page_title: Big Science
section_title: Definitions
hierarchical_section_title: Big Science / Definitions
caption_attribution_description: English: Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, Main Ring and Main Injector as seen from the air. The circular ponds dissipate waste heat from the equipment. Tiếng Việt: Máy gia tốc tại phòng thí nghiệm Fermi, Mỹ Deutsch: Luftbild des Fermilab aus der Luft. Die kreisförmigen Becken werden zur Kühlung der Anlagen verwendet. Nederlands: Het Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, de naam ter ere van Fermi Português: Fermilab com os anéis do Tevatron. Română: Accelerator de particule circular Suomi: Fermilab ilmasta kuvattuna Slovenčina: Letecký záber Fermilabu (väčší prstenec urýchľovača má priemer 6,3 kilometra). Русский: Ускоритель в Лаборатории Ферми. Вид на ускорительный центр Fermilab, США. Теватрон (кольцо на заднем плане) и кольцо-инжектор. Над подземными тоннелями видны кольцевые пруды, рассеивающие избыточное тепло от оборудования. 한국어: 페르미 연구소의 테바트론 가속기
context_page_description: Big science is a term used by scientists and historians of science to describe a series of changes in science which occurred in industrial nations during and after World War II, as scientific progress increasingly came to rely on large-scale projects usually funded by national governments or groups of governments. Individual or small group efforts, or Small Science, are still relevant today as theoretical results by individual authors may have a significant impact, but very often the empirical verification requires experiments using constructions, such as the Large Hadron Collider, costing between $5 and $10 billion.
context_section_description: "Big science" usually implies one or more of these specific characteristics:
  Big budgets: No longer required to rely on philanthropy or industry, scientists were able to use budgets on an unprecedented scale for basic research.
  Big staffs: Similarly, the number of practitioners of science on any one project grew as well, creating difficulty, and often controversy, in the assignment of credit for scientific discoveries (the Nobel Prize system, for example, allows awarding only three individuals in any one topic per year, based on a 19th-century model of the scientific enterprise).
  Big machines: Ernest Lawrence's cyclotron at his Radiation Laboratory in particular ushered in an era of massive machines (requiring massive staffs and budgets) as the tools of basic scientific research. The use of many machines, such as the many sequencers used during the Human Genome Project, might also fall under this definition.
  Big laboratories: Because of the increase in cost to do basic science (with the increase of large machines), centralization of scientific research in large laboratories (such as Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory or CERN) has become a cost-effective strategy, though questions over facility access have become prevalent.
  Towards the end of the 20th century, not only projects in basic physics and astronomy, but also in life sciences became big sciences, such as the massive Human Genome Project. The heavy investment of government and industrial interests into academic science has also blurred the line between public and private research, where entire academic departments, even at public universities, are often financed by private companies.  Not all Big Science is related to the military concerns which were at its origins.
caption: Enormous superconducting synchrotron particle accelerators with circumferences of many kilometers are the exemplars of Big Science. Shown above is the Fermilab Tevatron.
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