"Where's the KA-BOOM? There was supposed to be an Earth-Shattering KA-BOOM!"
Posted on 09/10/2008 5:13:56 AM PDT by yankeedame
You seem to demand that we know what we are going to do with something before we’ve run any experiments. That is the problem with hard science. You have to do the research before you can come up with the applications.
I guess we'll have to disagree on that one. Had Bubba Clinton not killed it, we would have long since surpassed this point and be well on the way to discovering or producing and refining new alternative spources of energy that would make gasoline obsolete.
I suppose that, in one sense, you can dismiss the SSC as a big, overpriced science experiment that doesn't benefit anyone. But, the same could be said of the space program.
We know what America is and has become without the SSC, but we'll never know what we would have become with it.
BTW, when Bubba "the Rapist" killed the SSC, it was under budget and ahead of schedule. He killed it for political reasons, nothing else. Imagine if LBJ would have killed the space program.
Does anybody here remember Vera Lynn
Remember how she said,
That we would meet again,
Some sunny day.
Vera
Vera
What has become of you?
Does anybody else in here feel the way I do?
Vera is 91 yrs old and lives in Britain.
Unless they find the Higgs boson, does this “matter?” (Little particle physics humor..)
History Channel is running documentary on this that helps bring particle physics down to something everyone can understand. Fascinating stuff.
Oh, ye of little faith. Word is out that soon to be marketed is Super Collider Crispies, a new breakfast cereal developed during the course of the experiments.
You pour Tang on it and it goes snap, crackle and BOOM.....and your house blows up to smithereens with you in it.
One small splat for mankind..........
Leni
"Where's the KA-BOOM? There was supposed to be an Earth-Shattering KA-BOOM!"
More on the Hadron Collider. I imagine there will be lots of these articles today.
More on the Hadron Collider. I imagine there will be lots of these articles today.
Fermilab discovered three of the theoretical particles that made up the Standard model.
Read more here: http://quarknet.fnal.gov/run2/fnalpast.shtml
It’s significant in many ways but probably boring to most people. One of them is the hypothetical potential for extra dimensions in space-time. Another is gravitons, which are elementary particals that are responsible for this enigma we call gravity. The implications are enormous, but you’ll have to use your imagination from here on out. Discovering what is responsible for gravity will allow us to replicate it. If we can “control” gravity, we can do many, many things, one of which is to perhaps make nuclear fusion more efficient and less tedious to reproduce.
Ending the worlds energy “crisis”..
Knowing the fundemental make up of the universe will allow us to one day manipulate it, much like we do with everything we have come to master.
D-
in 1969, when (Robert R.)Wilson was in the hot seat testifying before the Congressional Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, Sen. John Pastore demanded to know how a multimillion-dollar particle accelerator improved the security of the country. Wilson said the experimental physics machine had “nothing at all” to do with security, and the senator persisted.
“It has only to do,” Wilson told the lawmakers, “with the respect with which we regard one another, the dignity of men, our love of culture. It has to do with: Are we good painters, good sculptors, great poets? I mean all the things we really venerate in our country and are patriotic about. It has nothing to do directly with defending our country except to make it worth defending.”
the Superconducting Super Collider was an international project, which many hoped would have sufficient power to generate elusive particles like the Higgs bosons/b "detect" rather than "generate".
What’s the worst that could happen? The creation of a new Big Bang event that will rip a hole in space-time that will pulverize our solar system to quarks and suck it into a newly warped space-time continuum, making it part of the creation of a new and separate universe?
The vast majority of our present universe will probably remain intact.
Ya gotta look at the big picture. :)
I read another article that said they changed the date to next Tuesday........something to do with having to run payroll on Monday.
sixth thing, for those of us who read to fast - “it’s hadron” and not “hardon”
in 1969, when (Robert R.)Wilson was in the hot seat testifying before the Congressional Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, Sen. John Pastore demanded to know how a multimillion-dollar particle accelerator improved the security of the country. Wilson said the experimental physics machine had “nothing at all” to do with security, and the senator persisted.These remarks by Wilson are nonsense. A government-funded accelerator has NOTHING to do with "our love of culture," and NOTHING to do with whether or not we are "good painters, good sculptors, great poets." It is neutral on these points, and one could certainly argue that it is negative regarding "the respect with which we regard another" and "the dignity of men" in that he asked the government to fork over the hard-earned money of American citizens just so he could get a new toy (given that it had nothing to do with national security or any other proper role of government, that's exactly what it was.)
“It has only to do,” Wilson told the lawmakers, “with the respect with which we regard one another, the dignity of men, our love of culture. It has to do with: Are we good painters, good sculptors, great poets? I mean all the things we really venerate in our country and are patriotic about. It has nothing to do directly with defending our country except to make it worth defending.”
Do you think going to the moon “improved the security of the country”? Or do you think it had more to do with “the respect with which we regard one another” (as Americans)? Which do you really think was more expensive or contributed more to our knowledge of Science, the particle accelerator or the Apollo mission?
He is saying that if all we did as a nation was directed only towards our own survival and self interest that we would be a poor nation and not worth defending. And it DOES have to do with “all the things we really venerate in our country and are patriotic about”.But not all we do as a nation is funded/supervised by the government. In fact, very little should be, as the proper role of government is very limited. A nation or a people is not measured by what its government compels of it, because virtue is not the result of compulsion.
Do you think going to the moon “improved the security of the country”?Given that the space race was an extension of the arms race during the Cold War: Absolutely.
Or do you think it had more to do with “the respect with which we regard one another” (as Americans)?There was quite a bit of national pride involved, certainly. And there was nothing at all wrong with that. But that is not the same thing as the human dignity which is recognized by our basic national principles.
Which do you really think was more expensive or contributed more to our knowledge of Science, the particle accelerator or the Apollo mission?Irrelevant, for the reasons given above.
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