"Darren New" <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote in message
news:48dd34c7$1@news.povray.org...
> somebody wrote:

> > 1) Radioactivity was not called "high energy physics" back then, nor is
it
> > called that now.

> You're missing the point. (As you seem to have been for much of the
> discussion.)  It wasn't called that, but that's what it was,

No, it wasn't.

> and nobody  knew when they discovered it what it would lead to.

So if X is a member of Y and Z and if Q is a member of Y, then Q is also a
member of Z?

Ie: Radiation, which when we observed it we didn't know what it would lead
to, actually led to useful applications, so, say, Higgs, which we don't know
what it may lead to, will lead to useful applications when observed. Such
reasoning doesn't follow.

Moreover, radioactivity obviously *did* have an effect on everyday life.
That was how it was discovered (much like how magnetism or electricity was
discovered in ancient times).

HEP operates in a domain not presently or foreseeably applicable to everyday
life. We are not trying to explain an observed phenomenon, we are trying to
"observe" something, that which is not even currently a phenomenon.
Unfortunately, not all discoveries will bear fruit in a lifetime or twenty.
There's no such physical law. Some discoveries will remain academic for a
long, long time.

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