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CERN accepts $1B in private cash towards Future Circular Collider

physicsworld.com

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Re: CERN accepts $1B in private cash towards Future Circular Collider

#101

Post by surgical_fire »

jocaal wrote: post #89
surgical_fire wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes no sense. "Decoupling science from the state" is just bullshit from "government icky, taxation is theft" morons. No, governments should definitely fund scientific research. When it is public it is the only guarantee that it will benefit everyone. Scientific research done by private entities is kneecapped by their financial interests (and be very sure they will bury any advance that jeopardize their financi…

How are radio telescopes and mars rovers in my interest? How would you know what is in my interest? I worked for my money so the person in the best position to judge what is in my interest is me. I am sorry for you if that is such a hard concept to understand.

Frankly, your particular interest is completely irrelevant.

Scientific research is of societal interest, even if your particular interest differ. The best you can do is vote for parties that promise to shut down scientific research, or find another group of likeminded morons and form such a party with them.

If you disagree with the concept of taxes, well, sucks to be you. May your desires never come to fruition, because life would be hell.

Re: CERN accepts $1B in private cash towards Future Circular Collider

#102

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

chrystalkey wrote: post #31
arthurfirst wrote: post #30

it's already a black hole for funding

Said the grumpy grandpa, shaking his hand at the cloudy sky. I dont know what value that comment contributed, funding research is always a long shot. And often times it fails, but that is kinda its purpose, we dont know what we dont know.

It's largely fans of Sabine Hossenfelder youtube channel, where some years ago sadly she shifted into just being a grifter selling conspiracy theories about the funding of particle physics.

The audience here tends to vastly overweight contrarian near conspiracy theory style stuff, so this sort of comment shows up on literally every damn post about physics research.

Re: CERN accepts $1B in private cash towards Future Circular Collider

#103

Post by bonsai_spool »

somethingsome wrote: post #91
bonsai_spool wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This may be one of the good cases, then. I'm not an expert in cancer but I am a biologist and physician. The head and neck cancer (here) and various pediatric indications get the most attention but it has felt that proton therapy has been seeking an indication for almost 40 years now. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6... The study was designed to show non-inferiority, which doesn't preclude…

In Europe at least, many insurances cover it if you have the right criterias. From my visits, they mostly focus on children that have some very nasty cancers, the IBA hospitals are all designed with children in mind (to avoid stressing them), and from my memory, a unique hospital is often enough to treat a whole country for the kind of cancer they target. Now, if it is on par with classical radiotherapy BUT it gives…

Yes, all of your points are presented as arguments to pay for this (children, comorbodities, specialization, specific cancers)

Re: CERN accepts $1B in private cash towards Future Circular Collider

#104

Post by mike-the-mikado »

colechristensen wrote: post #75
mike-the-mikado wrote: post #24

As someone who supports pure science research, I would be interested to understand if any of the discoveries of CERN (and related projects) in the last 50 years (say) have proved to have practical application. (Specifically, "discoveries", not technology developed in support of the research)

This is such a weasel question because you can keep saying whatever was new was "just technology" not pure discoveries. No, there hasn't been any big "new physics" since the standard model in the 70s, everything has been refinement and specifics. You can't go to Walmart and buy something that couldn't exist unless we knew the precise mass of the top quark or the Higgs boson. There have been a tremendous amount of dev…

I was hoping that someone would be able to point me to some practical technical advance enabled by discoveries or measurements at CERN (or similar establishments).

It seems plausible to me that better understanding of the properties the subatomic particles might enable some previously unexploited technology (e.g. in quantum computing or sensing).

Re: CERN accepts $1B in private cash towards Future Circular Collider

#105

Post by chrystalkey »

jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #102
chrystalkey wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Said the grumpy grandpa, shaking his hand at the cloudy sky. I dont know what value that comment contributed, funding research is always a long shot. And often times it fails, but that is kinda its purpose, we dont know what we dont know.

It's largely fans of Sabine Hossenfelder youtube channel, where some years ago sadly she shifted into just being a grifter selling conspiracy theories about the funding of particle physics. The audience here tends to vastly overweight contrarian near conspiracy theory style stuff, so this sort of comment shows up on literally every damn post about physics research.

Dont be too harsh on the first comment, I'm Sure he's a good guy. Interesting to see that hossenfelder thing, I was'nt aware of it. Her videos got recommended to me but title+thumb always felt like an over the top commentary with more drama than actual problem to be aware of.

So I never clicked and at some point youtube stopped.

Re: CERN accepts $1B in private cash towards Future Circular Collider

#106

Post by jasonwatkinspdx »

chrystalkey wrote: post #105
jasonwatkinspdx wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's largely fans of Sabine Hossenfelder youtube channel, where some years ago sadly she shifted into just being a grifter selling conspiracy theories about the funding of particle physics. The audience here tends to vastly overweight contrarian near conspiracy theory style stuff, so this sort of comment shows up on literally every damn post about physics research.

Dont be too harsh on the first comment, I'm Sure he's a good guy. Interesting to see that hossenfelder thing, I was'nt aware of it. Her videos got recommended to me but title+thumb always felt like an over the top commentary with more drama than actual problem to be aware of. So I never clicked and at some point youtube stopped.

Yeah, it's sad she went that direction, because her educational videos that aren't agitpop are very good.

It's just another example of how the incentives on modern social media pull people towards ragebait and other forms of grift.

Re: CERN accepts $1B in private cash towards Future Circular Collider

#107

Post by patmorgan23 »

jocaal wrote: post #89
surgical_fire wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes no sense. "Decoupling science from the state" is just bullshit from "government icky, taxation is theft" morons. No, governments should definitely fund scientific research. When it is public it is the only guarantee that it will benefit everyone. Scientific research done by private entities is kneecapped by their financial interests (and be very sure they will bury any advance that jeopardize their financi…

How are radio telescopes and mars rovers in my interest? How would you know what is in my interest? I worked for my money so the person in the best position to judge what is in my interest is me. I am sorry for you if that is such a hard concept to understand.

So you think we shouldn't try to understand the world around us?

Re: CERN accepts $1B in private cash towards Future Circular Collider

#108

Post by jiggawatts »

mike-the-mikado wrote: post #24

As someone who supports pure science research, I would be interested to understand if any of the discoveries of CERN (and related projects) in the last 50 years (say) have proved to have practical application. (Specifically, "discoveries", not technology developed in support of the research)

This kind of thing always reminds me G. H. Hardy, a mathematician that famously took pride in working on pure number theory, which he described as having "no practical use" and therefore being morally superior to applied mathematics connected to war or industry.

This ended up as the theoretical bedrock upon which modern encryption algorithms are built, enabling trillions of dollars of economic activity (as well as spying and other nefarious or ethically questionable activities).

I noticed (as have others) that even the purest of pure fundamental research has this oddly persistent pattern of becoming applied to everyday problems sooner or later.

The x-ray telescope mirror design used for Chandra -- motived only by pure intellectual curiosity -- ended up being a key development stepping stone towards ASML's TWINSCAN tools that use focused x-rays for chip lithography. Arguably this is more important to the global economy now that even oil is!

Similarly, particle accelerators like CERN might be the next chip lithography beam sources. The technologies being developed for research physicists such as laser-driven "desktop" accelerators might be just the ticket to replace tin droplet x-ray light sources.

Who knows?

We certainly won't if we don't built these things for pure research first to find out!

Re: CERN accepts $1B in private cash towards Future Circular Collider

#109

Post by somethingsome »

bonsai_spool wrote: post #103
somethingsome wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Europe at least, many insurances cover it if you have the right criterias. From my visits, they mostly focus on children that have some very nasty cancers, the IBA hospitals are all designed with children in mind (to avoid stressing them), and from my memory, a unique hospital is often enough to treat a whole country for the kind of cancer they target. Now, if it is on par with classical radiotherapy BUT it gives…

Yes, all of your points are presented as arguments to pay for this (children, comorbodities, specialization, specific cancers)

I think we agree in general, I don't disagree that maybe Proton therapy is not better than radiotherapy, it might but we lack some evidence.

I only argue that if they are equal in quality of treatment and the 'total cost' is the evaluation parameter, it is way more complex than the treatment itself, and it could be justified to use proton therapy, even if more expensive.

Nice talk anyways :)

Re: CERN accepts $1B in private cash towards Future Circular Collider

#110

Post by thrance »

naasking wrote: post #63

What a waste. So many more science experiments with better expected ROI could be funded for the money needed for the FCC, and we're not even expecting any significant new insights from it.

> So many more science experiments with better expected ROI could be funded for the money needed for the FCC

Ok, like what? Let the scientists at CERN decide what to spend their funding on.

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