GENEVA — The world’s largest particle collider passed its first major tests by firing two beams of protons in opposite directions around a 17-mile underground ring today in what scientists hope is the next great step to understanding the makeup of the universe.
After a series of trial runs, two white dots flashed on a computer screen at 10:26 a.m. indicating that the protons had traveled clockwise along the full length of the $3.8-billion Large Hadron Collider — described as the biggest physics experiment in history.
The organization, known by its French acronym CERN, began firing the protons — a type of subatomic particle — around the tunnel in stages less than an hour earlier, with the first beam injection at 9:35 a.m.
The CERN experiments could reveal more about “dark matter,” antimatter and possibly hidden dimensions of space and time. It could also find evidence of the hypothetical particle — the Higgs boson — which is sometimes called the “God particle” because it is believed to give mass to all other particles, and thus to matter that makes up the universe.
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Who cares right?
Well I bring this story to your attention for a comparison of investments and priorities.
Our Government just decided to give Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac $100 billion dollars of tax payer money because they failed at their own basic mission statement.
i.e. "Make money by lending money to people buying a house."
Geneva builds the world's largest particle collider for the bargain basement price of $3.8 billion....we could have built 25 of these things for the 25 best Universities in the U.S and STILL had money left over.
Other countries are making "quantum" leaps ahead of the U.S. in all kinds of fields of scientific research because we blow our collective wads on the war effort (currently $576 billion) and bail outs for our top business economic majors who have grossly failed at what they went to school for in the first place.
Welcome To Detroit
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