Английский язык: Аннотирование и реферирование текста

254 • Top energy: 14 trillion electron volts; • Peak power consumption: 120 megawatts; • Number of collaborators: More than 10,000. Why the wide range of estimates? Europe’s CERN research organization says it’s investing $6 bil- lion. Adding the value of other contributions since 1994, including the detectors, boosts the total to as much as $10 billion. To some extent, it depends on who’s doing the counting and what the currency rates are. Responding to the critics, CERN has issued a series of reports explaining why the LHC will pose no threat. Ellis was one of the re- port's authors. "If the LHC were to make microscopic black holes, it would be tremendously exciting – and no danger," he said. The 62-year-old London native has spent more than half his life at CERN, delving into topics ranging from dark matter to the theory of everything. Once the LHC is up and running, he expects to find out whether the theories he and other physicists have developed over all those years lead to solid evidence – or lead to a scientific dead end. "Theoretically, that would be the most interesting possibility, be- cause it would really mean that we had to tear up our notebooks of the last 45 years and start more or less from scratch," Ellis said. The God Particle The theory described in all those notebooks is known as the Standard Model, which ranks among the scientific world's most suc- cessful theories. The Standard Model lays out a menagerie of sub- atomic particles and their interactions – and provides the basis for in- ventions ranging from television sets to microwave ovens to nuclear bombs. Only one elementary particle predicted by the Standard Model has not yet been detected: the Higgs boson, which is thought to interact with other particles to give them mass. Without the Higgs, the big bang might have been an insubstantial flash in the pan – all energy, and no mass. Or so the theory goes.