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But it puts things into perspective. Humanity blows crazy amounts of money on war, entertainment, advertising and the financial industry, within a system where
by cygx 6y ago
But it puts things into perspective. Humanity blows crazy amounts of money on war, entertainment, advertising and the financial industry, within a system where something like two dozen individuals can (collectively) amass trillions of dollars of personal wealth. But $20 billion for fundamental science, spread out among 23 comparatively wealthy nations is too much?
- vidarh 6y agoTo expand on your point to illustrate how relatively little this is: Norway alone spends about $6bn on research and development a year for a population of ~5m people... This project will take ~30 years to complete. Norway alone could fund it. But there's as you say 23 members (and more associate members), and as a CERN member, Norway contributes ~$30m/year to CERN. That's 0.5% of the R&D budget, or about $6/year per person. This is the highest per capita amount of any CERN member, since funding is determined based on GDP. E.g. the UK pays less than half as much per capita as Norway. As such, it's reasonable to assume that for most members of CERN, funding to CERN takes up less than a percent of their R&D budgets. It is likely member states would have to pay more for this, but amortized over the project period, we're talking at most double even without an international (beyond the member states) consortium. And of course it's not only the 23 member states that benefits from this. Overall in terms of worldwide science funding, CERN is a rounding error.