BIG SCIENCE!

In the little French town of Cressy, scientists are getting ready for some big science.  They're setting up the Compact Muon Solenoid particle detector at the CERN particle accelerator.  Once it's all put together and tested, the accelerator will be able to generate energies similar to those which prevailed in the young universe shortly after the Big Bang. 

The project is being done in France because the Europeans have recently upgraded the CERN accelerator considerably.  Back in the 1980s, the United States was planning to build a comparable machine, the Superconducting Supercollider.  Work got as far as digging a big hole at Waxahatchie, Texas, when Congress pulled the plug on funding.

Good luck to the CERN researchers at uncovering new secrets of the dawn of creation.  Doubtless American researchers will be following their results avidly in the science journals. Sure, the SSC was a tremendously expensive project:  at least 12 billion dollars, and probably more.  But let's put that in perspective -- the U.S. government spends upwards of 2.3 trillion dollars every year.  The entire cost of the Supercollider would be about half of a percent of the annual budget. 

It's a pity that science isn't considered as important as, say, highways.  Highways are good and useful things, but so is knowing how the Universe works.