Side benefits of the LHC

Abstract

Paul Michael Grant's article on a proposed hydrogen-cooled electric “Supergrid” (“Extreme energy makeover” October pp37–39) provides an answer to an oft-posed question about CERN's Large Hadron Collider (LHC). As a particle physicist, I am frequently asked by well-informed non-physicists why it is worth pouring more money into repairing the LHC if it costs so much and CERN cannot yet make it work. My first answer is that the fundamental physics that the LHC will do is worthwhile in its own right. But I also add that the LHC and Fermilab's Tevatron are great demonstrators for the superconducting transmission of large electric currents over tens of kilometres.