Baby Bang

Have you heard about the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) Machine?

Apparently some 8,000 scientists from 85 countries have spent the last couple of decades unhindered, seriously working to play God, while stem-cell researchers continue to be badgered and harangued in their efforts to find treatments for debilitating and fatal diseases.

They started it up today - just sending particles one direction at a time. In a month they will be sending particles both ways, eventually inducing a collision.

They don't know what will happen, but they are sure it will be exciting (of course, we must keep in mind that this is a group of people who clapped and cheered and probably wet themselves when they saw the little light they sent into their 17 mile race track come out on the other side successfully, so remember they are able to read more into their results than, say, your average Nascar fan).

They don't know what will happen, but they hope one possible outcome would be to create a small black hole (And really, we can never have enough of those in the universe, now can we?).

They don't know what will happen, but they hope to create post-big bang conditions to learn more about the creation of the universe (all you out there who are screaming at your computer monitor that it's all in the Bible, just simmer down and go back to watching your TiVo'd episodes of The 700 Club. If God could create the universe, he should be able to handle these shmoes just fine, and if there was no "big bang", then they can't recreate it, see?).

So far, my question is: why?

Critics have expressed concern that if they do manage to create a black hole, it could adversely affect our planet (some of the more extreme views suggest that such a man made black hole would absorb our entire planet - if that's going to happen, I hope they find out before I go and do all this laundry).

They don't know what will happen, yet they pooh-pooh expressions of such concern and have declared that any black hole they might create would be so small it wouldn't even absorb an atom. They declare this with conviction and bluster not seen since the days after 9-11, when the Bush administration bullied their way into a war using accusations of WMD.

I have yet to read of any information they hope to glean from this experiment that would have useful application to life on this planet, or in any way benefit humankind. Yet billions of dollars have been poured into this project. Funding that was thus unavailable for medical research or projects that could address world hunger, or research into colonizing other planets in the event ours becomes uninhabitable (perhaps as the result of some multi-billion dollar, 20-years-in-the-making physics project), or development of a car alarm that only goes off when the car is actually being burglarized, or a laser beam the rest of us can use to vaporize cars with alarms that go off in the middle of the night for no reason.

Again, I have to ask: why?

Perhaps in anticipation of criticism, the experts have been quick to point out that this is only a "baby step"; that it is "pure science", as has been historically conducted by this and that other notable scientist. They generally spout names that clearly belong to their heroes in high-science. I keep waiting to hear about Ben Franklin, Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, or even Leonardo DaVinci - but their references are always far more obscure and unpronounceable, making them impossible to Google. The experts also take great pains to be clear that they will need many more years (and billions more in funding) in order to figure out what to do with any data they eventually obtain from colliding these subatomic particles.

Well, that many scientists and that much money, surely they aren't wrong that nothing can go wrong, right? I mean - the nuclear physicists who developed the atom bomb were stupid scientists, and that's why they didn't foresee the adverse applications of their technology. And there are many positive applications of nuclear energy (many of them medical) that somebody somewhere could probably argue would not exist today if technology hadn't been advanced through development of weaponry.

So the children of the fifties and sixties had to practice ducking under their desks. If not for the threat of nuclear annihilation, Japan might have continued its uppity attacks on the United States. Plus, some of our best movies would never have been made, and Patrick Swayze wouldn't have had Red Dawn on his resume' to prove he was more than a handsome dancing ghost. Ok, maybe they could have come up with that plot, anyway. But don't tell me Brandon Frasier's Mummy movies would have graced our planet if he hadn't had the stellar Blast from the Past to kick off his career. Ok, maybe they could have come up with some other Rumpelstiltskin adaptation. But you have to admit that Fat Man and Little Boy really needed an atom bomb to carry the plot. And don't even get me started on the boost in refrigerator sales that followed the most recent Indiana Jones flick.

So, ok, you smarty pants scientists! Bring on the risks and let's pooh-pooh them together. All Hail Science! Huzzah! (By the way, you might want to spend the next 4-6 weeks stocking up on canned goods and water, just in case). But if we can create another whole universe underground in Switzerland, just think of the possibilities! No, seriously... everybody think...there are some - we'll find them...let's all just hang in there...

Maybe I am looking at this from the wrong perspective, but the more I hear about it, the greater my sense of unease, and the farther I seem to get from an answer to my question:

Why?

LHC for dummies (Wikipedia)
Radio Netherlands Worldwide Article
National Geographic Article
Wired Science Article
European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN)
Telegraph.co.uk article

Additional Reading courtesy of Slate:
Did America's Tevatron beat LHC to the "scoop"?
If the Earth gets destroyed, I'm suing.
Death by Black Hole
Why it's not front page news.