I think it’s unlikely that we’re ever going to find another particle as useful as, say, the electron. You need a particle collider to get free Higgs bosons; yo

I think it’s unlikely that we’re ever going to find another particle as useful as, say, the electron. You need a particle collider to get free Higgs bosons; you can obtain free electrons by rubbing a balloon on your head. And electrons are the Swiss Army knife of technology, they are important in every chemical reaction and every electric device. Higgs bosons will likely never have a practical use. But- I still think we should keep doing particle physics, for a while longer. We have built up a huge global community of physicists and engineers who do particle physics, and without a way for them to conduct experiments there won’t be any jobs for those people to do, and in 2 generations all that expertise will be gone. The praxis will be gone. After all, that’s what technology really is; it isn’t a set of books on a shelf, it’s networks of people, with skills and connections to each other, who can get things done. Let’s make sure we don’t pull the plug early.