The Juxtaposition Syndrome

There are two hypothesis floating around which are equally frightening. The first is that governments are universally incompetant; like King Midas on “opposite day”. Everything they touch turns to poop. The other is that governments know EXACTLY what's going on but the information is so monumentally cataclysmic (not to mention bad), they don't dare tell us what it is, but feel a need to control our behaviour in some way.

There are numerous examples of this phenomenon where, whatever the issue, people gravitate to either “The government is useless.” or “The government is controlling us” camps. For example, I've actually heard people claim the H1N1 vaccine is a scam to inject microchips into our bodies so the government can keep tabs on you. I'm leery of this theory. They don't NEED to inject us with Global Positioning nanoprobes. We all have GPS-equipped cell phones already, which we willingly pay for ourselves, to the delight of Big Brother (no, not the stupid reality TV show). And if FaceBook isn't voluntary Big Brotherism, I don't know what is!There's loads of other similarily polarizing issues from the economy to the environment, but there's one issue that makes those two issues look as serious as “America's Funniest Home Videos.” I am talking about the Large Hadron Collider.

The LHC as it's known, (obviously named by scientists, not marketing people or it would have a cooler acronym) lies deep underground near Geneva, Switzerland. Being the mother of all science projects, the collider is old news to technogeeks. For those of us with lives, however, it's stayed below our radar. Here's what I discovered in my research.

The collider is a gigantic gizmo, looking suspiciously like an enormous roulette wheel, 30 kilometers in circumference or, for metrically challenged readers, 18 miles around. The nine billion dollar doohickey is the shiniest toy the scientific community has ever seen. It is designed to smash sub-atomic particles (itty-bitty bits of .... er... stuff) together in such a way, it will tell the egghead brigade gobs of information about the “Big Bang” which started that whole “universe” fad. Religious types refer to this point as “Creation”.

Opponents of the monstrosity claim the machine may potentially wipe out Switzerland, the planet, the solar system or the entire universe, depending on which pessimistic professor you prefer.

My career in the field consists of three weeks of Physics 10 before accepting it was entirely over my head, so I realize I'm no expert, but I do understand some things. I understand nine billion dollars, for example.
Nine billion dollars is one of those Real Big Numbers that roll rather trippingly off the tongue when discussing governmental expenditures. However, like the other Real Big Numbers that get tossed around, it is hard to grasp. To put it in perspective, to make that much money at my current rate of pay, (with no beer allowance) I'd have to work over 200,000 years. This is, coincidentally, the same amount of time it will take before the pension I am paying into, may actually be worth enough to live on.

Notwithstanding, over 100 governments worldwide, including Canada, has kicked in on on this fantastic device whose sole purpose is apparently to learn whether it will kill us or not.

The professed use of it is to find out what atoms were hanging around at the beginning of time. It won't help feed the poor or fix the economy or get the Edmonton Eskimos into the playoffs (apparently, the collider can't protect against a half-decent pass rush, either) or any other worthy goal. In fact, the only value it has, seemingly, is to satisfy some theoretical phsysicist’s curiosity.

Since governments generally are loathe to invest in private ventures with no hope of profit, (unless you're an automobile manufacturer) the whole “official line” on the “why” of this project seems so implausible. Governments must be insane to contribute to this wonderfully elaborate white elephant.

Or are they? Maybe they're only feeding us this Big Bang BS to polarize the population into Bangers versus Creation-philes to keep us from finding out what they are REALLY  up to.

And what might that be? What could possibly be worth $9 billion to a collection of governments that  is more important than doing things that will get them re-elected? What is so important that America tried to build one ahead of the Swiss consortium's version only to abandon it after sinking billions into it? Americans are many things but they are not quitters. What made them start the project? What made them stop? Of course the American model was known as a SUPER particle collider. Much better than an ordinary, consumer-grade particle collider, although the Swiss model also had a corkscrew, spoon and little pair of scissors.

For myself, I am undecided. It is easy to believe governments are full of dumb ideas and flawed plans. Having them as evil, shadowy know-it-alls is a bit of a stretch. Either way though, as far as the LHC goes, I'm sure it has something to do with the end of the Mayan calendar in 2012. As sure as I am  about the government's motives.