Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Big Science and the Large Hadron Collider

  • Perspectives on Current Issues
  • Published:
Physics in Perspective Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), the particle accelerator operating at CERN, is probably the most complex and ambitious scientific project ever accomplished by humanity. The sheer size of the enterprise, in terms of financial and human resources, naturally raises the question whether society should support such costly basic-research programs. I address this question by first reviewing the process that led to the emergence of Big Science and the role of large projects in the development of science and technology. I then compare the methodologies of Small and Big Science, emphasizing their mutual linkage. Finally, after examining the cost of Big Science projects, I highlight several general aspects of their beneficial implications for society.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. Alvin M. Weinberg should not be confused with the theoretical physicist Steven Weinberg, who told the following story: “In 1966 when I was first visiting Harvard I found myself at lunch at the faculty club with the late John Van Vleck…. Van Vleck asked me if I was related to ‘the’ Weinberg. I was a bit put out, but I understood what he meant; I was at that time a rather junior theorist, and Alvin was director of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. I dipped into my reserves of effrontery, and replied that I was ‘the’ Weinberg. I do not think that Van Vleck was impressed.” See Steven Weinberg, Dreams of a Final Theory (New York: Pantheon Books, 1992), p. 60 footnote.

References

  1. For a general account, see Gian Francesco Giudice, A Zeptospace Odyssey: A Journey into the Physics of the LHC (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2010).

  2. For essays on the birth of Big Science, see Derek J. de Solla Price, Little Science, Big Science … And Beyond (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986); Peter Galison and Bruce Hevly, ed., Big Science: The Growth of Large-Scale Research (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992).

  3. Graham Farmelo, The Strangest Man: The Hidden Life of Paul Dirac, Mystic of the Atom (New York: Basic Books and London: Faber and Faber, 2009), p. 353.

  4. For the relationship between the Manhattan Project and Big Science, see Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986), especially pp. 279-317; Jeff Hughes, The Manhattan Project: Big Science and the Atomic Bomb (New York: Columbia University Press and Cambridge: Icon Books, 2002), especially pp. 45-54.

  5. Silvan Schweber, “A Historical Perspective on the Rise of the Standard Model,” in Lillian Hoddeson, Laurie Brown, Michael Riordan, and Max Dresden, ed., The Rise of the Standard Model: Particle Physics in the 1960s and 1970s (Cambridge, New York, and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 645-684, on p. 657.

  6. Vannevar Bush, Science: The Endless Frontier. A Report to the President (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1945; reprinted Washington, D.C.: National Science Foundation, 1990), p. 16.

  7. Ibid., p. 14.

  8. John R. Steelman, Science and Public Policy. Vol. 1. A Program for the Nation (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, August 27, 1947; reprinted New York: Arno Press, 1980), p. 4. For an analysis, see William A. Blanpied, “Science and Public Policy: The Steelman Report and the Politics of Post-World War II Science Policy,” in AAAS Science and Technology Policy Yearbook (Washington, D.C.: AAAS, 1999), website <www.aaas.org/spp/yearbook/chap29.htm>.

  9. [Harry S. Truman], “Address of the President of the United States [at the Centennial Celebration of the AAAS, September 13, 1948],” Science 108 (1948), 313-314, on 313.

  10. Alvin M. Weinberg, “Impact of Large-Scale Science on the United States,” Science 134 (1961), 161-164; see also Alvin M. Weinberg, Reflections on Big Science (Cambridge, Mass. and London: The MIT Press, 1967).

  11. Weinberg, “Impact” (ref. 10), p. 161.

  12. Ibid., p. 162.

  13. Wolfgang K.H. Panofsky, “The SSC’s End: What Happened? And What Now?” Physics Today 47 (March 1994), 13, 15, 88, on 15.

  14. For an analysis of the events that led to the cancellation of the SSC, see Michael Riordan, “The Demise of the Superconducting Super Collider,” Physics in Perspective 2 (2000), 411-425; Michael Riordan, Lillian Hoddeson, Adrienne Kolb, and Glenn Sandiford, Tunnel Visions: The Rise and Fall of the Superconducting Super Collider, in preparation.

  15. Victor F. Weisskopf, “In Defense of High Energy Physics, in Luke C.L. Yuan, ed., Nature of Matter: Purposes of High Energy Physics ([Upton, N.Y.]: Brookhaven National Laboratory, 1965), pp. 24-27.

  16. P.W. Anderson, “More is Different,” Science 177 (1972), 393-396.

    Article  ADS  Google Scholar 

  17. Simon D.M. White, “Fundamentalist physics: why Dark Energy is bad for astronomy,” Reports on Progress in Physics 70 (2007), 883-897; Rocky Kolb, “A thousand invisible cords binding astronomy and high-energy physics,” ibid., 1583-1595.

  18. Freeman Dyson, “Six Cautionary Tales for Scientists [1988],” in From Eros to Gaia (New York: Pantheon Books, 1992), pp. 11-28, on p. 28.

  19. Sherry Boehlert, Congressional Record, Vol. 138, No. 87 (June 17, 1992), p. H4829.

  20. Freeman Dyson, “Sixty Years of Space Science, 1958-2018 [1988],” in From Eros to Gaia (ref. 18), pp. 47-66, on p. 56.

  21. Robert Sahr, “The 2011 conversion factors revision,” website <http://oregonstate.edu/cla/polisci/sahr/sahr>; Bureau of Economic Affairs, National Income and Product Accounts, Table 1.1.4, website <http://www.bea.gov/national/nipaweb/index.asp>.

  22. Stephen I. Schwartz, ed., Atomic Audit: The Costs and Consequences of U.S. Nuclear Weapons since 1940 (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 1998), pp. 55 n. 39, 58-64.

  23. Deborah D. Stine, The Manhattan Project, the Apollo Program, and Federal Energy Technology R&D Programs: A Comparative Analysis (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Research Service 7-5700, 2009), p. 2.

  24. Eric J. Chaisson, The Hubble Wars: Astrophysics Meets Astropolitics in the Two-Billion-Dollar Struggle over the Hubble Space Telescope (New York: HarperCollins, 1994), pp. 114-115.

  25. Riordan, “Demise” (ref. 14), pp. 415-417.

  26. United States General Accounting Office (GAO), Testimony Before the Committee on Science, House of Representatives, Space Station: U.S. Life-Cycle Funding Requirements, GAO/T-NSIAD-98-212 (Washington, D.C.: 1998).

  27. Human Genome Project Information, U.S. Department of Energy, website <http://genomics.energy.gov>.

  28. International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) website <http://www.iter.org/factsfigures>.

  29. Anders Unnervik, “Lessons in Big Science Management and Contracting,” in Lyndon Evans, ed., The Large Hadron Collider: a Marvel of Technology (Lausanne: EPFL Press, 2009), pp. 38-55, on p. 40.

  30. Alvin M. Weinberg, “Criteria for Scientific Choice,” Minerva 1, No. 2 (1963), 159-171, on 168.

Download references

Acknowledgments

My article is based on a colloquium I gave at the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, Italy, on May 5, 2010. Its content was largely stimulated by a question that Giovanni Bignami asked during a public presentation on the physics of the LHC that I gave at the Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti in Venice. I also thank Guido Altarelli, Riccardo Barbieri, Michelangelo Mangano, Marco Martorelli, Markus Nordberg, Emma Sanders, Anders Unnervik, Gabriele Veneziano, and James Wells for useful comments and discussions. Finally, I express my deep gratitude to Roger H. Stuewer for his thoughtful and careful editorial work that has greatly improved my article.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Theoretical Physics Division, CERN, 1211, Geneva 23, Switzerland

    Gian Francesco Giudice

Authors
  1. Gian Francesco Giudice
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Gian Francesco Giudice.

Additional information

Gian Francesco Giudice received his Ph.D. degree at the International School for Advanced Studies of Trieste in 1988; he is a member of the Theoretical Physics Division at CERN.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Giudice, G.F. Big Science and the Large Hadron Collider. Phys. Perspect. 14, 95–112 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00016-011-0078-1

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00016-011-0078-1

Keywords

Search

Navigation