Large Hadron Collider? Been there, done that!
Published: 14 October, 2008, 09:11
Got the T-shirt!
“Everything you discover, I discovered ten years ago”. This appears to be the tacit catchphrase of modern Russian science. Leading Russian physicists from Protvino, a town in the Moscow region, now claim that if their pr
Beneath Protvino, a town which now numbers roughly 37,000 residents, there lie 21 kilometres of tunnels. They were built in the 80s for the RosAtom Institute for High Energy Physics, which was planning to launch a particle collider. If finalised, it would have matched the LHC in capacity, but would be 15 years its senior.
Vladimir Kremlev for RT
However, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, construction was halted and the complicated underground system now stands unused.
“We cannot bury the tunnel for ecological reasons. There is a city above it and subterranean waters could come out. It is 60 metres underground and we constantly have to simply sustain it by pumping the water out and making repairs,” said Viktor Savin, the coordinator of Russia’s team in the LHC project, in an interview with Ria Novosti.
The town of Protvino was originally just a small scientific settlement, attached to an innovative complex of physic laboratories. It was built in the 60s, with its location specifically chosen for being in the least seismically-active zone possible, making it favourable for the construction of the collider.
Now, 80 million roubles are spent yearly on the tunnel’s maintenance. The institute’s governing body cautiously suggests that if the tunnel is not used as a collider, it could be adapted and used to facilitate the research of cosmic rays.
Protvino is also renowned for a number of landmark scientific breakthroughs. Anti-helium, an experimentally-constructed case of anti-matter, was discovered in this scientific settlement. In 1967, the RosAtom Institute launched a proton collider in Protvino, which was the largest in the world at the time.
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I've said it a thousand times before! Read My lips! It doesn't really matter who developed the first Hadron Collider. The LHC will not provide any information we do not already have. Just think for a moment about what Einstein said. 'It takes a lot of energy to make a bit of matter', or words to that effect. The point being, the energy requirement to make our universe must have been mindblowingly vast. Billions of times greater than the mass of our universe. If you want to know all of the secrets of the universe, just as me!
In exactly the same way, if the Superconducting Supercollider (SSC) had not been cancelled in 1993, it would be providing results from 40 TeV collisions right now. 23 km of tunnels were dug under Waxahachie, Texas, a town of 21,000 residents. I'm not sure in what sense an incomplete project is a "been there, done that" situation: we mostly see it as a lost opportunity. At least we're fortunate enough now to see what the universe looks like at 10-14 TeV at the LHC.
Wow, this article sparks many mixed emotions. On one hand, science for science-sake is one of the most commendable forms of lifetime commitment. However, on the other hand is the risk/benefits to the common people (who ultimately pay the final costs or reap benefits.) This is not a simple case. To date CERN has given the world the MRI, multiple telcom and data-storage advances, and the world-wide-web that we are now using. I hope that CERN, and other similar facilities continue to produce side benefits for society in tandem to their quest for further exploration. Using LHC to hunt for elusive theorized particles or whatever, is quite similar to using rifles to go hunting for wild quail or rabbit. A gun can be an indispensable tool for this task. A key to a successful outing is that everyone in the party is well versed on the functioning of all the firearms. Also, hunting is usually only permitted far from populated areas. The problem with LHC is we can't know exactly how it will function because it will be functioning in areas with high degrees of uncertainty. Also there is no way to shield populated areas from some forms of mishap. The biggest concern, however, is that safety assurances are largely based on one unverified set of assumptions predicting the mini black-holes with evaporate away. If there were no counter-arguments or opposite alternate explanations, there I would be less wary. Unfortunately, that is not the case any longer. There is an alternative: The Dominium model, a modern cosmologic retrofitting of the lens through which we view established data. The data doesn't change; established measurements are undeniable; finally, in the new model there no longer are any paradoxes between theory and physical evidence.