Large Hadron Collider - A Question
This is probably a geek-central type question, for which I make precisely NO apologies. A bit of background first:

I'd love to think that the good people at CERN were switched-on (no pun intended) to realise that they'd get huge amounts of publicity from the first beam around LHC during "silly season" but I doubt it.

For one of the first times in a long-time (and I've no shame in admitting this) I'd a small tear of joy yesterday.

I'm nothing to do with CERN professionally, I've only visited it a few times when seeing friends who work(ed) there, but ANYTHING that can excite the non-scientific (in even the most abstract fashion) community MUST be a good thing.

My ideal? Physics and mathematics departments of universities across the land see a massive increase in applications next year.

So - here's the question:

How many Wolf prizes, Dirac medals and Nobel prizes do we think LHC will be used to generate?

My first "fantasy Nobel nominee" would be Dr Higgs and hopefully sooner rather than later (he's 79, and he's already got the Wolf and Dirac).

atlas.ch/photos/atlas_photos/selected-photos/events/lhc_atlas1.jpg
(Eds Meds Mathskillz=1,Socialskillz=0, Thu 11 Sep 2008, 17:41, 1 reply, 16 years ago)

Nobel prizes are a bit hard to judge
and also influenced by politics.

In my opinion, the LHC and assiciated expreiments should get recognition for:

SUSY particles
The Higgs
Large CP-violating interactions

Really, it shold get recognition for inspiring a new generation of scientists who want to make the world a better place rather than profit from it.
(Shippy likes linebreaks and doesn't care what you think, Fri 12 Sep 2008, 0:23, Reply)