Four days ago on Sunday 5 April 2015, The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, the particle physics specialist lab in Switzerland started up again. Two years ago, shortly after the infamous Higgs Boson was discovered the LHC was put to sleep for essential maintenence work.
“Congratulations,” said Rolf-Dieter Heuer, the director general of CERN when speaking to thousands of his staff at the re-awakening. “Now the hard work starts.”
This time round, the LHC is looking for the most elusive of particles, or lack of particles; Dark Matter. Along with the hopeful discovery of dark matter, CERN are also looking for antimatter, other dimensions, and even other worlds with super symmetry.
If the hard work is about to start for CERN, I feel for them. It has not had an easy ride of it even up until this point. For as many fans, there are critics. For all the praise of discovering the mysterious ‘snitch’ like Higgs Bosen, there are whisperings that CERN funding could be better spent elsewhere and the funding that is there suffers from a lack of transparency. People have questions.
There are of course those that disagree and say spending is justified. According to our friends at Scienceogram, CERN spending, in the grand scheme of things is really just peanuts.
Cern Higgs Boson spend according to Scienceogram. Credit: Scienceogram. Creative Commons 2.0
So, I put it to you scientific community, are we spending too much on trying to find dark matter?
Mo' Money Mo' Science 