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They have their reasons if you actually read about it. Anyway it takes roughly 20 years to plan, get funding, and build the thing. That's why they're starting now. It's called "what happens if you only have one chance to build something that as yet the technology hasn't been developed yet". For instance the LHC was designed before they knew if they could find magnets to be able to "bend the beams". Also check out http://www.linearcollider.org/.

Can people here drop the inane "we're all gonna die" meme in regards to the LHC? It's not funny and it perpetuates some silly myth that the mainstream media can pick up on. I would like to think that /. is a little better than fark (is fark still around?); Isn't the readership here a bit more educated?

Every LHC story has more "jokes" than any talk of potential new physics or any discussion on whether this beast will even work. It's a damn sight more complicated than any facility previously built, and even though I desperately want it to work, I have my doubts we'll see first collisions within the first year of operations.

If the LHC is a failure, it essentially signals the end (in our lifetime, at least) of any more high-energy physics programs being pursued, especially in the US. The ILC has already been tabled pending first results from LHC.

They're working on getting the International Linear Collider to be based between them and Argonne National Laboratory, a few miles away. Of course, that will probably just be a really deep, really long tunnel, unless you're into the engineering of these things.