4 ms·

This is such a loss of money. The practical aspects will never be used. This will move some technologies a bit ahead but so would work on biology and medical a

This is such a loss of money. The practical aspects will never be used. This will move some technologies a bit ahead but so would work on biology and medical areas. I would be much more happy to see people cured or otherwise helped than to know that a partcle is this or that. This is in strong opposition to what happened in these areas of physics in the previous century. Things which were directives had a conceivable practical application. What can you make out of events which happen at such energies, the kind we will never reach outside of such research centers.

orf 6y ago
Just wait until you see your countries military budget!
calcifer 6y ago
Science for its own sake is a noble pursuit. Not everything has to have commercial applications or to be "practical".
- qwobit 6y ago
  Agree. But another thing I must point out is that pure mathematics is an example of ‘doing stuff for the sake of doing stuff’ and it has had an incredibly long lasting influence, with physicists turning to pure mathematics research to aid with their own problems. The solution just has to be a perfect fit with the problem to become practical in industry. We often do not see the practicality of such abstract ideas until they are abundant in use.
  - BrandoElFollito 6y ago
    With mathematics you have at least hope to use it someday. Indeed, research on elliptic equations may not have been seen as important until widespread crypto hit. Moreover, the cost is small. This is also the rational by which we can agree that philosophy is worth spending money on (because "general culture"). Here we have 20B€ so that some people discover the structure of a particle, knowing that it is exactly impossible to have a real life use because of the required energies.
    - pg-gadfly 6y ago
      It isn't "exactly impossible" though, it never is. You can find out a more efficient way to create it, or you might have more power available in the future. All manmade elements have been extremely expensive to make the first ti-me, and that hasn't stopped them from being constantly used.
      - BrandoElFollito 6y ago
        There is no efficiency - juste pure energy needs. You cannot probe a quark with lower energy. Then there is nothing to use from such experiments. The research is purely academic, it is not like the cure for cancer is hidden behind a gluon. I can understand dumping even 20B€ in research which brings something tangible. Making sure that the structure of a quark is what we think it is is not one of these.
        pg-gadfly 6y ago
        >There is no efficiency There is certainly efficiency to consider when making energy. We can't tap into the full potential of any source, there are "hard limits" to many of our current methods, but that doesen't stop a paradigm shift from happening and making it so. Many things studied before had no "tangible" use then, it doesen't come like that. It's iteration upon iteration, using previous work to achieve a little bit of something new. You cannot foresee the future beforehand.
        BrandoElFollito 6y ago
        At some point in physics there is no "paradigm shift". In order to probe such structures you need an enormous energy. An energy you have to build an accelerator to have. What do you get in return? The confirmation or not of a theory which can be confirmed only at these energies. It is not as a non-confirmation would turn around physics, it would be just some strange thing happening at these energies. Compare this with experiments from the late 1800 and early 1900. You had obvious holes in the theory (Michelson-Morley, the ultraviolet catastrophe, ...) - these experiments were showing that something in our everyday theory is wrong. Not some fluctuations at 20B€. There are branches of physics where the research is really cool (notably solid state physics) and which you can make a real life use of. Particle physics is not one of them.
- BrandoElFollito 6y ago
  When you have 20B€ to spend, you first make a round of the real needs in science. Understanding the structure of a quark is priority 100 compared to understanding how to cure MS. In an ideal world where we have all the money we need, sure. In the world we are in one must make choices.
- d_tr 6y ago
  I agree and would like to add that people have been proven to be very bad at making at least certain kinds of predictions. Humans may still be around after 100 thousand years. The electron had not even been discovered just 130 years ago. It is very difficult to make good predictions about the possible practical applications of our current physics knowledge. Of course, it is much more difficult to make such predictions about as yet undiscovered physics... Besides, HEP experiments aim to expand our knowledge about the fundamental laws of nature. Fundamental laws are by definition applicable to all energy scales.

orf 6y ago

Just wait until you see your countries military budget!

calcifer 6y ago

Science for its own sake is a noble pursuit. Not everything has to have commercial applications or to be "practical".

qwobit 6y ago
Agree. But another thing I must point out is that pure mathematics is an example of ‘doing stuff for the sake of doing stuff’ and it has had an incredibly long lasting influence, with physicists turning to pure mathematics research to aid with their own problems. The solution just has to be a perfect fit with the problem to become practical in industry. We often do not see the practicality of such abstract ideas until they are abundant in use.
- BrandoElFollito 6y ago
  With mathematics you have at least hope to use it someday. Indeed, research on elliptic equations may not have been seen as important until widespread crypto hit. Moreover, the cost is small. This is also the rational by which we can agree that philosophy is worth spending money on (because "general culture"). Here we have 20B€ so that some people discover the structure of a particle, knowing that it is exactly impossible to have a real life use because of the required energies.
  - pg-gadfly 6y ago
    It isn't "exactly impossible" though, it never is. You can find out a more efficient way to create it, or you might have more power available in the future. All manmade elements have been extremely expensive to make the first ti-me, and that hasn't stopped them from being constantly used.
    - BrandoElFollito 6y ago
      There is no efficiency - juste pure energy needs. You cannot probe a quark with lower energy. Then there is nothing to use from such experiments. The research is purely academic, it is not like the cure for cancer is hidden behind a gluon. I can understand dumping even 20B€ in research which brings something tangible. Making sure that the structure of a quark is what we think it is is not one of these.
      - pg-gadfly 6y ago
        >There is no efficiency There is certainly efficiency to consider when making energy. We can't tap into the full potential of any source, there are "hard limits" to many of our current methods, but that doesen't stop a paradigm shift from happening and making it so. Many things studied before had no "tangible" use then, it doesen't come like that. It's iteration upon iteration, using previous work to achieve a little bit of something new. You cannot foresee the future beforehand.
        BrandoElFollito 6y ago
        At some point in physics there is no "paradigm shift". In order to probe such structures you need an enormous energy. An energy you have to build an accelerator to have. What do you get in return? The confirmation or not of a theory which can be confirmed only at these energies. It is not as a non-confirmation would turn around physics, it would be just some strange thing happening at these energies. Compare this with experiments from the late 1800 and early 1900. You had obvious holes in the theory (Michelson-Morley, the ultraviolet catastrophe, ...) - these experiments were showing that something in our everyday theory is wrong. Not some fluctuations at 20B€. There are branches of physics where the research is really cool (notably solid state physics) and which you can make a real life use of. Particle physics is not one of them.
BrandoElFollito 6y ago
When you have 20B€ to spend, you first make a round of the real needs in science. Understanding the structure of a quark is priority 100 compared to understanding how to cure MS. In an ideal world where we have all the money we need, sure. In the world we are in one must make choices.
d_tr 6y ago
I agree and would like to add that people have been proven to be very bad at making at least certain kinds of predictions. Humans may still be around after 100 thousand years. The electron had not even been discovered just 130 years ago. It is very difficult to make good predictions about the possible practical applications of our current physics knowledge. Of course, it is much more difficult to make such predictions about as yet undiscovered physics... Besides, HEP experiments aim to expand our knowledge about the fundamental laws of nature. Fundamental laws are by definition applicable to all energy scales.