Hadron Collider ?

[fbg40]

Can someone explain the purpose of the Hadron Collider and how much it costs the taxpayer ?
FBG40

[Khandro]

Hypo; //I was thinking about why Khandro was so keen to push the "lone genius" model of scientific progress.........//

I can assure you I don't have a misunderstood lone genius complex, well 'misunderstood' maybe, - certainly (and often) on Answerbank :0)

[naomi24]

Khandro, if you weren’t so determined to appear ‘enigmatic’ you might have more success. ;o)

[Colmc54]

Sorry, I meant half a century not a decade. But my question still stands.

How politically and scientifically altruistic is this research at the end of the day?

[Colmc54]

You even now could create an optical lattice in which single electrons and their antimatter equivalents positrons could be confined as per the Penning trap. If such a device could hold huge quantities of both the positrons and electrons apart until detonation we would have a perfect weapon of mass destruction. Unlike other devices when anti-matter annihilates with it's equivalent particle all the energy is converted into gamma rays in accordance with e=mc2. But get this, once the superheated (by the gamma rays) air finally slowed down to something getting close to the speed of sound, their would be none of the problematic nuclear fallout issues to concern the victors claiming the ground as won.

[jim360]

Would that really work, Colm? I'm not sure it would, albeit based on not much thought. Basically, while E=mc^2 implies a fair amount of energy on the face of it, electrons and positrons are so pathetically small that you would a lot of them to make a bomb of any sort of power, and then you'd have to be able to trap a lot of them too. Quick back-of-the-envelope calculation, possibly wrong by a couple of zeroes, you would need about 100 trillion or so positron-electron pairs just to give one joule's worth of energy. That's basically unfeasible.

Antimatter bombs sound cool but they are, for now at least, unfeasible.

[Colmc54]

Yes but we're getting down to 10nm resolutution in node foundries creating the wafers that Intel and Apple are going to be using soon. Two beams, two three dimensional lattices it could be as gig as little bigboy.

Seriously though, I guess I'm just hitting out. I'm disillusioned with 'big science' big anything really.

In my own humble scientific work as a veterinary surgeon I have brought a stray cat back to my house that would otherwise have had to be put down. I'm sitting up late now to try and stop my dog, also a rescue case, from spooking the cat.

Why should I bother, why should physicists bother? The reason is because we care about life and how it came to be.

The Higgs announcement was great PR especially it seems for the SNP. I truly think that science requires more circumspect and measured deliberations in it's observations and not patron driven hype.

[jim360]

I don't think physicists -- or indeed scientists in general -- are necessarily that good at PR, as a rule. It also takes a great deal of skill to communicate your work -- and the point of it! -- to the general public, and for that matter to the bill-payers, and not always has the community got it right. But it's a very tricky thing to get right, to be fair. The reasons for doing advanced particle physics are often abstract, whereas the general public and certainly the people who have the money want something more concrete.

[Khandro]

colmc. Congrats for the cat rescue, hope he/she is a replacement for the pet recently lost.
I agree with you about the PR factor of CERN. The OP asked for what it costs and I have a link above showing the salary scale of the 2,400 people employed there, which is mind-boggling in relation to the results. What on earth are all these people doing on a daily basis? particularly when the original purpose has been achieved - or has it?
It may be facetious of me, but I envisage a board meeting where the main item on the agenda is, 'What the f. are we going to do next to keep our jobs and this thing rolling?' answer: 'What about saying we are on the verge of an important breakthrough in cancer research?' or from the back of the room: 'Maybe something to do with mobile phones, or....... ?' :0)

[jim360]

It *is* facetious of you. No maybe about it.

[vetuste_ennemi]

I don't think most CERN scientists attempt (as suggested in earlier posts) to "justify" their wages by claims, spurious or otherwise, that their work will produce useful side benefits for the wider world; I think most of them will be motivated solely by a love of their subject and a search for deeper understanding of the universe. Strange and unexpected to find that my favourite professional artist is a philistine in his attitude to science. Although the other eight sisters were all artists, Urania was a scientist, Khandro.

[Khandro]

To naomi from mikey and me; :0) xx

[Khandro]

Sorry wrong thread !!!!!!

[jomifl]

Khandro/ I have a link above showing the salary scale of the 2,400 people employed there, which is mind-boggling in relation to the results./
Didn't know there was a price scale for scientific discoveries, how does a cure for smallpox compare with the light emitting diode?

[Khandro]

jomifl; With the rear end of the latest Audis and Mercedes looking like a 50's fairground courtesy of LEDs, I think on my sliding scale anyway, I'll take the cure for smallpox.

[Hypognosis]

I want to know why those Audi Christmas tree ligts unfailingly draw my gaze to the wrong side of the white line. For comparison, the headlight dazzle from other cars always has me looking askance at the kerb for my side of the road (peripheral vision is better at detecting moving objects directly ahead of me), or squinting.

[Colmc54]

I think I can confirm that Audi drivers in the UK are status seekers. In the main they are insecure middle-management types that think buying a German status car will add some added strategic significance to their otherwise meaningless lives.

The German designers of the status cars work on their core customer base by embellishing the latest iterations with gimmicky bells and whistles like the fancy lights above to play on the insecurity of their status seeking customers because maybe their status cars don't have the latest lights!

If you want a car that can reliably get you from A to B at the time of your choosing there is only one choice namely the cheapest one that will do the job. End of.

Meanwhile the messy collisions of the protons against protons at Cern are guaranteed to deliver one resulting triumphant result:

That would be the discovery that an even more powerful accelerator will be required to make the 'final' discoveries necessary for physicists to keep bamboozling ordinary tax-paying people with incomprehensible explanations for questions they don't care about the answers to because they were brought up to think that status symbols are more important than the reasons how we came to exist.

[Khandro]

Colm. Yes! and more importantly we should be addressing - more than ever before in the history of humanity - not how[i we came to exist, but how are we going to [i]continue] to exist.
But that requires wisdom, something money cannot buy, so its easier to keep chucking it at facile projects like CERN and pretend it will lead to our advancement.

[jim360]

Well, I'm not going to spend too much time trying to persuade you any more -- but describing CERn as "facile" is quite amusing...

[Khandro]

jim; CERN, in comparison to the present challenges facing humanity is a stroll in the park.

[douglas9401]

Most of the challenges facing humanity only need people to be sane, reasonable and fair.
Science needs work and just because it's not understood by the majority doesn't render it facile or frivolous..