Boson Buddies

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) sputtered to life for the first time on September 10, 2008, deep beneath the Swiss countryside near Geneva, smashing protons into each other with considerable violence in the hopes of producing some instructive debris (as a complete aside, the LHC is not to be confused with the Chrysler LHS, which is no longer in production, but which was also sometimes smashed into things with considerable violence). Unfortunately, there was a loud “clank” on September 19, 2008 and the LHC ceased to function due to electrical problems with some humongous magnets that resulted in six tons of liquid helium gushing all over the place. This failure occurred well before any meaningful experimentation could be conducted, so the universe has preserved its secrets until at least September of 2009, when repairs are expected to be completed.

But what exactly are these secrets? And why have the collected nations of the world invested so much money in liquid helium in order to ferret them out? Actually, I’m merely a City Planner and I have no real understanding of high-energy physics, but I have read a few interesting things on the Internet. The LHC was constructed primarily to search for the Higgs boson, a theoretical sub-atomic particle which (theoretically) gives mass to other particles. It is the vanilla fudge of the Quantum world, packing the pounds onto an otherwise waifish assortment of quarks, muons and anti-neutrinos. It is also thought that the energies achievable by the LHC will allow insight into other freakish notions like extra dimensions, dark matter and electroweak symmetry breaking (don’t ask). The potential value of this knowledge depends on whether you ask a scientist or an accountant, but the theory is that solving these fundamental mysteries will lead to even more fundamental mysteries to solve. The physicists don’t really know if they will actually even learn a damn thing from their 4.5 billion dollar gadget, but that’s how they roll.

The thing that I wonder about is not whether the average human (or the above average Republican) has the innate intelligence to begin to understand the obtuse concepts and wacky musings of these lonely geniuses, but rather, what’s the use of smashing tiny, tiny little things together in order to maybe learn stuff that may, or may not, be of any practical value? Why aren’t all those Poindexters out using that brain power to do stuff we know is achievable, like turning cats into gasoline or finding a cure for stigmata?

Sadly, we may never know. But perhaps they figure if we smash enough stuff together we can peep up under God’s skirt and get a full frontal gander at the source of creation. Perhaps they think that the pursuit of knowledge is valuable in, and of, itself. Perhaps they hope we will learn that Large Hadron Colliders are way cooler than stealth bombers and binary chemical weapons and that tiny little explosions are substantially more adorable than big ones. Maybe they hope we will all discover that if we make smashing sub-atomic particles together our priority, bigger things may need to be smashed less often. Maybe they think that if we spend enough time and enough effort chasing impossible phantoms, perhaps we will catch one.