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Saturday 20 March 2010
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In The News
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Large Hadron Collider Squishes 3 Mosquitos
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The Large Hadron Collider is now the world's most powerful particle accelerator, several times over. The Swiss are a happy bunch of folks in white suits (scientists not insane asylum inmates) to be sure.
The news wires are chattering about this enormous number - getting beams to 3.5 TeV - as a testimony to their outstanding skill and mankinds latest triumph.
Piffle.
That's right, piffle.
We often talk big numbers (like when we talk about the US deficit) in billions and trillions and think we're so clever. But why am I not impressed with this gigantic 3.5 TeV number?
Well, first, do you know what even 1 eV is? What is an electron volt? It's the amount of energy it takes to accelerate one lonely electron through an electric potential of one volt. In other words, 1 eV = 1.602 x 10^-19 J. (J = Joules)
So, ok, still getting excited about that 3.5 TeV? Well what's the T tell us? That is a million million times... so 3.5 TeV = 3,500,000,000,000 eV.
To put this in perspective, that's about the same amount of kinetic energy of three flying mosquitos.
Can you believe that the cost of the Large Hadron Collider and its 10,000 scientists and engineers, plus the energy (and polution) and all that construction have amounted to $4.6 billion?
All to throw light beams together equivalent to squishing 3 mosquitos.
I'm not impressed. In fact, this is a pitiful waste of time and money.
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