Hadron Collider ?

[fbg40]

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

[Old_Geezer]

Different issues can be tackled in tandem. Try to sort all humanities problems out first, throwing money at one thing, and you wait until the sun explodes on you and still not have solved it all.

And in the meanwhile don't make progress on any other things.

Besides one can not tell what other projects will give you to use to help in other areas/goals. One needs to expand knowledge generally or there will be little progress on the issue that concerns you. Stay focussed on one thing and almost certainly much will be missed.

In any case what is the reason we exist or wish to continue to do so as a species ? If there is no greater aim then to what point ? Knowledge gathering can be considered one such aim; it being it's own reward to your descendants.

[Old_Geezer]

humanity's
>:-(

[Khandro]

OG; // Knowledge gathering can be considered one such aim; it being it's own reward...// That's all well and good, the question I ask is at what cost - any?
As is shown above, are these rewards, real or potential, worth the stupendous (on-going) cost of this exercise? 2,400 people on salaries ranging from 7 to 13 thousand Swiss francs a month not to mention the massive use of earth recourses, all for 'knowledge gathering'.
When people say they want to climb a mountain 'because it's there' I don't mind that; climbing a mountain doesn't cost very much.

[Khandro]

resources

[vetuste_ennemi]

Colm, absolutely! As a wise man once said "Science is bunk".
Love your "End of."sentence by the way. An imaginative and original form of expression.
"CERN, in comparison to the present challenges facing humanity is a stroll in the park.".
Suppose I were to replace CERN with (let's say) Wagner. Or perhaps Gerard Manley Hopkins. What say you to that. Khandro? Somebody who knew what the word meant might describe such a statement as facile. And they would be right.

[Khandro]

v_e; I'm afraid you post makes no sense (to me) so please forgive me for not replying.
p.s. I hope you haven't been at that Bulgarian(?) stuff again.

[vetuste_ennemi]

It's sirloin steak and a bottle of Beaune tonight, Khandro. Didn't mean to be obscure; I was referring to your remark that CERN was "facile" in comparison to the problems facing humanity. I don't see what the one has to do with the other.

[Khandro]

v_e; // I don't see what the one has to do with the other.//
Neither do I, my point exactly.
p.s. Given the choice of taking the poems of G.M.Hopkins and the music of R.Wagner to the desert island, or the findings of CERN, I wouldn't be hard-pressed to decide.

[Khandro]

On reflection; please replace 'facile' with 'fatuous', which is what I meant.

[Old_Geezer]

The cost is insignificant compared to the wealth of the planet. And economies thrive on wealth being passed around anyway. One needs to employ folk, let's get huge advancements from doing so.

[vetuste_ennemi]

Putting aside the particular case of CERN for a moment, Khandro, can you see nothing wonderful (awesome even) about the world as revealed to us by modern science? Take the famous remark of Carl Sagan's "we are made of stardust": stars had to die so that you and I could live. Did you see the marvellous programs on TV in the Darwin centenary year (Attenborough there as usual)? Cannot science in its way be as spiritually uplifting as anything written by Manley Hopkins?

[Khandro]

Well, of course I do! - waddya take me for? take me forand before we need to fuss about stardust, there are many wonders to behold without going very far;

[Khandro]

http://www.wimp.com/spidersweb/

[Colmc54]

Further exploration of the particle assemblage will need more and more public expenditure. I think that where big science is failing to make the case for further experiments of the kind under discussion is that to the vast majority of the people who globally fund them it is hard for them to think of anything more completely irrelevant to their day to day lives.

Yes perhaps in the equations of string theory there is a chance that all that we know exists at a confluence of two branes who, as I type are drifting apa...........

Science is notorious at populising it's discoveries and making them at least interesting to ordinary people. Cox tries his best but as an egotistic narcissist who is all over every programme he, and his fellow narcissists the BBC put out, all hope for public support for big science begins to wane.

We need to stop the popularisation of science from being hi-jacked by over-ambitious egotists like Cox and his ilk and give young science grads custody of the poisoned chalice. At least, being young, they have half a chance of appealing to a generation that thinks everyone older than them is an object of pity unless you're Einstein say, or Schrodinger, who at least produced equations that can be shown to reveal them as representing the pinnacle of human (even if in the case of Schrodinger it may have been post-coital) cognitive brilliance.