There seems to be a lot of talk in the air lately about how much money someone should be allowed to make. What size bonus’s they get and so on. Just a few moments ago one of my Facebook friends posted this:
If your bored one day and you have 8 billion dollars to spare maybe you should build a machine that creates mini black holes, yeah what a fantastic idea! The large Hadron Collider! next they will be splitting atoms! oh wait they already did, ladies and gentlemen, the Hydrogen Bomb. surely there is a better way to spend such wealth?
Which made me wonder where the money for the LHC comes from, and is it worth it. There are a few threads out on the internets about this subject. Quite a few people question the validity of the project and question its cost. Do you know how many people that money could feed? could educate? could save?
I wonder how many people consider the opposite question. What is the cost of not building the LHC? What knowledge do we miss out on that changes our lives forever?
A friend of mine was going to work on the super collider they were going to build in Texas until Clinton nixed it. He said they were expecting to get technologies out of that like: “Beam me up Scotty”.
Scientists from all over the world were arrayed to take part in that project. Nixed with the stroke of a pen. You’re right: what did we miss out on by not doing it?
Why fund it? Because business rarely invests in basic science research. These days, only IBM and Bell Labs have any kind of basic science research, and they’ve scaled way back.
Why do basic science? Where do you think the understanding of semiconductors, that form the basics of the computer you’re reading this on, came from? Basic science. The same can be said for nearly all technologies that our economy depends on. The investment in early semiconductor research was pennies compared to what computers are worth.
The LHC is exploring the nature of matter — the same thing that JJ Thomson was doing when he developed the model of the atom that is the basis for modern chemistry and nuclear physics. All the big discoveries were done by people on public funding (Newton, Faraday, Watt..) What would we have missed out on if Thomson hadn’t gotten government funding?
Moreover, it is no accident that Silicon Valley is adjacent to Stanford University.
Who knows what they will discover in the LHC? The history of basic science research says that it will be well worth the effort in the future.
In the 1880s Pierre Curie, working on a government grant at the Sorbonne, investigated crystals and crystal structure. In the process he discovered the piezo effect. It remained a scientific curiosity until Robert Boyle, working at the British Board of Invention and Research, used a piezo crystal to make the first practical sonar device. And all because some government grant, nearly 40 years earlier, had funded some basic science research.
Read James Burke’s Connections. Its filled with stories like this — how unrelated scientific advances met together to produce great things.
“Quite a few people question the validity of the project and question its cost. Do you know how many people that money could feed? could educate? could save?”
A valid question.
In my humble opinion, the answer depends a bit on your tolerance for risk vs. return. This is a gamble. Scientists are betting they can learn some really useful things as a result.
We have examples of this in the past. For example, NASA’s Apollo program. How many people could have have been fed, educated, and saved if that money had been used elsewhere? On the other hand, how many people *have been* fed, educated, and saved because of the array of technology that came out of that program?
If this is a good bet, then we’ll reap many times the investment in an upgraded human standard of living. If it’s not, then we’ve wasted an awful lot of money. At the very least, hopefully we’ll learn a little bit more about the world in which we find ourselves.
My own opinion is that spending money on scientific research is a valuable thing, in and of itself. But I can understand why others might disagree.
Dammit Phil. You’ve got to stop posting heady stuff like this that makes people think. Can’t we all just get back to whitewater rafting???
Mark, I believe that you and I are on the same page as far as scientific research is concerned. There is certainly an argument that the money could be spent feeding and housing people. The more compelling argument is that the research will generate much more wealth than is being spent which helps to feed and house an exponentially greater number of people. Imagine the internet for example. You’ve probably got a better handle on this than most people. In its early stages who could have imagined the fortunes that would be generated by the internet, a simple little DARPA project? How much money has been created out of thin air because of companies like Netscape, Yahoo, and Google? Everything in this world is a risk. It’s a good thing that Human’s are born to embrace risk. The LHC may give us a great big goose egg, or it may unlock technologies which enable us to travel to the far side of our galaxy and beyond. What ever the outcome it is worth the expense because whatever the outcome we learn.
Yeah, whitewater is pretty tame compared to these kinds of questions.
Not to go too far off-topic, but what do you think of the money spent on the International Space Station?
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14505278/
How about manned space flight?
http://mikrokopter.de/ucwiki/VideoAbspielen?id=188
Pretty close to a flying saucer.
Matt, the link is broken. I guess msnbc didn’t want us watching. At this point any money that we spend on space is going to bring back worthwhile returns. Figuring out how to do more with less will probably be a big bonus of space exploration.
David, that little gizmo is too cool. Imagine what a full size vehicle would be like to fly.
Matt’s link worked for me…
Sorry about the link. Still works for me. It’s an old one from 2006 comparing the ISS to other large projects (including the NIF — laser fusion reactor that just had a successful test). I think the bang for the buck on the ISS is low. The NIF could be a very very big deal for humanity.
As for the mikrocopter, I’m wondering why 6 propellers? I could understand 3, to get control in pitch and yaw. Generally propeller efficiency goes with the cube of the diameter, so bigger propellers are more efficient. Still, it looks like a lot of fun.