The mysteries of the universe: the Cern tunnel

Few of us have deep insights into physics, or chemistry, or medicine. I don't, for sure. I thought about that when I was skimming through some news articles about Cern (The European Organization for Nuclear Research), an organization presently involved in a huge project that, according to news articles, try to solve the "mystery of mass", how mass is held together and how big bang really came about. News articles tend to focus on the showy part of the project; see, as the particles collide, small and unstable "black holes" ( - don't ask me about the details) are created. Small nuclear explosions occur as the particles are smashed together. "the particles will produce tiny fireballs of primordial energy, recreating conditions that last prevailed when the universe was less than a trillionth of a second old", explains the reporter from The New York Times. Obviously, a lot of bad jokes about being sucked into a black hole just have to be cracked (The organization was, in fact, sued by a worried American teacher).

After I've read the articles, it's clear to me that this project is very costly, that many researchers are engaged in it and that it concerns some questions that physicians consider to be of importance. But I get the feeling that there must be some technical use, to which these results can be applied. It just has to. Why do I have that hunch? Aren't the fundamental questions of physics essential enough to initiate grand research projects? I guess I am thinking about the relation between military interests & the development of space programs. The splitting of atoms and all the things that this made possible. Is it just my lack of knowledge of physics that makes me suspicious of the objectives of the research project in question?

This article from The Telegraph makes it is extremely difficult, as a reader, to get a clear picture of what is driving the project onwards, what is really of importanc here. One certainly gets a picture of the "large hadron collider", a particle accelerator situated in a tunnel, where some of the experiments take place; the article conjures up a futuristic, sci-fi montage of arcane technology and arcane interests, of which ordinary people understand little, but still it's very admirable, very grand. Why all this admiration? The journalist tries his best to make physics appear like something quite ordinary, like baking cookies. The tone is dramatic, it's all about "unlocking the mysteries of the universe", but at the same time he tries to capture something of the ordinary life at the laboratory. I like the latter aspect, and wish there were more articles focusing on that aspect of science. The drudgery at the lab, which not always will lead to the unlocking of the mysteries of the universe (I haven't read Bruno Latour's writings on the everyday work at the lab (Laboratory life), but I should - his take on science seems fairly interesting, and fairly sound).

I'm at Cern (the European Organisation for Nuclear Research), and I'm in this tunnel to look at a long metal tube, a particle acclerator known as the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the most complex piece of machinery ever built.

Most complex...? Then it must be some serious shit going on there, but what kind? (My associations drift towards rhetorics during the cold war, science and politics) Of course, there are two things here, the rhetorics of journalism - "NEWS! NEWS! NEWS!" and the way "sheer curiosity" or "senseless indulgence" or hidden intentions may worm their way into science (Hannah Arendt talks a bit about the latter dimension, I think).

“For me,” Dr. Gianotti said, “it would be a dream if, finally, in a couple of years in a laboratory we are going to produce the particle responsible for 25 percent of the universe.”

Without either the knowledge of paradigms of physics theories or the practical dimension of application, this quote (from the New York Times article referred to above), for me, means absolutely nothing. "The payoff for this investment, physicists say, could be a new understanding of one of the most fundamental of aspects of reality, namely the nature of mass." Fundamental aspects of reality? I don't think so, at least not if 'reality' is understood separately from the concepts used in the theory of physics. My only point is: there is a certain grandiose tone in many of the acticles discussing scientific experiments that seems to have nothing to do with physics itself, nor its application. Am I wrong?

PS: It was at Cern that the World Wide Web was developed.