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Scientists Discover That If You Slam Members of Congress Together Under Pressure, Money Is Released:
High-energy particle accelerators cost taxpayers large sums but stand little chance of discovering anything of practical value. Promoted as quests for understanding of the universe, particle accelerators serve mostly as job programs for physicists, postdocs, and politically connected laboratories and contractors. Yes, abstract experiments of bygone days produced great discoveries, and yes, the quest for abstract knowledge is inherent to human nature. But most experiments from the bygone golden age of physics were done at private expense, not using tax subsidies. Albert Michelson and Edward Morley did not demand that Ohio taxpayers provide them with a decade of luxury while they refined their ideas.
Privately funded atom-smashers would be perfectly fine -- unless one inadvertently transforms the Earth into "an inert hyperdense sphere about 100 meters across," as this book by British astronomer Martin Rees claims is possible. The problem is that today's particle accelerators operate by hitting up taxpayers for millions to billions of dollars -- money used mainly for career featherbedding among the people advocating the expenditure. Sure we'd like to know whether the Higgs boson exists. But why should we be taxed to find out? Pure knowledge is of value to civilization, and so is literature. If I demanded that physicists be taxed to subsidize the writing of my novels, physicists would be outraged. Yet the same group believes others should be taxed to subsidize their divertissements, to say nothing of their choice of restaurants.
Congress probably hands out money for particle accelerators because senators and representatives understand little of science and believe they are funding projects that will aid the national defense, improve nuclear power or result in some breakthrough such as warp drive. Attention, House and Senate: Particle-accelerator research focuses almost exclusively on the abstract question of why matters exists, which is a really fascinating question but is unrelated to practical knowledge, military affairs or global economics. Last winter, Congress added millions of dollars to the National Science Foundation budget for atom smashers. Statements by Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and other members of Congress from both parties suggested they believe particle accelerators have something to do with international economic competitiveness. This only shows that the House and Senate have no idea what they are throwing money at -- a long-standing flaw of Congress.
The National Science Foundation budget for the fiscal year that just ended contained about $135 million in tax dollars to operate the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory, a facility to which federal taxpayers forcibly have contributed about $1.1 billion total. In the previous year, fiscal 2006, the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider stayed in operation partly owing to private donations given by science patrons of their own free will. Congress won't stand for that! Now, Brookhaven researchers are once again in the business of reaching into your pocket. Watch out for heavy-handed lobbying demanding that taxpayers who are struggling to pay for health insurance nevertheless support the National Synchrotron Light Source, another toy Brookhaven wants, and the wonderfully named Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility in Newport News, Va. Jefferson was known to love religious freedom, the horticulture of Virginia and public subsidies for data on quantum chromodynamics!
We're using your tax dollars to simulate the explosion of the entire universe. It's perfectly safe!
The cost of the Brookhaven and Jefferson initiatives will be chump change if backers of the proposed International Linear Collider get their way. Over the winter, ILC proponents estimated their underground maze of mysterious gizmos, plus associated labs and countless administrators' offices, could be built for about $15 billion. That's roughly the same as is already being spent on the Large Hadron Collider being completed in Switzerland. The Large Hadron Collider is mainly a project of European governments; if built, the ILC would be funded mainly by the United States, China and Japan. Already, those who stand to profit from the $15 billion ILC are saying it is needed for international competition -- normally clear-headed technical journal Science recently devoted not one but two articles to echoing the specious special-favors lobbyists' pleading that unless the United States throws money, the Large Hadron Collider would "secure Europe's ascendancy in particle physics for years to come." The proposed International Linear Collider in the United States would do approximately the same thing as the nearly complete European system: Why does the world need two super-expensive tax-subsidized advanced accelerators when neither is likely to accomplish anything other than providing payroll checks for staff? Why, because if the Europeans are wasting $15 billion, we've got to show our national resolve by wasting $15 billion, too! We can't let the French get all the credit for accidentally crushing the Earth into an inert hyperdense pinpoint!
The superconducting magnets of Europe's 17-mile-long Large Hadron Collider, near Lake Geneva, are scheduled to turn on in 2008, and we can hope that a sizable chunk of the France-Switzerland border does not dematerialize at that instant. The goal of the Large Hadron Collider is to slam together beams of protons traveling in opposite directions at roughly 99 percent of the speed of light: It is assumed the collision will simulate the subatomic energy levels that existed during the Big Bang. Europe's Large Hadron Collider is circular, and veering around in a circle slightly limits the top speed of protons. America's proposed International Linear Collider would have its mysterious gizmos in a straight line and thus be able to accelerate protons slightly closer to the speed of light, coming slightly closer to approximating the assumed conditions of the assumed Big Bang. A straight-line setup with slightly more speed is the main difference between the proposed International Linear Collider and the nearly finished Large Hadron Collider. Set aside whether $15 billion should forcibly be removed from taxpayers' pockets in order to cause proton beams to move a bit faster. Are we really sure it is history's greatest idea to be re-creating the conditions that existed when the universe exploded?
The universe was formed by the Big Bang. Surely we are totally, completely safe using tax dollars to put the U.S. government in charge of recreating the conditions.
Assume the Big Bang was how it all began. During this event, vast amounts of matter and radiation materialized from nowhere, the light-speed barrier was broken, space became curved, matter-antimatter annihilation destroyed millions of times the mass of the present universe, and other fairly wild stuff happened. A localized Big Bang Lite caused by a particle accelerator is unlikely, but why are we going out of our way to engage the risk? Given that very expensive particle accelerators have little chance of ever producing social benefits, Western governments appear to be building these devices solely to stop physicists from complaining about the level of tax subsidies they receive. Is this really a sound public-policy reason to engage a risk of calamity?
Physics featherbedding note: Normally clear-headed Science magazine, flagship of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, last winter ran an article on why physicists privately are hoping the new ultraexpensive atom smashers won't find the ultimate elementary particle, the very thing they are designed to find. Wait -- they are hoping the $30 billion worth of projects will fail? Here's the reasoning: If the machines actually do discover what causes matter, how will science lobbyists justify billions more euros and dollars for additional atom-smasher subsidies in the future? Science wrote with a straight face, "Many particle physicists say their greatest fear is that this grand new machine, the Large Hadron Collider, will spot the Higgs boson and nothing else. If so, particle physics could grind to a halt." If the mystery of matter is solved, how could taxpayers be compelled to continue paying the restaurant tabs of physicists! Come on American Association for the Advancement of Science, you assert rationalism, so it would be nice if you took a detached, rational view of the financial self-interests of science.
Search note: The above link to Rees' book is from the Google Library Project, which I once opposed but now support. The project allows anyone to scan the text of books. In theory, you can use Google Library to read entire copyrighted books without the author receiving a royalty, which is why I initially opposed the effort. But realistically, who's going to read an entire book in a computer browser pane? I've switched over to thinking Google Library is a good idea because it might raise enthusiasm about books and increase sales. Here, you can browse my 2002 novel "The Here and Now," which has nothing to do with sports, space aliens or cheerleaders. "The Here and Now" got rave reviews in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times -- and barely sold 2,000 copies. Maybe Google Library will help revive it.
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