies surrounding the ‘official’ initiation of the Large Hadron Collider, particularly over whether or not it will create a black hole which could devour the earth, not to mention the cost of the project, leading scientists answered some of the most frequently asked questions.
Is CERN going to blow up the world? If not, why not? “No! The important thing to remember is that the energies we create at the LHC are unique for our experiments, but they certainly aren’t unique in the universe. Processes in the Earth’s upper atmosphere scale much higher energies all the time without blowing up the world. We’ve looked at other places in the universe where we’d see catastrophic effects if they were going to happen at the LHC and have ruled out any danger. A very recent and extremely comprehensive safety report is available on the CERN website. These checks do not involve untested theory and are very well understood. “Finally, if there was a risk of destroying the world, no scientist that I know in the collaboration would turn it on. Finding out about our universe may be worth years of effort, billions of Swiss francs, long hours and night shifts, but it certainly isn’t worth the apocalypse!” -,Dr Martin White, in the High Energy Physics Group at the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge “No – at least, it’s extremely unlikely. The LHC will be accelerating protons to a very high energy and smashing them together, in a controlled way such that we can see the particles that are created. Protons with higher energies regularly come to earth from space and have had plenty of chance to blow up the earth if such a process existed.” -,Dr Paul Stevenson, Lecturer in the Department of Physics, University of Surrey “According to some theories gravity, which is normally extremely weak for an individual elementary particle, might become quite strong when you bang together the energetic particles that we’ll be using at the LHC and if that idea is correct then it’s possible that in some of these collisions of protons you’re going to produce a Black Hole. Now this is going to be an incredibly small microscopic Black Hole and the amount of energy that it has is in human terms absolutely infinitesimal so these aren’t going to present any danger to us in fact these things break apart extremely quickly and they release energy in much the same way as other collisions of protons at the LHC. There’s no danger from them. “The total amount of energy which is released is incredibly small. But nevertheless these will be fantastic laboratories. We can study gravity in the laboratory in a way that’s never been possible before.” – Prof John Ellis, CERN Theoretical Physicist What is the point of CERN? “On a physics level, CERN aims to find out what the smallest constituents of the universe are and how they interact. This is intimately connected with the history of the universe itself- we can’t understand how the universe came to be and how it evolved to its present state without knowing what it is made of at the fundamental level. At CERN, we get an amazingly detailed view of how the universe works and we get vital clues that will help us understand its birth. We are also hugely interested in finding out how things work today so that we can develop future technologies. History tells us that curious particles turn out to be very important a few years down the line, starting with the electron. “As a secondary consideration, the spin offs from particle physics are very useful indeed. The web was invented at CERN, and there are medical applications for a wide range of the technology that has been developed there. “Finally, on a social level, CERN is one of the finest examples of an international collaboration that I’ve ever come across, and is a very inspiring environment to work in.” -,Dr Martin White, in the High Energy Physics Group at the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge “CERN was established to provide a place for pure, scientific research and collaboration, which is entirely open and whose results are public and not for gain. It’s one of the most noble aims I can imagine – CERN is like the UN of scientific research. Remember that the web was invented at CERN, who then gave it away for free? Where else would you unite scientists from all over the world, working for a common cause in fundamental physics, who come up with these wonderful spin-offs that benefit everyone – that’s the point of CERN, to make this possible.” -,Dr Tara Shears, University of Liverpool “The same as the point of the rest of science: like art it is one of the things we do as humans to heal and nurture our relationship with the physical world we live in. Working wisely with nature needs a foundation of understanding of it – that is what CERN (and the fluidics lab down my corridor) helps to build.” -,Prof Tom McLeish, Director, IRC in Polymer Science and Technology, University of Leeds Why are you personally interested in CERN? “I’m interested in the answers to the questions “What bits of stuff is the universe made of, and why/how do they behave? What happened just after the big bang?” I think that the CERN experiment will help answer some aspects of these questions.” -,Dr Ben Allanach, Reader in Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge “I have always been fascinated by the deep structure of the world as much as the miracle of our ability to understand it at all. That is why I became a physicist. It also speaks to the extraordinary effectiveness of mathematical thought as a gateway to understanding.” -,Prof Tom McLeish, Director, IRC in Polymer Science and Technology, University of Leeds “Because it is helping to define the basics of the universe in which we live. This is mostly just fascinating but might one day be useful. This is enough of a reason – we spend larger sums on many other things (a lot of travel for example) just because they interest us. Isn’t this curiosity a defining human characteristic?” -,Prof Will Stewart, Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering How interested do you find people are when it comes to the forces and particles of the universe? “Astronomers and the wider public are interested in particle physics experiments like the LHC because they tell us about the Universe on the smallest scales – with consequences for the wider cosmos. The Universe is effectively a gigantic laboratory, albeit one that we can’t control, and the LHC gives us the opportunity to replicate that in a controlled way. “Understanding the nature of matter, why it takes the form it does and how it came to be in that form are key issues for cosmologists, the astronomers who try to understand how our Universe began, how it is in the present day and how it will end. The LHC should help them answer those questions.” -,Dr Robert Massey, Royal Astronomical Society Governments seem to be spending increasing proportions of science budget’s on the life sciences – how do you feel about this? “I think it is perfectly fair. I think that if you ask people what science should do for society, they’ll think of medicine first, and then probably environmental issues. If you ask people about what they’d like to know about the world, however, they’ll probably say that they would like to know how it started, how old it is, whether it has always been there and what is going to happen to it. So in that context, they fully support particle physics. I don’t think we’re in a position where we can’t afford to support both of those areas of science.” -,Dr Martin White, in the High Energy Physics Group at the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge “In my opinion, life sciences deserve healthy funding. There is a balance to be struck between research expenditure in all scientific fields, based on a mixture of their scientific and socio-economic potential. Recently, the life sciences have been making an extraordinary amount of progress, providing health and other benefits, and an increase in their funding is justified. Of course, particle physics is also displaying an enormous amount of scientific potential at the moment and deserves its slice of the pie.” -,Dr Ben Allanach, Reader in Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge “There is a lot worth funding in the life sciences, and ways in which the borders between the different areas of science are becoming blurred as our knowledge of each improves and seeps over the old discipline boundaries. It’s a concern, though, that some traditional areas of science are being squeezed so that we will lose expertise and training in important areas. In my own area of nuclear physics, it worries me that as the funding is cut, fewer young scientists will be able to join the field, the universities will no longer provide the training and knowledge transfer, yet the government talks about a nuclear power future.” -,Dr Paul Stevenson, Lecturer in the Department of Physics, University of Surrey Do you think the LHC is going to be the last really big multibillion dollar particle accelerator? ” It is difficult to say until we know what the LHC has seen, but I suspect not. The ideal situation for particle physicists would be to follow the LHC with a linear electron-positron collider which turns out to be very complementary to the LHC in terms of the physics capabilities. The LHC is excellent for discovering new physics, but when protons smash together you have a much messier system than when you smash electrons and positrons together. This means that precision measurements of the real details of theories are hard at the LHC but much easier at the linear collider. “Ideally, we need some idea of roughly what the new physics is before building the linear collider, and if this isn’t forthcoming it might stall the project. I expect that it will proceed but with some delay whilst we analyse LHC data. The linear collider has already started in terms of research and development.” -,Dr Martin White, in the High Energy Physics Group at the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge “I’m not going to set myself up for a fall by saying it will be the last! There are limits in how big one can build an accelerator, but there are exciting new technologies for particle acceleration being developed that will likely lead to radically different designs which can reach higher energies over smaller distances. I hope and expect that a linear accelerator will be built to complement CERN’s circular design, which will have a different set of strengths. Who knows what the more distant future holds. Even if CERN finds the Higgs, there are many questions about things like Dark Matter still to be answered, and accelerators are the main tools for answering those questions.” -,Dr Paul Stevenson, Lecturer in the Department of Physics, University of Surrey Is the 4 billion Euros spent on CERN justified? Could it have been better spent on another scientific project? “First some general numbers. The cost to completion of the LHC is estimated at up to 6.4 billion Euros (5.2 billion pounds). This sounds a lot, but it has been spent over many years and the annual British contribution to CERN is 70 million pounds, which works out at about £1.17 per person per year Of course, 70 million pounds is still, by any standard, a lot of money. “Nevertheless, I think it’s still true that we’re getting enormous value for money from that 70 million pounds. Particle physics has had a vast number of ideas in the last 30 years or so, but not enough experimental data to test them. We really can’t proceed without the LHC, and we are at the crucial stage where the Standard Model can’t survive past the LHC if we don’t see anything new. Thus, the LHC is guaranteed to revolutionise particle physics and hence our understanding of the universe, so scientifically it’s an easy decision. “There are other benefits- we are world leaders in many areas of the field, and if one purpose of government spending is to keep our country competitive we’ve done that job incredibly well. If you double the entire cost to completion of the LHC you get the expected final budget for the London Olympics (and that’s before you remember that our UK contribution to the LHC is very much less than the total cost to completion). Both the Olympics and the LHC are good decisions, and I think that both are well supported by the public. “In addition, consider that really high tech research and development has a limited place in industry where the emphasis is on immediate application, and it can’t happen in small scale academic departments due to inadequate resources. Places like CERN are really important for providing that missing link between the two, and a lot of the money we’ve spent at CERN will lead to exciting new technologies in the long term. “Finally, the experiment will have a very high profile, and there is a real chance to get the public excited about the science and to inspire and train a new generation of scientists at a time when its often reported that we’re struggling to attract young people to physics. I think it constitutes a very sound investment.” -,Dr Martin White, in the High Energy Physics Group at the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge “Yes, there are many, and that is really what should have been debated long ago. There are many other large projects concerned with energy, water, and life sciences, and most significantly, we should look for a large number of small projects in future.” -,Prof Peter Dobson, Professor of Engineering Science at the University of Oxford “There is so much good about CERN beyond the particle physics – the international co-operation, the amazing engineering, the inspiration to the public and budding young scientists, the developments in computing to deal with all the data… All this value-added stuff makes CERN a good investment.” -,Dr Paul Stevenson, Lecturer in the Department of Physics, University of Surrey