Souls of the new machine
“I’m slightly afraid that fewer and fewer people will want to devote their whole life to one experiment. This may be a problem.”
- Michal Tomášek
One experiment, one life
The scale and complexity of the LHC [Large Hadron Collider] can only be rivaled by some of the greatest scientific efforts ever made, such as the race to the moon or the development of the atomic bomb. More so than those efforts, the LHC is truly international, which is made clear on a visit to its outdoor cafeteria, where, in the shadow of Mont Blanc, a multitude of languages can be heard.
The duration of the experiment — about two decades on, it is only about to begin, and it could likely operate for 20 years — means that some physicists will spend their whole careers devoted solely to the LHC. This concerns Michal Tomášek, a Czech physicist who works on Atlas.
“Back when I was a student,” he says, “there were 20 to 40 experiments that lasted five to six years, and you had an opportunity to go from one to another. … [Now] it’s really one experiment for one life.
“I’m slightly afraid that fewer and fewer people will want to devote their whole life to one experiment. This may be a problem.”
- Paul Voosen @ The Prague Post - September 3rd, 2008.
Large Hadron Collider @ Wikipedia
~ Karl Jones
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