It's all about the science, baby!
Saturday, 13. September 2008, 23:41:29
It has only been a few days since one of our times potentially most interesting tool for research were tested for the first time. Yes, I am of course talking about the CERN Large Hadron Collider.
Everything with this project is big - the investments, the people involved, the number of countries that are cooperating - and not at least: the technology. I had the pleasure of speaking with one of the key persons in the CERN IT-department a few months ago, and I seriously doubt there are many people who truly understands the magnitude of what they have accomplished in Geneva. My guess is that there will be written books about the people behind the project and how the detectors were created, how the millions upon millions of sensors were set up and how filters were incorporated in the detectors, how the entire center draws on processing power from universities all over the world ... the list could go on.
But one thing is the size of the project - a completely different thing is the result of some of the experiments that are going to take place there. We are in reality discussing potential solutions for the holy grail of science: a unified theory of everything. Where theories related relativity and quantum mechanics are fused into one, where we hopefully will discover what dark matter really is as well as a number of other things - one more groundbreaking than the other.
But it seems to me that the more profound effect an experiment may have on the science community and our understanding of how the universe ticks, the more sceptical - yes, even frightened a lot of people seems to become. This may perhaps be because they do not understand the nature of the experiments - or perhaps because they realize that a lot of textbooks may have to be rewritten if the experiments does not give the expected results. This fun little music video does actually adress some of these issues: HLC rap
Personally I would love to have my world view turned upside down. But that is just me, I guess.
Anyway, I believe this sceptisism is rather recent. If we goes back a few decades I do not really recall there ever being such kinds of discussions regarding an experiment. This blog compares some of the discussions that took place during the Manhattan project with some of the discussions that took place before the LHC was triggered and it makes for some very good reading. But I believe that the punchline should not be that scientists only should write for other experts, but rather that researchers should be better at producing material that is easy to sell, and then reserve the speculations for other experts that understands the basis for musings and rethorical questions.
And my guess is that this was the reason why we could read a lot of negative - yes, even frightened comments in the press regarding black holes forming and devouring the planet. Instead of anticipating the fantastic accomplishment the LHC represented, they were only fearful of an extremely unlikely result. This, combined with the usual mixup with people quoting Nostradamus, astrology, religion etc. ended up creating a lot of very unnecessary noise.
But hopefully some of the core of the experiments that are going to be performed in Geneva in the years to come still will manage to do something more than produce results. Hopefully they will be able to instill something that recent progress somehow lacks nowadays: a sense of wonder.
And if nothing else - perhaps people are finally starting to realize that science is still as relevant as ever. That would at least be something.
Everything with this project is big - the investments, the people involved, the number of countries that are cooperating - and not at least: the technology. I had the pleasure of speaking with one of the key persons in the CERN IT-department a few months ago, and I seriously doubt there are many people who truly understands the magnitude of what they have accomplished in Geneva. My guess is that there will be written books about the people behind the project and how the detectors were created, how the millions upon millions of sensors were set up and how filters were incorporated in the detectors, how the entire center draws on processing power from universities all over the world ... the list could go on.
But one thing is the size of the project - a completely different thing is the result of some of the experiments that are going to take place there. We are in reality discussing potential solutions for the holy grail of science: a unified theory of everything. Where theories related relativity and quantum mechanics are fused into one, where we hopefully will discover what dark matter really is as well as a number of other things - one more groundbreaking than the other.
But it seems to me that the more profound effect an experiment may have on the science community and our understanding of how the universe ticks, the more sceptical - yes, even frightened a lot of people seems to become. This may perhaps be because they do not understand the nature of the experiments - or perhaps because they realize that a lot of textbooks may have to be rewritten if the experiments does not give the expected results. This fun little music video does actually adress some of these issues: HLC rap
Personally I would love to have my world view turned upside down. But that is just me, I guess.
Anyway, I believe this sceptisism is rather recent. If we goes back a few decades I do not really recall there ever being such kinds of discussions regarding an experiment. This blog compares some of the discussions that took place during the Manhattan project with some of the discussions that took place before the LHC was triggered and it makes for some very good reading. But I believe that the punchline should not be that scientists only should write for other experts, but rather that researchers should be better at producing material that is easy to sell, and then reserve the speculations for other experts that understands the basis for musings and rethorical questions.
And my guess is that this was the reason why we could read a lot of negative - yes, even frightened comments in the press regarding black holes forming and devouring the planet. Instead of anticipating the fantastic accomplishment the LHC represented, they were only fearful of an extremely unlikely result. This, combined with the usual mixup with people quoting Nostradamus, astrology, religion etc. ended up creating a lot of very unnecessary noise.
But hopefully some of the core of the experiments that are going to be performed in Geneva in the years to come still will manage to do something more than produce results. Hopefully they will be able to instill something that recent progress somehow lacks nowadays: a sense of wonder.
And if nothing else - perhaps people are finally starting to realize that science is still as relevant as ever. That would at least be something.
WIDGETIZE