[ExI] Cool Physics

[John K Clark]

I was thinking about what the Large Hadron Collider could potentially
find, and what could ignite the public imagination. That last point is
important if you expect taxpayers to pay for future machines, and I
don't think the average person would say these sort of devices have
discovered anything very cool since 1957 when they found out the
difference between left and right. I don't think even physicists
would say finding the Higgs particle would be very cool, not finding
it would be cooler than that. Finding out what Dark Matter is, now 
that would be cool by any standard, and Dark Energy would be 
even better. Of course it may discover something wonderful that 
nobody today can even imagine, but I can imagine making a mini
Black Hole and that would be very cool indeed because it would 
demonstrate the existence of other dimensions; but I think it 
would also mean there would be no point in making a more 
powerful machine, you'd just get more Black Holes.

Finding extra dimensions would give a big boost to the many 
would theory, all those other universes have to go somewhere, 
and I can't think of a better place to put them.

It's interesting that if the SSC hadn't been canceled when it
was about 20% complete it would have been about two and a
half times as powerful as the Large Hadron Collider and would 
have gone online 7 or 8 years ago. However it was decided in 
the early 90's that we could only afford one really big science 
project; we could have the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC)
or the Fucking International Fucking Space Fucking Station (FIFSFS)
but not both. 

It was decided to go with FIFSFS.

 John K Clark