CERN reviews plans to build new particle smasher three times bigger than the Large Hadron...

[Arbie]

Higgs Mechanism "strengthened for the next 50 years" due to experimental data from particle accelerators refuting alternative theories. Funny you left out that part.

fiberoptic technology enabling your posts sprang from early particle accelerator experiments

Of course particle accelerators have been valuable to many developments! So were vacuum tubes.

But (a) they are no longer driving progress AND (b) there's no good indication that they ever will again AND (c) they are enormously expensive. Combine those factors!

It's gone from notable to pathetic that all your examples of real-life benefits stem from at least fifty years back.

the World Wide Web itself was created by CERN

So? Are you in a side chat with someone trying to shut down CERN? Or is this just another example of your carpet-bomb "sayalottastuff" debate technique?

 

[Endymio]

Of course particle accelerators have been valuable to many developments! So were vacuum tubes.

Google 'false equivalence'. Vacuum tubes were replaced by something better -- something we, incidentally, have spent more than one million times as much building as we ever did tubes. Particle accelerators, however, remain the state-of-the-art technology in physics. And modern accelerators bear about as much resemblance to an old cyclotron as do vacuum tubes do to a modern CMOS IC.

It's gone from notable to pathetic that all your examples of real-life benefits stem from at least fifty years back.

Eh? Internet backbone bandwidth is utterly dependent on DWDM carrier multiplexing, which itself is made possible by EDFA and other doped optical amplifiers, introduced in the mid-1990s. Next-gen ICs based on tech like tunneling FETs and nanosheet transistors are also outgrowths of quantum electronics, a field which grew from our work on the Standard Model. And I could name 100+ other advances. The work we did in particle physics 50 years are still paying dividends today.

Luckily, this argument is already over. The scientific community understands the need for further progress in basic science, and is willing to invest for the future. But don't worry: plenty of medical researchers will still continue to work on that new gout treatment!

 

[Arbie]

Particle accelerators, however, remain the state-of-the-art technology in physics.

Talk about unexpected results... you may have hit on the problem! Since they aren't getting us anywhere any longer.

The work we did in particle physics 50 years are still paying dividends today.

Deftly skewering my observation that "all your examples of real-life benefits stem from at least fifty years back." LOL.

plenty of medical researchers will still continue to work on that new gout treatment!

If you had gout I imagine you'd pick a different example. No matter - there are plenty of crippling afflictions to choose from.

 

[Endymio]

Deftly skewering my observation that "all your examples of real-life benefits stem from at least fifty years back." LOL.

So you believe basic research shouldn't be conducted, unless we can definitively state it will lead to real-world applications? Wow. Fortunately, not one single scientist on the planet agrees. Not even(quack! quack!) Sabine.

Not that it matters. In just the last 25 years alone, advances developed to build the LHC and other high-power accelerators led to pencil beam proton therapy for cancer treatment, trapped ion cages (the basis for current quantum computers), the fast-neutron scanners we use at major airports (far better than x-rays), drive-beam plasmas and HIB fusion advances (not commercially viable yet, but getting there), ion-beam nanofabrication and ion satellite thrusters, more powerful superconducting magnets used for MagLev trains, and countless others. This is just from the technology we developed to *build* the accelerators, much less the advances we got from their data.

 

[mailpup]

Arbie and Endymio, please discontinue your lengthy personal argument in this thread. Use PM if you must continue it. Thank you.