Having worked at the UK and American particle accelerators, I can tell you you are not missing much from seeing them up-close. Still, maybe CERN's different, heard they have a gift shop and everything (!)

a gift shop??? What can you buy? Dark matter?

The Swiss sure love their tourism

They sure do!
Never been there, but did come across this the other day (not my photo)

From today's Independent newspaper
"London Underground is in talks with the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (Cern) about the possibility of using the 23km tunnel of the Circle Line to house a new type of particle accelerator similar to the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva.
...Although there are still considerable technical problems to overcome, such as a geo-magnetic "kink" in the circuitry at Edgware Road station, Cern is quietly confident that it will be able to convince London Underground of the merits of the scheme, which should result in the first air-conditioned underground line as a spin-off of installing supercooled magnets below ground.........."

Amusing black hole related GIF thing here:

Hmmm...


Yeah. That's what you say.


See. There's proper facts there. I know who I believe.

Some nutter claiming to be from the future was arrested at the LHC..
http://crave.cnet.co.uk/gadgets/0,39...9305387,00.htm

April Fools or what...? tsch..

it's neither the doctor nor capt. Jack, so it's joke lol

Major success today

The series of "mini-Big Bangs" were so powerful, scientists were hopeful they would cause sub-atomic particles to "melt" into their most basic ingredients and bring researchers closer to finding the fundamental building blocks of the Universe.

Large Hadron Collider (LHC) generates a 'mini-Big Bang'


The Large Hadron Collider has successfully created a "mini-Big Bang" by smashing together lead ions instead of protons.
The scientists working at the enormous machine on Franco-Swiss border achieved the unique conditions on 7 November.
The experiment created temperatures a million times hotter than the centre of the Sun.
The LHC is housed in a 27km-long circular tunnel under the French-Swiss border near Geneva.
Up until now, the world's highest-energy particle accelerator - which is run by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (Cern) - has been colliding protons, in a bid to uncover mysteries of the Universe's formation.


Read more: [Courtesy of BBC News]

Is it a waste of money? Or do you think they're on to something?
/discuss

From a life scientist's point of view, they could definitely be spending the money on something a little more applied. Physicists get the best salaries and funding to do very little imo. We've had little scientific breakthrough in about 40 years, whereas our understanding organisms and natural systems in the world has increased exponentially.

Still, the LHC experiments have large impacts on the way we use engineering etc so it is very important. Even if its one extremely large project (like the LHC) in the entire world, this work needs to be done. Scientists from all over the world come to use it (and its subsidiary machines) so when you see it like tha, its not so much of a waste of resources.

Totally disagree with this. Admittedly there has been exponential increase in the understanding of the natural world recently, but that has been enabled by computers, lasers, electron microscopes, the internet, etc etc all of which owe their existence to a bunch of physicists fiddling around with obscure concepts (at that time) and eventually giving rise to quantum mechanics, which has revolutionized the understanding of how the universe operates in the last hundred years.

Maybe the LHC will open the door to the next hundred year revolution.

But the physicists couldn't do it without the mathematicians. More funding for maths!

Maybe you should read the second paragraph. Yes it is important, but not to money that they receive. And yes my view is completely biased, given that we struggle to get any funding for something that has a massive impact on agriculture and medicine

"Mr Cole was taken to a secure mental health facility in Geneva but later disappeared from his cell. Police are baffled, but not that bothered."

People don't just disappear inside their cells !!!

A lot of physicists would also agree with you. The amount of money put into grand scale experiments takes away from more interesting funding for research on non-reductionist physics, which is equally fundamental. Yes, find a unified theory of the universe is compelling, but so is complexity sciences, for example, which challenge the notion that reductionist views have a sole possession on what is 'fundamental'. It's an ongoing discussion in the physics community. However, the old-skool researchers and particle physicists have a big sway on funding inlfuence esp when it comes to governments.

However to suggest physics funding dwarfs biology funding is ridiculous. The amount of funding that goes into medicine and biology (there is much overlap so I include them together) is much greater. Cancer research alone dominates medical funding to an extreme level in the same way particle physics dominates physics.

As for the valid statement that physics has given us everything we have today, this is true; however there is a difference between that and grand scale experiments.

On a practical side, we shouljdn't put all our money into one basket. Money should be spread around so innovation can happen.

Yeah sorry I didn't really mean medicine more biology in general.

Yeah I used to work at a cancer institute and they get stupid money. But from what my physicist friend gets (who does not do particle physics btw) they get a lot more money that we ever used to in cancer biol. And then put a factor of 10 when comparing to what we get in plant biol. But Im sure some cancer institutes in the states will contrast that

Particle physics is about to get cheaper, Ikea started selling colliders.

I can't believe people are still talking about this black hole nonsense. I was on a tour there this past weekend, and its true that they don't let you go down, but it was still fascinating going to the various terminals and you can still see that giant magnets that they use in their 'dry dock' area. The latest experiments they are doing with lead nuclei is supposed to 'mimic a big bang' when really it does nothing of the sort, it produces an infinitesimally small area that has a density similar to what must have been the density of the entire universe a fraction of a second after the big bang. They are not creating a new universe. They are not creating a neutron star, and nothing they have ever done will create a black hole. Plus why do people think that a black hole would swallow up Geneva? They are special because they are so dense, yet a 'black hole' smaller than the size of 2 atoms would have no more gravity than... the two atoms that made it.

Unless of course our scientists know jack shitt about particle physics.
Thankfully science is dynamic and not religious fossil dogma but, as it is progressing our knowledge will evolve and change.
That is good.
But it could be that future scientists will look at us in a "aww bless their little cotton socks" way.
That is bad.

Maybe a set in concrete dogma would be better.
Now THAT is a dilemma.