On Wed, 24 Sep 2008 22:45:44 -0500, Mueen Nawaz wrote:

> somebody wrote:
>> What if jumping from a bridge will cause you to fly?
>> 
>> You don't try random things and hope that you'll get fantastic results.
> 
> 	I sincerely hope that the LHC was not built to do random things.

I suspect that it's not the much sought-after infinite improbability 
drive. :-)

Jim

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On Thu, 25 Sep 2008 01:00:34 -0600, somebody wrote:

> That's much harder than to better divide an existing pie

"It's too hard" is not a valid argument.

Jim

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"Jim Henderson" <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote in message
news:48dbb06d$1@news.povray.org...
> On Wed, 24 Sep 2008 12:42:14 -0600, somebody wrote:

> > No. Satellites falls into "unmanned" space exploration. I specifically
> > made a distinction: Unamanned=good, manned=bad. The fringe benefits of
> > manned exploration to unmanned is not worth carrying out manned
> > exploration. Spend that money on unmanned, and you can launch 10 times
> > more satellites.

> One of the more significant benefits of manned exploration of space is a
> better understanding of muscle atrophy - which has had real-world
> practical application in disease research.

Sure, because there are not aldready tens of thousands of easily accessible
bedridden patients in hospitals already to conduct the research on.

If you are thinking of MARES, it mainly adresses atrophy due to
microgravity. So it's to solve a problem that manned space exploration
created anyway. Take out manned exploration, the artificially created
problem goes away. Now you can use the freed funds to do research that
actually will benefit those who suffer on earth.

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"Jim Henderson" <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote in message
news:48dbafbb@news.povray.org...
> On Wed, 24 Sep 2008 11:21:18 -0600, somebody wrote:

> > * I challenge anyone to provide a single practical application that the
> > discovery of the top quark (mass) has enabled.

> > * I challenge anyone to provide a single practical application that the
> > discovery of the top quark (mass) may one day enable. Top quark was
> > discovered more than a decade ago at Fermilab, an older generation
> > collider than LHC.

> Straw man argument.  Assuming that there isn't one *yet* doesn't mean
> there will never be one.  Sometimes it takes years for discoveries like
> this to find their way into practical application.

Do you really believe top quark will ever have a practical application in
the next, say, 100 years?

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48dbc037@news.povray.org...
> "Jim Henderson" <nos### [at] nospamcom> wrote in message
> news:48dbafbb@news.povray.org...
>> On Wed, 24 Sep 2008 11:21:18 -0600, somebody wrote:
>
> Do you really believe top quark will ever have a practical application in
> the next, say, 100 years?
>
Religions are founded on beliefs, science is not.

Marc

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somebody wrote:
> Do you really believe top quark will ever have a practical application in
> the next, say, 100 years?

	You keep asking this, so I'll respond with a statement that I think 
most here agree with:

	"I have no reason to believe that finding the top quark will have no 
practical applications, and thus won't take it as an assumption."

	Besides, why limit to 100 years? What if it provides benefits 300 years 
from now?
	

-- 
AAAAA - American Association Against Acronym Abuse


                     /\  /\               /\  /
                    /  \/  \ u e e n     /  \/  a w a z
                        >>>>>>mue### [at] nawazorg<<<<<<
                                    anl

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somebody wrote:
>> One of the more significant benefits of manned exploration of space is a
>> better understanding of muscle atrophy - which has had real-world
>> practical application in disease research.
> 
> Sure, because there are not aldready tens of thousands of easily accessible
> bedridden patients in hospitals already to conduct the research on.

	While I won't jump in and say the research was valuable (I really don't 
know), your argument is fallacious.

	When you have a patient lying in a bed here on Earth, there are a 
number of factors that we can't control. If you want to understand 
muscle atrophy, you won't know how it depends on variables W, X, Y and 
Z, because we can't eliminate those variables. We can just guess that 
perhaps it depends on them.

	Going up in space eliminated some of them, and provided a better 
understanding. It's not at all implausible that that knowledge may 
benefit those who are at 9.81g.

-- 
AAAAA - American Association Against Acronym Abuse


                     /\  /\               /\  /
                    /  \/  \ u e e n     /  \/  a w a z
                        >>>>>>mue### [at] nawazorg<<<<<<
                                    anl

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Stephen wrote:
> Doctor John <joh### [at] homecom> wrote:
>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>> Hash: SHA1
>>
>> m_a_r_c wrote:
>> |
>> | Besides finding at last Milliway's Restaurant at the End of the Universe
>> | adress !
>> |
>> | Marc
>> |
>>
>> I ate there only next week :-)
>> The food's not as good as it's going to be
>>
>> John
> 
> They do a good bread made from ground bones under that bridge ;)
> 
> Stephen
> 
What can you possibly mean? :-)

John

-- 
"Eppur si muove" - Galileo Galilei

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On 25-Sep-08 8:13, somebody wrote:
> "Darren New" <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote in message


> I cannot cite for something that doesn't exist.

Exactly, so stop doing it.

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On 25-Sep-08 2:56, somebody wrote:
> "andrel" <a_l### [at] hotmailcom> wrote in message
> news:48D### [at] hotmailcom...
>> On 24-Sep-08 19:21, somebody wrote:
[snp]
>>> * Side effects and peripheral benefits does not justify an endavour of
> this
>>> magnitude. If you are going to suggest grid computing as a benefit, why
> not
>>> suggest pouring all 10 billion dollars into it? That would give much
> bigger
>>> and surer yields.
>> No, it wouldn't. Because this and other technology was developed to
>> support scientific research at first and only then the potential for the
>> general public was discovered. You could have poured money directly into
>> grid computing, the internet and GPS (to name a few examples that came
>> up), except nobody would have had the vision to do so.
> 
> What does high energy physics have anything to do with GPS?

Nothing directly, why do you ask? I was talking about technology in 
general.

> 
>>> * Moon program (or in general, manned space exploration programs)
> are/were
>>> huge wastes of funds as well. If there were any merits to it, we would
> have
>>> visited the moon in the last 40 years. It was one-upmanship, clear and
>>> simple. Post-facto justifications, "space-age-technology" hype as a
> result
>>> is NASA trying to save face.
> 
>> You totally missed the point of the moon program. It was not intended to
>> go to the moon, it was intended for the process of going. The journey is
>> far more important than the arrival. (somebody (not you) said that much
>> better)
> 
> No, the goal was was exactly precisely 100% to *be* at the moon before
> somebody (not me) else. Nobody cared about the journey. Why romanticize
> something that was essentially a pissing contest?

No it wasn't. Or more precisely it was something disguised as one. That 
is how management and politics work. Set a goal and give a story. The 
naive ones will take that for granted and people who recognize the trick 
will still be motivated, as long as it fits with there own goals. 
Kennedy did it with the space program, Reagan tried it with the star 
wars program (and failed mostly), Blair an Bush tried it with Iraq (also 
with mixed results).

>>> * Hence my question, what possible practical expectation is there from
> this
>>> experiment? Feel free to ask around. No honest scientist will give you
> an
>>> answer.
> 
>> Many will and did, but whatever they say will be disregarded by you as
>> irrelevant. So why would you even ask such a question.
> 
> Nobody did, and I know nobody will. Knowledge for knowledge's sake is NOT a
> _practical_ expectation.

No, many people answered that and you refuse to accept the answer 
because it is not the one you want.
Short recap:
1) knowledge in itself has practical value, at least for scientists
2) you can not judge the practical value of something before it starts.
3) almost every experiment done in the history of science had zero 
direct practical implications.
4) Nearly all practical things were based on knowledge or experience 
gathered those earlier experiments without practical use.
5) OTOH many experiments done turned out to have no practical 
consequences whatsoever (yet).
6) Proving some experiment was in category 4 is straightforward, proving 
it to be in category 5 is impossible.
Conclusion: your question was invalid.

Take it or leave it. Feel free to devise your own standards for judging 
if something has practical value or not. Feel free to decide for 
yourself what you would and what you wouldn't support in science and for 
how much. But don't bother the rest of the world with your half baked 
ideas that you did not think through yet. Alternatively, if it was meant 
as a sincere question for other people's opinions, learn not to sound as 
if you and you alone know the truth.

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