You've lost me examinator - what political labelling diatribe? And apparently the Higgs Boson is the particle that can explain why the rest of the atom is as massive as it is. I don't remember covering it in High School physics, although it was discovered in 1960 something, so I'm afraid I can't do much better than that, but Wikipedia has a stab at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_boson.

The Higgs Boson is a hypothetical short lived elementary particle propounded by Peter Higgs in the 1960s to help explain why atoms hang together. No-one has seen one, perhaps because it doesn't exist and there is another explanation for the phenomenon, or perhaps because enough have never been separated long enough from other particles to be viewed.

Had you been in Europe, you would know that there has been intense concern about the LHC causing a massive black hole that would swallow the Earth. The Precautionary Principle has been invoked in attempt to stop the experiment and there have been death threats made to some of the scientists involved.

Perhaps the reason that these efforts have been unsucessful in Europe in comparison to banning GM produce might be because the Europeans are on the right side of the financial gain on this one. Banning the LHC would lead to a loss of funds rather than protection of their own inefficient industries.

Doesn't ANYONE find the LHC intriguing?.

Yeah, ok, we might end up down the bottom of a black hole. The non-hysterical generally agree we won't.

With this thing we're talking about anti-gravity, inertialess matter and force shields (just as fore-thoughts).

One of the most intriguing things I read today was:

"Gravity acts on mass, but so far science is unable to explain the mechanism that generates mass. Experiments at the LHC will provide the answer. LHC experiments will also try to probe the mysterious dark matter of the universe – visible matter seems to account for just 5% of what must exist, while about a quarter is believed to be dark matter. They will investigate the reason for nature's preference for matter over antimatter, and they will probe matter as it existed at the very beginning of time."

That's from a CERN press release.

StG, I'd consider it one of those longshots of research science which has a fair chance of paying off in ways we can't even imagine.

There is a risk that they will learn little (we learnt that this approach does not work) and a much greater chance that we will unlock the keys to understanding what makes matter and energy tick or at least make significant steps towards that understanding.

R0bert

Gentle men I guess my little joke (hence the”:-)“) failed. I do know what a boson is and why it's name. Thanks I’m sure others might have benefited .

GrahamT you said “ ………It is normally invoked by environmentalists arguing against a new project, or the roll-out of some new technology.”

Given that most technological advancement are usually opposed by the conservative end of the spectrum … e.g. the Fear of ‘spinning Jenny’ by the Luddites. I assumed you were therefore making a political point one that made no sense unless it was viewed from the “Left = Environmentalist = anti-technology; right= technology=development “ stance. This is both historically and factually untrue.

I resist categorizing individual’s in political pigeon holes (right or left, environmentalist or developer) as they are based on differentiating people for political (party ) purposes. i.e. A matter of marketing expedience ( a fabrication of convenience rather than reality).

Sorry If I annoyed you . I don’t mean to be a smartie or critical to commenters, my intentions are to discuss flaws in arguments mine or theirs… discussion is the name of the game.

In this environment we are talking to the room as well as the commenter. I do agree with your original point though. I was trying to put the 1% in context for every one

Dear Graham,

I think Tejinder Virdee, the Head of one of the
LHC's experiments summed it up:

"You can make conjectures, but unless you
verify the conjectures, they are metaphysics.
That's why many of us haven't minded spending our
entire working lives building this experiment..."

To the average person however, as examinator
("Laba Diena," examinator), pointed out, its all
merely "scientific conjecture," thus no angst.

I hope that Higgs will live long enough
to open that bottle
of bubbly that he claims he will,
(once the data from the accelerator
is analyzed, and they find something).