Image: David Bebber.

The author Bill Bryson has an article in the Times’ science supplement to explain where the CERN team currently are with the Large Hadron Collider.

Three other mighty detectors are arrayed around the LHC perimeter, all of them complex and wonderful and calibrated to find various puffs of quantum liveliness. It is hard not to be struck by the inverse relationship between the tininess of what the physicists are looking for and the costly massiveness of the equipment needed to find it. I ask Virdee if it can possibly be worth investing so much money and brainpower in a search for obscure and evanescent particles.

He smiles, but instantly says: “Yes. Undoubtedly. You know, a little over a century ago when the electron was discovered nobody saw it as having any practical applications. It was just an interesting addition to the sum of human knowledge. But that bit of knowledge was what made the electronics industry possible. Imagine a world without electronics. It is impossible to know where discoveries we make here might lead, but you can be certain that one day people will be glad we made the effort.”

Read more at The Times.