...and on a less serious note. What kind of superpowers would you get if you accidentally stepped in front of the beam when your clumsy lab assistant accidentally hit the on button? Hulk Powers? Spidy Powers?
OK, back to serious. I am not against gaining the knowledge they will obtain, but what are the applications? Is it too much to ask for to have some benefit from science that is publicly funded? This general ‘For the benefit of mankind’ crap doesn't fly.
Since this one is also internationally funded, I assume we chipped in for lunch at least. Yet unless that money leads to some tangible benefits to the taxpayer it is no different than money earmarked for the Bridge to Nowhere in Alaska. No, wait, that isn't correct. The Bridge to Nowhere would have benefited the fifty people on the island. So this is less moral than that canceled bridge.
If we didn't chip in, well, then, whatever. Hope they have fun.
The LHC project has already yielded a “discovery” that you use everyday.
The world wide web, or, more specifically, hypertext. When the project first started, all the scientists were on what at the time was the Internet. One of the participants came up with the idea of hyperlinks in text as a means of creating the documentation for the project and as a means of collaborating.
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.
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
“OK, back to serious. I am not against gaining the knowledge they will obtain, but what are the applications?”
It’s my hope that what I am about to write isn’t understood as belittlement of you or anyone else on this subject. However from my perspective, it seems to bad that people in the general sense can’t or won’t spend more time to investigate and learn more about what this project is set to accomplish.
In a prior thread the question is asked: Will they ultimately find existence of the Higgs Boson particle ?
Personally, It’s my hope that they don’t.
It appears abuntantly clear to me that you simply do not understand the enormosity of knowledge involved here.
If I’m allowed to put it simply....To prove and fully understand the existence of the Higgs Boson. Is to fully understand and comprehend the complete and total workings of “all that there is, was and ever shall be”. In essence this research has the potential to reveal “THE ANSWER” to every question in man’s history.
Think about it..........................