Particle Fever Page #5

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I don't hold it against you.

The question

by an economist was,

"What is the financial gain of

running an experiment like this

and the discoveries that we

will make in this experiment?"

And it's a very,

very simple answer.

I have no idea.

We have no idea.

When radio waves

were discovered,

they weren't called radio waves,

because there were no radios.

They were discovered

as some sort of radiation.

Basic science

for big breakthroughs

needs to occur at a level

where you're not asking,

"What is the economic gain?"

You're asking,

"What do we not know,

and where

can we make progress?"

So what is the LHC good for?

Could be nothing other than

just understanding everything.

The first time

I ever saw ATLAS was in 2005.

I had come out just to see

what ATLAS would look like

because there was a possibility

that I could be working on it

as a postdoc.

I can remember walking in

and just being like...

You know, just stunned.

I mean, me, stunned,

you know, just, you know,

already kind of having an idea

of the magnitude.

People tell you,

"Oh, it's five stories tall."

And you go, "Oh, okay,

five stories tall."

And then you see.

Five stories completely filled

with microelectronics...

All custom designed,

all hand-soldered.

You know, it's like as if

it's a five-story Swiss watch.

There was this issue

about the BCIDs.

We had our extended barrel

out earlier,

but it should be back in,

and we should be...

everything running normal.

Okay, so one more

announcement.

We have to be extremely careful

what we do to the system.

I mean, we know that anybody

who's even updating

a number somewhere

might stop our system for

more than an hour quite easily.

So please be absolutely sure

that you yourself

and everybody in your system

is not touching the system,

unless it's been agreed

by the shift leader, yeah?

Nothing should be touched, yeah?

And that includes all things

that you're absolutely

dead certain

they will not do anything wrong.

Especially those things.

It's being called the

largest scientific experiment

in history,

and some say

one that could cause Armageddon.

It's the strangest

experiment ever:

Mankind's most ambitious attempt

to understand

how we all got here.

Thousands of scientists

from around the world

spent 20 years designing

an extraordinary machine.

It cost 5 billion

and will switching on very soon.

This is a genesis machine,

a window on creation.

Five months of testing on...

They're looking for something

called the God Particle,

but skeptics are saying nobody

knows what will happen

when they turn on the switch.

A group of French scientists

believe the collider

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