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Commentary: We expect astonishing leaps forward
Professor Geoff Hall, Imperial College09.09.08
It is hard to overestimate the importance of the Large Hadron Collider.
The project could answer fundamental questions about mass in the universe, and over time give us some astonishing leaps forward.
Already areas like medical imaging have benefitted from advances in particle physics, and the LHC could stimulate similar breakthroughs over time.
As project manager of one of the tracking detectors in the CMS experiment at LHC, I have spent a significant amount of time at the project, and it has been surprising to see some reactions, which seem to dramatically exaggerate risks and refer to some far fetched scenarios.
What has been astonishing is the public's level of interest in the project, and in particle physics in general. It has been great to see the general public become excited by what we are doing.
Of course, this means people have extremely high expectations of the LHC, and I believe it will live up to that.
What we hope to find is an explanation for mass in the universe. We have a theory, which predicts the Higgs boson particle, but it has not been proved. It may be that the LHC actually shows us this theory is wrong.
One of the most exciting things about the project is that we really do not know quite what will happen - it is entirely possible that it will be something unexpected, and that could happen very early on.
However, it will probably be some time before we begin seeing real results.
Although the LHC will be officially switched on tomorrow, the first collisions will not happen for another few weeks, and we expect it to be around six weeks before it is fully operational.
After that, it is likely to be around a year before we build up enough data to really start making new discoveries.
