> We're already spending vast amounts of money on high-energy experiment, and building ever-larger particle smashers seems to have limited payoff from here on o

> We're already spending vast amounts of money on high-energy experiment, and building ever-larger particle smashers seems to have limited payoff from here on out. This sentiment has a long and storied past. http://patentlyo.com/patent/2011/01/tracing-the-quote-everything-that-can-be-invented-has-been-invented.html http://patentlyo.com/patent/2011/01/tracing-the-quote-everyt... > But I do know there's plenty of other interesting stuff (much of which is actually useful) we don't know about physics at other scales which we can spend our time and money on. Yes, true, but the low-level stuff only describes. Theory formation attempts to explain. Explanations are required for science.