From Tom Henderson Smith:

Re: “Historic” collider operation begins (Sept. 10): Will someone please explain to me what is to be celebrated about what is surely the most expensive (and thus the most costly in energy and resources) experiment starting up at a time when economic gloom shrouds the world and environmental degradation and impending disaster are so often reported? What possible benefit to humanity or to the planet as a whole will acrue from the particle accelerator? I really want to know.

I heard that in India a teenage girl committed suicide today because she had been given to understand that a “black hole” would occur as a result of the experiment and that this would mean the end of everything. That may have been naive but unless representatives of the scientific community give us some rationale for this vast squandering of energy, resources and expertees that is more than purely the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, then widespread despair about our future is certainly going to be aggravated by todays “historic” scientific events.