Collider Experiment, Part Two

(Thumbnail image: European Organization for Nuclear Research)

“Engineers have fixed the so-called big bang machine after an electrical fault led to it being shut down last year. [...] Its key aim is to find the elusive Higgs boson, nicknamed the 'God particle,' which is believed by scientists to explain the existence of mass. There is also a chance the machine will create tiny, short-lived black holes, a fact which has led to some wild speculation about the earth being doomed by out-of-control experiments." (ITN)

The Large Hadron Collider was fired up last year with international fanfare. But the world’s most advanced particle accelerator failed just days later. Now scientists testing the repaired collider say it will be fully operational by Christmas. That news revives long-running debates over the project’s value and impact.

Newsy.com looks at perspectives from The Telegraph, Russia Today, The Colbert Report, and The Observer.

The Daily Telegraph says that information scientists gather from the collider will exceed expectations and will be worth the wait.

“For the first time in decades, we’ve built a machine that exceeds our powers of prediction. New insights are sure to come to help answer the biggest questions of all about the origins of stuff and the fundamental forces that shape the cosmos.”

Russia Today spoke with the director of the project who dismissed claims about the danger of the experiment.

“On a lighter note, this collider is surrounded by a huge amount of urban legends like some versions even go as far as to say this will bring the end of the world.  I mean it’s obviously not true but are there any grounds why people would talk like that? […] Now all these legends of course they are not true.  The universe is nearly 14 billion years old and during its time of a lifetime it bombards Earth and stars a million times per second with particles which have much more energy than the LHC and we are still talking to each other, so there is no danger.”

Steven Colbert offered a lighter perspective on the scientists’ theory.

“Why has the collider been having all these troubles? Well in a series of papers physicists Holger Bech Nielsen and Masao Ninomiya posited this answer: the collider is being sabotaged from the future. These physicists are clearly building on their ground breaking grammar school treatise, 'tomorrow ate my homework.'”

Finally, The Observer put forward the perspective that the Hadron Collider’s scale is the real reason for the problems.

“It is a vast device the size of London's Circle Line but is engineered to a billionth of a metre accuracy. Ensuring that no flaws arise at scales and dimensions like these pushes engineering to its absolute limits.”

The Observer went on to say that when scientists iron out the problems, awards will follow.

“New physics will be uncovered with Nobel prizes following in their wake.”

So what do you think? Will the Large Hadron Collider work this time around? Is it a worthwhile endeavor?