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Comparing the cost against defense spending, which has a reputation for waste, doesn't convince me. If the cost is similar to two B-2 bombers and one thinks tha
by btrettel 6y ago
Comparing the cost against defense spending, which has a reputation for waste, doesn't convince me. If the cost is similar to two B-2 bombers and one thinks that the B-2 bomber is overpriced, one would probably also think that the LHC is overpriced.
To me, bringing up that the WWW, fancy PET scans, etc. came in part from HEP and therefore we should be grateful is missing one major point. In the WWW case, in an alternative history it seems likely to me that some other project would have developed something similar around the same time if the funding were allocated differently. As for the other benefits, I think if the money were allocated towards research in those areas it would have been more effectively spent.
Ultimately I think the worst "cost" for HEP in general (not just colliders) is that it encourages something like brain drain on other fields. I think that people interested in certain mostly non-practical areas of physics like HEP would do the world a lot more good if they instead got a PhD in some field of engineering or CS, or at the very least a more practical area of "physics". Here I refer to physics in the descriptive sense which doesn't align well with the prescriptive definition of physics. E.g., I don't understand why fluid dynamics is not "physics" in that it's rarely researched in physics departments (unless studied indirectly in chaos theory or plasma physics). Must be too Newtonian for people to care. (For what it's worth I'm at the end of a PhD in mechanical engineering studying fluid dynamics.)
- throwawaylabor 6y agoI think GP is saying that the value of LHC is greater than the marginal value of 2 bombers when you already have 18. LHC would be one way to use that some of that "waste" in defense spending more wisely. Regarding "practical" study-- Where you see value in the output of engineering work, those guiding the work of engineers see value in the output of scientific work. If we had more people of the latter type that appreciated the value of scientific work, we might have more productive engineers and developers.
- btrettel 6y agoDefense spending is inefficient, but why should that money be spent on HEP rather than something else? I'm not even convinced that projects like the LHC are a net positive for humanity for the last reason I mentioned. As for your final paragraph, I'm not really sure what you're getting at. If you believe I have misunderstood you, I'm interested in learning how. Most physicists I've met seem to severely underestimate the amount of scientific research conducted by engineers. If you get a PhD in engineering, you're typically doing primarily (if not exclusively) science. The main difference is that this research keeps in mind the applications. That's what makes it useful. I think it's a shame that so many very smart people choose to study HEP rather than engineering where they would do better in the world. And I don't think people working in HEP (for example) make engineers or programmers more productive.