Central planning doesn't work?Biiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnnnngggggggggggooooooooo!
That, and socialism breeds complacency.
Posted on 10/19/2004 6:19:43 PM PDT by leadpencil1
GENEVA (AP) - A European laboratory that was the birthplace of the World Wide Web and home of Nobel prize-winning developments in understanding the origins of the universe celebrated its 50th birthday Tuesday. But French President Jacques Chirac warned that despite those illustrious achievements, European scientists are falling behind.
Chirac and King Juan Carlos of Spain were featured speakers at the celebrations of the European Organization for Nuclear Research, known by the French initials CERN, which was created in part to help stop the brain drain from postwar Europe to the United States.
"In terms of Nobel prizes, publications, patents and science students, Europe is losing ground at an alarming rate," Chirac said in addressing the 50th anniversary celebration of the world's largest atom-smashing laboratory.
"Scientific competition is increasing today," Chirac said. "It no longer comes from the major powers in the developed world, such as the United States or Japan. Each passing day sees more competition from the large emerging countries, like India and China."
Chirac said Europe plans to spend 3 percent of its wealth on research by 2010, but more is needed and the spending should be placed outside the European Union's stability and growth pact, which limits deficit spending.
King Juan Carlos said CERN helped Europe regain the position it held earlier in the 20th century, when it was the home of such leading scientists as Albert Einstein.
"CERN is certainly the leading particle physics laboratory in the world, a center of excellence that attracts world experts in the field," the king said.
After the U.S. Congress pulled the plug on the construction in Texas of the proposed Superconducting Super Collider in 1993, CERN became the focus of much of the world's research into matter and understanding the origins of the universe.
Chirac noted that 6,500 scientists from 80 countries - half the world's researchers specializing in particle physics - work at CERN.
A number of the speakers said that support from the United States played a major part of the founding of CERN to help reunite Europe following the devastation of World War II.
"The idea for CERN can be traced back to two American scientist - Robert Oppenheimer and Nobel laureate Isidore Rabi," said Francois de Rose, the only surviving scientist from the dozen credited with creating the laboratory.
Among the highlights of CERN's history was the awarding of the 1984 Nobel physics prize to Carlo Rubbia and Simon van der Meer for the discovery of two particles, the W boson and Z boson.
In 1992 Georges Charpak of CERN was awarded the Nobel physics prize for his invention, the "multiwire proportional chamber," which revolutionized the tracking of particles and is used in many medical applications.
In 1990, British scientist Tim Berners-Lee was working at CERN when he proposed a way to help researchers by linking related pieces of information across the Internet in what became the World Wide Web.
The 50th-anniversary observance came at a time of reduced research at CERN because the largest collider is being replaced in the 17-mile circular tunnel under the Swiss-French border.
The previous equipment - the Large Electron-Positron collider - has been pulled out of the tunnel big enough for a subway train. It is being replaced by the $1.8 billion Large Hadron Collider.
That massive machine, with underground detectors the size of cathedrals, is to be finished and switched on in 2007 to provide even more power in the search to understand the makeup of subatomic particles that are the building blocks of all matter in the universe.
Besides the European member nations in CERN, other observer nations whose physicists work at CERN include Japan, Russia, Israel and India.
Many scientists from the United States, which still has major rival laboratories, are among the hundreds of physicists who take turns conducting experiments with the particle accelerators.
"The scale of the experiments we perform is so huge that no one institute or even country can conduct them alone," Richard Webb, a 25-year-old British scientist at CERN, told The Associated Press.
Central planning doesn't work?
"We must build a better future for the Muslims that will be here when we are all gone."
To quote the immortal Butt-head...."Uhhhh yeah".
*giggle* *snort* *GUFFAW*
As of late, all Europe has been successful in is second-guessing the United States and strutting around like prissy little poodles who think their sh** doesn't stink.
Central planning doesn't work?Biiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnnnnnnngggggggggggooooooooo!
That, and socialism breeds complacency.
Well, yes, until they were run out of Europe or simply murdered for the crime of being Jews. But hey, that history could never repeat itself...could it?
Maybe they shouldn't have killed off most of their Jews. Or driven them out.
A scientific culture that expects and rewards individual initiative is a scientific culture that fosters and supports creativity, which is where scientific advances come from. The big science system, where a lab director controls a large lab and its budget, can advance to an anticipated goal, but is not so good at coming up with the true breakthroughs, those unexpected discoveries that change the landscape. Europe now I think tends more to the latter than the US, although certainly big science is found here as well. (And then there are political boondoggles of little scientific value, that suck vast sums of money from the science budgets. I refer to NASA's manned space program.)
What is wrong with manned space program.. Space is not about science..
The French think they can do anything better than us. And the state of their nation shows how valid that view is.
Every time the Shuttle gets launched, it costs several hundred million dollars. Very little scientific research gets published in peer-reviewed journals as a result of the space station and the Shuttle. Think about it: how many times have you heard that the research being done consists of growing tadpoles in microgravity, or some such thing? If the Shuttle could transport its payload capacity by weight of straw and somehow have it turn to gold, it still wouldn't be profitable. Meanwhile NASA is planning on returning to the expendable boosters and capsules of the 1960s -- no real progress seems to have been made on propulsion. No true space planes. I think no real progress will be made in space until the fundamental advances in propulsion have been made. NASA has made some progress on these issues, but there's a long way to go. Meanwhile, the space station eats up cash with little to show in return.
I should make sure to say NASA has done a superb job on unmanned space exploration. Mistakes have happened, such as the Hubble mirror debacle or the lost Mars missions of a few years ago, but the Mars rovers and Cassini have been thrilling successes with huge scientific payoffs.
If you are interested in this, find a copy of Voodoo Science, by the physicist Robert Park. This tartly written book tears apart NASA (and also cold fusion, alternative medicine and other matters). For a quick taste of his writing: http://www.aps.org/WN/.
Blah blah blah I have heard he same crap about humans in space. Sorry pal you are wrong..
Please read the book Voodoo Science. It ain't crap, it's true. I used to be a big supporter of the manned space program -- I worked in a planetarium and I am a working scientist (a mathematician) -- but NASA is designed more to channel tax payer's money to various congressional districts than to genuinely make progress in manned space exploration. I mean, we've flown that death trap the Shuttle for 23 years now! NASA's PR department keeps talking about making space travel routine, but the Shuttle is still only rated "experimental". Whatever happened to Reagan's Orient Express or any other single-stage-to-orbit plane or rocket? Too expensive to develop when the contractors need the money to keep flying dangerous, obsolete technology.
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