Anyone Else Staying Up For The CERN Announcement About The Higgs Boson Tonight?

[MikeH]

Just building the thing involved advancing some areas of engineering. So we have got 'useful' benefits before we even turned it on.

[The Mad Monk]

Such as developing proper anti-bird-dropped-bread defenses.

[Jon Miller]

From APS:

"How about the ROI for industry? Well, two companies, one French and one German, helped build the system, and according to the team, for every Euro they spent, they got three and a half euros back. In addition, new technology was specifically developed for the LHC. “We developed the silicon detectors from this, said Incandela. “10 years ago we didn’t have this technology."”


JM

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

Astronomy is cheap, modern stuff like the Hubble notwithstanding.

I suspect all science is pretty cheap if you never try to do anything new.

Current budget for the Square Kilometre Array- 1.5 billion Euros.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Is there any use of funds you would call wasteful, Imran? Or does pretty much anything go as valuable, so long as people vote for it?

Wasteful or not wasteful is irrelevant in this discussion. If you object to your wealth being spent on a specific area, you can as nye stated, vote to influence how that money gets spent.

FWIW, I don't consider funding for general scientific research to be wasteful.

[MRT144]

Okay, what the ****, physicists?

http://www.theverge.com/2012/7/4/3136652/cern-scientists-comic-sans-higgs-boson

COMIC SANS?

You discover the higgs, you get to choose the fonts.

[giblets]

Wasteful or not wasteful is irrelevant in this discussion. If you object to your wealth being spent on a specific area, you can as nye stated, vote to influence how that money gets spent.

FWIW, I don't consider funding for general scientific research to be wasteful.

Gee, isn't it possible he's trying to influence others to vote against it by arguing that it's a waste of money?

[Jon Miller]

1969 partons discovered at slac
"SLAC's original cost (1962) was $18,000,000 in preconstruction research and development, and $114,000,000 for design and construction."

http://www.slac.stanford.edu/history/shorts.shtml

in 2012 dollars that is 990 722 526$

the cost of LHC is ~6billion $ in 2009, so we can say that the cost of new physics rose by a factor of 6

the gdp of the US (1QT) was ~3 trillion (in 2005 dollars) in 1962

the gdp of the US now (1QT) (which isn't a fair comparison since SLAC was a US effort and LHC is a world effort) is over ~13 trillion (in 2005 dollars)

so that is only a factor of ~4, and you could claim that the relative cost of discover has goen up.... except that if we include the EU (which payed most of the bill) or just include the cost for the US, we actually find that the relative cost for discovery has gone down....

JM

[Lorizael]

There are a lot of factors missing from that back-of-the-envelope calculation. An important one, I think, is the cost to educate the scientists making said discoveries.

[giblets]

There are a lot of factors missing from that back-of-the-envelope calculation. An important one, I think, is the cost to educate the scientists making said discoveries.

Actually I think the relevant comparison here is what the scientists would have been doing if they weren't engaged in those discoveries.

[Lorizael]

Actually I think the relevant comparison here is what the scientists would have been doing if they weren't engaged in those discoveries.

Scientists are very specialized these days, so nothing.

[Kuciwalker]

Hardly. Anyone with the necessary talents to work on a project like this could just as easily study CS or electrical engineering and work in Silicon Valley - or really do almost anything requiring strong quantitative skills. Lorizael's notion of scientific specialization is wrong. Moreover, the very existence of the LHC has led people to pursue PhD's in useless areas of physics.

[Kuciwalker]

I suspect all science is pretty cheap if you never try to do anything new.

Current budget for the Square Kilometre Array- 1.5 billion Euros.

"modern stuff like the Hubble notwithstanding"

[Kuciwalker]

From APS:

"How about the ROI for industry? Well, two companies, one French and one German, helped build the system, and according to the team, for every Euro they spent, they got three and a half euros back. In addition, new technology was specifically developed for the LHC. “We developed the silicon detectors from this, said Incandela. “10 years ago we didn’t have this technology."”


JM

This is a great illustration why building the LHC now was a terrible idea. They had to invent entirely new technologies! Whereas if we just wait then many of those technologies will in due course be invented anyway (assuming they actually have any useful applications outside of physics wankery) and the LHC would be much cheaper.

[DinoDoc]

Actually I think the relevant comparison here is what the scientists would have been doing if they weren't engaged in those discoveries.

If KH is any guide, making bank in the financial sector?