Tra qualche mese apre al CERN il nuovo LHC. Per una descrizione accessibile ai non specialisti di cosa ciò significa puoi leggere questo articolo sul New Yorker non so quanto accurato, ma certamente diversi ordini di grandezza meglio di quanto comparirà sulla stampa italiana [New Yorker].
La cosa interessante e un po' triste è il fatto che probabilmente non ci saranno mai più i soldi per fare qualcosa di più grosso, che sarebbe troppo costoso per una cosa che non ammazza nessuno.
In 1969, the Congressional Joint Committee on
Atomic Energy held a hearing at which the physicist Robert Wilson was
called to testify. Wilson, who had served as the chief of experimental
nuclear physics for the Manhattan Project, was at that point the head
of CERNs main rival, Fermilab, and in
charge of $250 million that Congress had recently allocated for the lab
to build a new collider. Senator John Pastore, of Rhode Island, wanted
to know the rationale behind a government expenditure of that size. Did
the collider have anything to do with promoting the security of the
country?
WILSON: No sir, I dont believe so.
PASTORE: Nothing at all?
WILSON: Nothing at all.
PASTORE: It has no value in that respect?
WILSON:
It only has to do with the respect with which we regard one another,
the dignity of men, our love of culture. . . . It has to do with are we
good painters, good sculptors, great poets? I mean all the things we
really venerate in our country and are patriotic about. . . . It has
nothing to do directly with defending our country except to make it
worth defending.
11:20:00 PM 
|
|
