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During 2008, Europe's largest particle physics laboratory, CERN, will start up the most powerful particle accelerator ever made. In a complex of tunnels and caverns 100 metres below the Swiss/French countryside, the final preparations are being made to the Large Hadron Collidier (LHC). The world’s largest system of superconducting magnets will steer two beams of particles, each accelerated to within a tiny fraction of the speed of light, in opposite directions around the LHC's 27 kilometre circular tunnel. The energy stored in these magnets is about the same as that of an A380 super jumbo traveling at 700 km/hour. In order to increase the chances of seeing very rare interactions, the intensity of the beams is such that collisions will occur about 40 million times a second.

The interactions will be observed by some truly colossal detectors - the largest, some four storeys high and 46 metres long, weighs about 7,000 tonnes. The data that will be seen by these detectors each year, equivalent to that on the entire internet 22 times over, should contain some trace of new phenomena - the elusive 'Higgs boson' that is supposed to be the origin of mass, the so called 'supersymmetric' partners of the presently known particles or even some tantalizing hint of extra-dimensions.

While this sounds like science fiction, it is all based on science. The so called 'Standard Model' of particle physics has been immensely successful in explaining all that is currently known about the interactions of sub-atomic particles. However, a raft of different observations all suggest something new will be found at the LHC. Our understanding of the most fundamental constituents of matter, and with it our understanding of the origin of the universe and our place in it, is about to be transformed.

Sound sexy to you? Perhaps not. Then how about this: The LHC cost about 2 billion euros.

Is that really money well spent? Like most things in life, this depends on how you count.

Basic research often leads to discoveries of enormous economic and political importance - so much so that, in the economy as a whole, this research more than pays for itself. From CERN one can point to crystals now used for medical imaging; the technology that generates and controls beams of particles for cancer therapies; and even the World Wide Web, invented at CERN in 1989 as a way of sharing information between scientists working all over the world. If CERN took 1/1000th of the revenue generated from the latter alone, governments would be asking particle physicists for money, not the other way around.

More generally, there are few examples of modern innovation which are not indebted to basic scientific thought. From electricity to electromagnetic means of communication, basic circuits to computers - research with the sole aim of extending our knowledge of the laws of nature has resulted in enormous and lucrative benefits for society. These benefits were not envisaged at the outset, often could not be patented and so were not funded by industry. It is therefore vital that pure research is funded by governments. In the context of the economic output of the above technologies, 2 billion euros is really not very much money. In fact, over the longest timescales, basic research has given an astonishingly good return on capital employed.

If society does not fund basic research for the pursuit of knowledge and the enrichment and wonder it provides, then, at the very least, is should do so for the profit. Opinion may be split on whether this is 'sexy' or not but in a world where Britain increasingly struggles to manufacture anything competitively, the innovation inherent to particle physics and to other basic research may well be essential.

Click here to read Anjana Ahuja's response: Why particle physics is sexy

A Battle of Ideas debate on "Particle physics is sexy!" will take place on Sunday, October 28 at 17.45

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Mitesh Patel is a CERN staff physicist working for the 'LHCb' experiment.