With great power comes great expectations. The Large Hadron Collider at Cern near Geneva has now achieved the status of the most powerful particle accelerator in history, whipping up beams of protons to more than 1-trillion electronvolts. This is the point where a better writer would make an analogy about how much this is, using the standard-issue units of science writing: basketballs, double-decker buses, whales, Wales. Take it from me: for a particle accelerator, that’s a lot.
The LHC is the biggest and most expensive experiment in history, as befits asking the most fundamental questions in the universe: why does stuff have mass? It’s a hard question, and thrilling in its pure curiosity.
On Tuesday night I witnessed a lively debate chaired by Cern physicist and electro-rock minor deity Brian Cox with the British science minister Lord Drayson. It was on the subject of what has become known as ”blue skies” research, as opposed to ”goal-oriented” research. In other proper words, ”research” as opposed to ”making stuff”.
When completing proposals for publicly funded grants, scientists are now required to indicate (in some cases retrospectively, in others with crystal ball skills on show) the applications or spin-off technologies of their work. This is problematic, and caused much vitriol. Vexed physicists used this forum to vehemently attack Drayson, who should be praised for both facing his critics and for not trotting out a politician’s answers.
I sympathise with the scientists. Retrospective justification is anti-innovative as it restricts young researchers with sparse or non-existent track records, and targeted research restricts the creativity that defines science. Nevertheless, I think the polarity of the question is overstated. Certainly, discovering the gene that makes a snail’s shell twist left rather than right has less obvious applications than the implications for spintronics of more energy-efficient microchips. But both of these are on a spectrum, and most research is somewhere in the middle. The government should realise this, and stop trying to force scientists into becoming inventors.
Critics might wail about how much the LHC costs, but esoteric it ain’t. This experiment to find the Higgs Boson is on a continuum of knowledge and discovery on which all human civilisation is based. There will be some direct technological spin-offs for sure. Other high-energy physics projects formed the basis for the development of positron emission tomography, which revolutionised medical scanning. Should the scientists at Cern ever need to fill in this new retrospective revenue-generating spin-off technologies section on a grant application, they would do well to write: ”We invented the internet. Now give us some money.”
Economies are underpinned by scientific research and scientists. Now is exactly the right time to invest more in curiosity-driven research, and although this might sound counterintuitive during the global recession, certainly there is historical precedence. Franklin Roosevelt instigated investment in basic research funding during the Great Depression, with a three-fold increase in the public science budget in the six years up to 1940, which resulted in unparalleled technological development as part of the New Deal. Japan emerged in the 1980s as a technological superpower, but the Japanese economy collapsed in 1990. Basic research was seen as a way out of the slump, and science was placed front and centre in Japanese policymaking. It is now in its third five-year plan, increasing funding to basic research each time.
And just in case anyone is tempted, don’t trot out the old cliche about the only practical spin-offs from the very expensive Apollo missions being Velcro and Teflon. Forget the immeasurable inspirational effect that landing on the moon had, creating a generation of scientists and engineers: proper economic analysis indicated that for every dollar spent on Apollo, $14 were returned to the economy. The business gurus in Dragon’s Den would be drooling at that kind of deal.
Next year, the scientists at the LHC will ignore the advice of the Ghostbusters, and will deliberately cross the streams of protons whizzing round the 27km tunnel at 99,99% the speed of light. When they start getting some results, they may yield an answer to one of the most fundamental questions in the universe. That should be enough to justify the phenomenal spend. Where’s your sense of wonder? But if not, the data is unequivocal. The LHC emphatically exemplifies the solid notion that basic research results in economic growth. – guardian.co.uk