The magnificent machine

Science|Business Senior Editor Nuala Moran.

The true test of whether this massive exercise in international collaboration and funding will deliver the insights its protagonists have promised comes several weeks later. Some time in the autumn it is planned to set two streams of protons on a collision course in a bid to create a miniature version of Big Bang. In the aftermath it is hoped that previously unknown and unseen physical forces will be manifest.

In a world where science funding is increasingly viewed as a means to an economic end, it is refreshing that the LHC has been sold primarily on the contribution it will make to human knowledge. Indeed, it could be argued that the study of the fundamental particles and forces it is hoped will be revealed is about as basic, or blue sky, as any field of science could be.

True, CERN has made much of how processing the mammoth amounts of data with which the LHS will furnish us, requires a magisterial feat of information processing. Assembling sufficient power to digest only a few percent of the data generated has called for huge advances in grid computing that have relevance in many other scientific disciplines – and in business and government.

Then, of course there is the argument that it is impossible to know what future applications will spring from understanding of the most basic elements of the Universe.

But perhaps the greatest value that could come from the LHC is the lessons it teaches about collaboration and the pre-competitive pooling of resources, budgets, objectives and personnel that have enabled the vision of this magnificent machine to be delivered.

For not only is the LHC the most expensive experiment in the history of science, it is also the most international, with financial support from countries across Europe and around the globe.

At its heart is the understanding that cooperation is the only way to realise projects of this scale – note that after its own Superconducting Super Collider dissolved in 1993 under the financial weight of going it alone, the US government went on the contribute over $500 million to the LHC.

Similar pragmatism should now be applied to another project that is central not only to advances in particle physics, but to Europe’s scientific endeavour as a whole – the creation of the European Research Area. Commissioner Janez Potočnik will later this month be stepping up his efforts to increase cooperation, prevent the duplication of effort and waste of resources that springs from national silos of scientific research.

With economic slowdown – and recession now nudging in – the Lisbon objectives on R&D spending look even less likely to be achieved. Science budgets that have been rising over the past decade are now likely to hit a wall.

The creation of the European Research Area requires Europe to mimic the feat of those who made the LHC a reality. Through vision, cooperation and combining disparate resources it is possible build a more powerful European research engine.