>A very similar argument can be made for particle physics and their colliders. Yes, telescopes produce pretty pictures, but fundamental particle physics occasio

>A very similar argument can be made for particle physics and their colliders. Yes, telescopes produce pretty pictures, but fundamental particle physics occasionally produces practical results. >Well, they used to (the colliders I mean). Modern particle physics seems to be more in the confirmation stage of current theory rather than a discovery phase like it used to be maybe 40 years ago. There are some good arguments as to why a muon collider might be a really good thing to build, and why it would be smaller than the LHC. CERN already has a program to look into it. If you have an hour this is a good talk by Nima Arkani-Hamed about muon colliders from last month. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKPwzezceGo&t=3379s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKPwzezceGo&t=3379s But to address your point about being in the confirmation phase, you can go to this particular time stamp, where he talks about why a muon collider is a good way to probe the higgs boson itself, which is new science. https://youtu.be/wKPwzezceGo?t=618 https://youtu.be/wKPwzezceGo?t=618