Research at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider began today at 13:06 CEST, when beams collided at 7 TeV. This is a groundbreaking moment in particle physics — indeed in science itself. The research promises to give scientists insight into the earliest moments of the life of the universe and to shed light on some of the deepest and murkiest mysteries of the structure of matter and energy. This is the kind of wonderful news that makes me proud to be a human being.
While I celebrate this remarkable achievement, I feel regret that the United States abandoned its own Superconducting Super Collider seventeen years ago. Capable of producing almost triple the energies of the LHC, the SSC would have provided even more of the kinds of insights the LHC will soon offer to humankind, but over a decade sooner. It would have also cemented the USA’s, rather than Europe’s, lead in physics research. The SSC project was cancelled due to budget overruns. Originally, scoped at $4 billion, it ran to $12 billion before being shut down. It seemed like a foolish decision to me to stop the project then, and in today’s world of $1 trillion budgets, it seems even more so.