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Will the Global Economic Crisis Kill the Large Hadron Collider?
San Francisco, 6:56 PM
Sun Nov 8
12 posts in the last 24 hours
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Will the Global Economic Crisis Kill the Large Hadron Collider? |
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11/17/08
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11/17/08
1) They spent a lot of money to build this thing in the first place. Now that's finished, they have to expect maintenance.
2) This thing has a very specific goal: Find or fail to find the Higgs boson. The first experiments haven't even started yet.
3) No one has ever built a machine like this before, unexpected failures can happen and have to be dealt with. I pretty sure the planners knew this going in.
4) This is mostly an EU project (I mean I know it's true an international project with funding and staff from all around the world but--). I think there is a little quasi-nationalist pride involved with this because of that. The Europeans want to show Asia and North America what's what.
5) 21 million is tiny in comparison to what national governments, even pretty small ones, spend many other programs.
When you spend that much money significant social inertia is generated. We're in it now. If they decided to stop it today, it might take a few years for it to slowly grind to a halt.
11/17/08
6) On a project this size and complexity, the contractor has the upper hand on negotiating small additional fees. It's not the smartest thing to dole something like this out to the lowest bidder.
BTW, they won't find the Higgs Boson.
11/17/08
In the case of the Higgs, well, probably not, but we won't know until we try right? The experiment is clearly defined--we have a very good idea what the mass of the Higgs should be--and the Higgs is required by the Standard Model, if we don't find it, the Standard Model must be revised.
11/17/08
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11/17/08
Yes, it can. $21 million is chump change, especially for governments. For example, the current powerball jackpot is $50 million, raised by asking people to throw their money away - there's profit on top of the jackpot, too.
The LHC has already cost enough that repairs on this scale are going to go through, it's just a matter of when.
-Kle.
11/17/08