It was just a pun, “stringing” me along. Your explanation was very good, although I am still skeptical of a theory based upon something that cannot be defined.
Argent, can we at least stipulate a couple of things here?
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As you’ve been told repeatedly, this is not a dangerous machine that’s going to blow up the planet. Can you entertain this for now?
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2.6 billion francs is not really that much money. We spend that much every week or so in Iraq. Which is unconscionable, but my point is that the dollar amount isn’t that large.
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(And I guess you’d disagree with this, that’s your prerogative) basic research is essential to science, and pays off in unexpected ways. This research is an attempt to further our understanding of how physics and the basic forces of the universe are arranged. This is the kind of thing that could promise a lot of pie-in-the-sky things. Science is about discovery, and the LHC is the next step in a very long chain stretching back about a century in discovering how our universe works. These things have paid off in things like electric power that you’re using to read this message, CRTs and radio that first allowed images to be transmitted, many many things. Gaining understanding how matter and forces are put together was essential for many things we take for granted today, and its an ongoing effort.
Sorry, I stopped in because I thought the thread title said “large hardon collider.” I see now that it’s Hadron. I’m therefore not interested.
Now a hardon collider that could destroy the world … THAT I’d like to see!.
What is a quark? What is charge? What is mass? Why is the fine structure constant equal to 1/137?
The Standard Model includes LOTS of things that are undefined. The idea behind string theory is to reduce the number of undefined entities to the smallest number possible.
String theory has been rightly criticized as being currently untestable. That leaves us with only two courses of action. To throw up our hands and say “Well, I guess we’ll never know!” Or to continue to construct more and more powerful experimental tools.
Well. I guess we’ll never know!
Maybe try “The Trouble with Physics” by Lee Smolin. He does a good job, I think, of explaining what String Theory is, what it is trying to be, and what it is not.
90% is over my head, but I am enjoying it anyway.
love
yams!!
I can’t possibly see how he’s doing a “good job” of explaining it if 90% of it is going over your head.
Because as much as I love physics, I am not good at physics.
For me, reading this book is kind of like trying to read “100 Years of Solitude,” in Spanish, after having taken a year of intro Spanish.
According to my physics tutor (who is defending his thesis (on String Theory) tomorrow, and who is most decidedly not crazy) most of the stuff that doesn’t make sense to me makes a whole lot of sense if you can understand the math behind it. I could put the book down, devote the next four years of my life to math, and then read and enjoy a much greater level of comprehension, but that strikes me as neither practical nor wise. So I keep reading it, and I enjoy it, but I dont sweat the fact that I’m not getting a lot of what he is talking about.
Myself, I am excited for the LHC.
love
yams!!
When 2.6 billion francs is spent on something, that money isn’t converted into a large hadron collider, never to be seen again. The money is given to people who design and build that collider. The money still exists, it isn’t lost to humanity. It’s just been redistributed. The only loss would be if somebody buried his share in a hole in the yard - even money in savings account is lent out by the bank.
Yes, my point is that the money should be given to people researching cancer or AIDS or ecological conservation or alternative fuels or something else that is more likely produce tangible benefits rather than some vague theoretical particle. How has this not been moved to Great Debates by now?
Scared? No. I’m not afraid of any black hole with gravity pull smaller than mine own, not to mention subatomic ones.
Excited? Yes. I think that knowing more is inherently better than knowing less, anr it’s a big step toward knowing how everything is constructed. By everything, I mean, you know, matter, universe, that sort of things. It’s interesting.
The laser was invented just to demonstrate that it could be done. Nobody knew what the hell it was actually good for. But without the laser, we’d have no optical storage (CD, DVD, Blu-Ray, etc.), crappier phone and Internet service, no holograms, no laser surgery techniques, no barcodes, no laser printers, less interesting Pink Floyd concerts, and a crapload of other things.
You’re the one who doesn’t want anyone to bother trying to find out. Remember?
Are you planning on being more or less convinced by this thread vs. this one?
Well, my perspective here is more about the waste of money represented by the collider than the threat to the earth - as I’ve said before, I think it should be better spent trying to fix specific concrete problems with goal-oriented solutions like disease, poverty or environmental conservation, instead of poured into the pursuit of some theoretical particle for the sake of a tenuous, mystical and bizarre theory whose own variables, it seems, can barely be defined in any focused way. I would think that this would just be straight up common sense, though as I said before, I’m just a podunk guy who never took physics. But common sense is common sense.
I am still not convinced that it’s a good idea to be artificially creating black holes, regardless of how many cosmic rays already hit the earth.
Part of the problem with modern science funding is that it’s too applications oriented.
Yes, money could have been diverted from the LHC to pay for solutions to concrete problems, and it’s fine complaining about that, until we need novel solutions to new problems in the future, but don’t have any, because no theoretical development has been undertaken.
If you’re talking about diverting money away from government funded projects, then diverting science funding should be the last considered option, IMO. Science has a phenomenal history of paying back, in tangible terms, what was spent on it.
If you’re really serious about cutting government spending to help the poor, why aren’t you lobbying for cuts in government spending on art, culture, enforcement of laws that serve no real purpose to society, like animal rights enforcement etc. (I’m being deliberately provocative, here)?
Even I need to leave the board sleep some time, Argent Towers. Anyway it’s been moved now.
Tough – the planet won’t blow up and we will learn something new for a reasonably low price.
The LHC was baselined at 2.2 billion Swiss francs back in 1996 and tagged for completion last year. As of 2001 the budgeted had grown to around 3.3 billion CHFs.
So lets keep the 3.3 Billion CHFs spent over roughly 10 years giving us a cost of 300 million CHF per year. Given the US exchange from a year ago (0.8 US Dollars to the CHF)) and you have a cost of 240 Million US dollars per year. Money sourced from a number of CERN member states
* Austria
* Belgium
* Bulgaria
* the Czech Republic
* Denmark
* Finland
* France
* Germany
* Greece
* Hungary
* Italy
* the Netherlands
* Norway
* Poland
* Portugal
* the Slovak Republic
* Spain
* Sweden
* Switzerland, and
* the United Kingdom
For comparison sake the US Department of Energy spent 2.4 Billion in 2007. The cost associated on a per country basis is piddling.
There are countless research projects going on in the world, some producing tangible outcomes and some that are purely speculative. Get a copy of a magazine like the New Scientist, and you’ll be amazed by the amount of seemingly inconsequential research projects that there are. But, as has been stated before, it is human nature to want to know more.
I think I’m correct that your primary objection is the cost of the project (and also the possible danger: but I believe that has been disproved now). It is not the only very expensive project – and it may not even be the most expensive. For example, from the BBC News website:
Whether there will be concrete results from any of these research projects is debatable. If we can succeed with nuclear fusion it will be life changing, but we are a long way off it at the moment. Should we discontinue all such projects purely on the basis of cost?
Below is a pie chart (rather dated now) that shows the amount dedicated to research in the USA in 1999:
http://www.research.umich.edu/research_guide/annual_reports/FY99/fields.jpg
I wonder how much of that $499,712,931 produces tangible results? If you don’t try, you won’t succeed.
All I’m saying is I think life will be a lot poorer if we only went for things we knew could guarantee results. I don’t suppose Einstein was propelled by thinking of the humane benefits that would come out of his studies into relativity. The job of theoretical physicists is to study problems in an attempt to find solutions for them. It is not guaranteed that they will always be successful or worthwhile. Sometimes it takes a lot of time and a lot of money. Quantum theory has been studied for over a hundred years now. A lot of people are trying to prove quantum and string theory. Are you suggesting that when the costs get to a certain amount, they just stop?
If it’s any comfort to you, here in the UK (and I believe in the USA as well), funding in the sciences has been drastically reduced.
The “better iron lung” theory of polio alleviation.