We are on. This afternoon just after 1PM the LHC beams have started to produce proton-proton collisions in the heart of the experiments, at the never-before achieved energy of 7 TeV.

It was a long journey to get here -the project is twenty years old- but this is just the start of a new, more exciting one: In the course of the next two years, the Large Hadron Collider will gradually increase its power, allowing the CMS and ATLAS detectors to collect enough data to significantly extend into discovery territory.

How much is my labor on the Project Calliope satellite costing me? Accounts range from 'zero' to $14,400, to $65,000. That's the difference between what I'm being paid to do it for, what I'm losing, and what I could potentially be making for the time I'm putting into this project.

The valuation of volunteer labor is currently $20 per hour. Opportunity cost is defined as the 'cost of an alternative that must be forgone in order to pursue a different action'. So if it takes me 4 hours to read a novel, is that an $80 book?