Posted on 06/05/2009 5:15:33 PM PDT by bruinbirdman
The Large Hadron Collider is to be run flat out throughout the year in order to make up for lost time and to beat an American rival to finding the elusive Higgs Boson – known as the "God Particle".
The £4bn particle accelerator, which broke down last year, was to be turned off in winter to reduce energy demands during peak electricity prices.
But the delays and the news that a smaller less powerful accelerator at Fermilab in Illinois is closing in on the particle has meant it will continue running throughout the year – at an extra cost of £13 million.
Dr Lyn Evans, the Welsh scientist who heads the project, said: "It would have been terrible if we'd got everything working and then had to shut it down straight away.
"So we've decided to bite the bullet and keep it going. That means that if the schedule slips by a week or two, it's not so bad. Up until this year that was inconceivable."
Built by the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN), the collider lies beneath the French-Swiss border, near the institution's headquarters in Geneva, at depths ranging from 170ft to 600ft.
The aim of the experiment is to recreate the conditions that existed a fraction of a second after the Big Bang – the birth of the universe – and provide vital clues to the building blocks of life.
It will track the spray of particles thrown out by collisions in a search for the elusive Higgs Boson, a theoretical entity that supposedly lends weight, or mass, to the elementary particles.
So important is this mysterious substance that it has been called the 'God Particle'.
The "big bang machine" is currently being readied for its restart after repairs to the catastrophic fault that
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
When Dick Armey and the frugal Republicans of old decided to kill the Super Collider, in TEXAS, because of their fisscal conservative nature - they showed that smart or economic growth was not part of their plans. They killed a program that had already found several viaible business applications before the collider was finished. They killed a number of college engineering programs at the local universities. They ended the search for the God particle and then they went on to fund such fantastic programs as a bridge to nowhere. Genuis those republicans. Now you know why they are out of power.
yitbos
“I predict great life changing things will happen from this. Unbelievable things.”
And what might those things actually be...could someone actually explain?...uncovering the nature of God thru science? Huh? Hasn’t that already been tried several times throughout human history with less than desirable results?
I remain skeptical, but open to new info; but so far, kinda looks looks the ultimate pissing down a rathole of vast resources (no pun intended).
As I recall, the money was given to the State to spend for roads and if they wanted to build the bridge. Palin voted not to use the money on the bridge. They still spent more money on a roads project than on a sience program that, like the Internet/DARPA program has a universal need.
God is omnipotent and omnipresence
Isn't that sort of like the mind of a worm getting closer to the mind of Stephen Hawking?
Bill Clinton was never fond of the SSC. Without a presidential champion the deficit-weary Congress cut funding for the SSC entirely and chose to abandon the $2 billion that had already been spent.
Nice try.
More like a snail.
WASHINGTON (1992)The House voted Wednesday night to block continued construction in Texas of the $8.3 billion atom smasher known as the superconducting super collider that critics called too expensive for a government trying to hold down spending.
The project, actively sought by Illinois in the 1980s but awarded to Texas, had been included in a $21.8 billion spending bill for the Energy Department and for several waterway protection projects.
An amendment that called for shutting down the project, leaving $34 million to phase out ongoing activities, was approved 231-182. The original bill called for spending $483.7 million on the collider.
LOL I think you give far too much credit
yitbos
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Mandatory funding for two controversial bridge projects in Alaska -- including the ridiculed "bridge to nowhere" -- has been stripped from a federal spending bill, a congressional committee said on Wednesday.
As a compromise, Alaska will still receive the money that had been set aside for the bridges to spend as it likes on transportation needs. (By the way transportation dollars come from gas taxes, I doubt that the population of Alaska payss anything like the money necessary for that money for the bridge or their highways. Alaska's roads useful for their needs, but excesses appear in items like these.)
That may not look like funding the bridge - but since my post was about the waste by Republicans for junk, that began to creap into the life of the controlling congress,instead of serous projects - like the Super Collider, I stand by my premise and the details of spending for the bridge.
21 posted on Friday, June 05, 2009 7:52:25 PM by q_an_a
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The bridge was not funded. Rooters rhetoric is bias concerning descriptions of what the money was used for.
yitbos
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