The LHC And the United States Committment to Science Education

The Large Hadron Collider is the biggest and most powerful super collider in the world and humanity hopes to discover new fundamental truths about reality through its use. It was built in France and Belgum but there was once the possibility that an even bigger, more powerful collider would have been built in the U.S. except congress lost the nerve to fund the project after already dumping millions into partial construction. This was not just a loss to the local community and the University system of Texas but to U.S. education. Now the best and brightest minds in physics will be compelled to go to France instead of being drawn to America. New discoverys will be made that will lead to marketable technologies that could have been discovered within U.S. jurisdiction. The loss of talent and potential discovery and the immesurable loss to the U.S. economy is particularly irksome in the current economic crisis. This shortsitedness reflects a general U.S. failure to focus on quality of science education in order to maintain our technological and intellictual superiority in the world.