"Darren New" <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote in message
news:48dc0501@news.povray.org...
> somebody wrote:
> >> Only after the fundamental work has been done by scientists.

> > I don't know what that means.

> I mean that (for example) research on genetic causes/cures for cancer
> wouldn't have been possible at all without high-energy physics research.
>
> (Figure out how the structure of DNA was determined, for example.)

I'm at this point guessing that you might be a little confused of the "high
energy" part in "high energy physics". Specifically, the energy scale of
"high energy" in modern times. So I'll try to help you and do the legwork -
I mean - fingerwork:

Google "benefits of high energy physics". On top, we find:

http://www.er.doe.gov/hep/benefits/index.shtml

Oh no! I was wrong all along. Look just how many benefits there are!

On closer inspection, besides the medicinal benefits that originated back
when energies were so low that the term "high energy physics" was not even
coined (*), can anyone see a direct benefit of the *actual research*?

Even on this propaganda page, there's nothing that lists the benefit of any
of the discoveries of the actual experiements. Wouldn't it be fun to have
something like "and the benefit of the top quark to humanity is..."?

The "benefits" listed boil down to things like:

""We use supeconducting magnets in our experiments, so that's a benefit of
the high energy experiments.""

Well, I like to eat popcorn when watching movies, so watching movies is good
science, it helps make inventions in genetics...

No, superconducting magnets is not a benefit of high energy physics
experiments. High energy physics experiments do not produce superconducting
magnets. High energy physics experiments, for that matter, do not produce
*anything* of practical value. This is my point.

Yes, HEP is one of the important consumers of superconducting magnets, and
like any good consumer, they do work in a tight loop with other physicists
and industry who manufacture the magnets. But those who design the magnets
do not benefit from high energy physics experiments, they sessentially
benefit from the money and opportunity being given to them by HEP
experiementers. Trickle down economics is not a good reason to give billions
to HEP.

""We use computers in our experiments, so faster computers and networks are
a benefit of the high energy experiments.""

No. We owe faster computers to John Carmack, and legions of Wolfenstein
players. And I'm only half joking. While consumers surely provide the
demand, and may even have feedback or make improvements, one cannot claim
that "faster computers are invented through playing games". The experiment
is to find the Higgs boson. Higgs boson won't make our computers faster, we
*need* faster computers *in order to* detect the Higgs boson. Causality is
reversed. There's no practical *result* of the experiments that will make
the computers faster. It's disingenuous to have a page with a title
"benefits of particle physics to society" and then list incidental
"benefits" of a generic *large consumer*, not HEP. Any large consumer of
superconducting magnets or computers can list the same "benefits". What is
the *real* benefit of the actual experiments, of high energy physics?

If the goal is to support building of faster computers through demand, give
each employee of LHC a copy of FarCry 2 and send them home. It would be much
cheaper than $10 billion.

WWW was invented at CERN:

No, it wasn't. Hypertext over the networks was invented by Tim Berners-Lee,
who happened to be working at CERN. Yes, it was a very important milestone,
but it was more evolutionary than revolutionary. Hypertext (Apple's
Hypercard, gopher... etc), as well as the Internet existed. But my point is
not to try to diminish the value of his invention. On the contrary, it's Tim
Berners-Lee who deserves the credit, not CERN. He was working at CERN when
he made the invention, but he could have very well have been working at IBM
or Apple or Walmart or Starbucks (well, he'd have better access to networks
at that time with the former two). There are thousands of pioneers that
contributed in large or small ways to the present state of the internet, and
they worked at one place or another at the time they made their
contributions. Of course it's no surprise that most of these contributions
came from institutions with large computer infrastructure. TCPIP was
invented at DARPA, for instance (and no, that doesn't justify building
bombs, or give credence to the claim that building bombs is a benefit to
mankind, since it enables invention of network protocols).

The important point is, CERN's high energy physics research did not give
rise to Tim Berners-Lee's invention. It's because they had a decent
computing infrastructure and Berners-Lee saw it fit to try out his ideas
there. So the connection of WWW with HEP is incidental, or random. Hypertext
over TCPIP might have been invented anywhere, colliding leptons did not play
any role. If a cashier at Starbucks invents a new type of cash register,
that doesn't mean coffee is to take credit. High Energy Physics research
similarly, cannot be credited with WWW. If we are going to do that, we might
as well spend billions to open new patent bureaus at every corner. After
all, we owe to a patent bureau that which arguably is one of the most
important discoveries of the last century, and it stands to reason that the
more patent bureaus we have, the more discoveries we will make in physics.

(*) Yes, atomic and subatomic particle physics at one point had practical
applications. But like I mentioned several times earlier, we long since have
crossed over that line where practical applications are possible. There's
always a law of diminishing returns as you get further away. Studying the
atmosphere of Earth has definite benefits. Studying the atmosphere of Venus
has little, if any. Studying the atmosphere of a planet 20 LY away (when
such time comes) is completely useless and wasteful. Similar scales exist in
any endavour. With particle physics, that scale of practicality correlates
more or less with energy.

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