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Comment by jgoodknight | Hacker News Reader

I do think it's worthwhile to question building an incredibly expensive particle collider without a specific purpose in mind, when the money could go towards fields like fusion energy, quantum computing, or cancer research

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We have more than enough money to do all of the above. Science is a sideshow; it absorbs a nearly infinitesimal part of the economy, and could be easily funded by a military funding decrease small enough that it'd scarcely be noticed.

Yes, a larger collider is unlikely to find much, but it's cheap enough that we should do it anyway. As bets go, it's a good one.

> it absorbs a nearly infinitesimal part of the economy

In 2018 the NSF requested $6.653 billion. (More than the stupid wall--don't tell Trump.)

That's some real money, and it should be well-spent. A new collider is probably not well-spent.

Or 1% of the budget of the department of defense. In other words, a sideshow.

The trick is to make the military finance your science project by finding a military justification for it.

I don’t know why you were downvoted, a lot of CompSci research is funded this way, including some of the things a few of us enjoy today (internet.)

It worked for Galileo: https://www.wearethemighty.com/articles/galileo-was-one-of-t...

Agreed, but good luck convincing Congress. You have to deal with the reality of the situation. Sure, the money exists, but you won't get it. So what do you do with the money you _can_ get?

Luckily, CERN is not financed by the US Gov.

Of course, but problems around funding are not unique to the US. You still have to make do with that you can get.

The U.S. isn't a member state but the US government (through the NSF and DOE) contribute a ton of money to the research, development, and operation of the LHC and it's major experiments.

What's the budget towards fusion energy research? Given the political difficulties in funding fundamental research, would that be a better sideshow for making a positive difference in the world if we had to prioritize one or the other?

What criticisms of the military budget always fail to take into account is that the military budget funds science too. The US Government is the largest sponsor of science in the world, and the military currently funds more science dollar for inflation adjusted dollar than it did even during the cold war.

The military's budget for Research, Development, Testing, and Evaluation in 2016 was 69B, or 11.9% of the total budget.

https://csbaonline.org/reports/research-development-test-and...

https://www.aip.org/fyi/2018/fy19-budget-request-defense-st-...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_...

development, testing and evaluation in a military context does not sound like fundamental science at all...

sure there will be research, and some of it will be open, but all the research behind closed doors does not enjoy the scrutiny of normal research, so there is plenty of opportunity to waste money on nonsense "research" ...

Observing the superior tech used by even standard military it's obvious that there is a fuckton of pure reserch going on, most of it will be top secret for many years though. NSA records this message and will apply some superhuman quantum algorithms to it and theres nothing I can do about it. Hail our petrodollar overlords!

I'm sure we are simply talking about different kinds of research...

Just like I'm sure 20 years ago a market researcher was convinced he was doing "pure" research...

The point that I was trying to make, which apparently must be downvoted into oblivion, is that comparing big numbers to really huge numbers leads to some very distorted conclusions. No matter how really huge the defense budget is[1], spending $20 on a drinking straw is a lot.

Speaking of someone who has been on the receiving end of lots of research money throughout my career, still...$6 billion is a lot of money, and it should not be wasted. I agree with the original article that a new particle collider probably is not what we should do with this money.

[1] (and yes I agree it's too much--go fight that battle if you like, but you probably won't win a single cent back)

knock off the whinging about downvotes. this isn't reddit. people dislike what you're saying. move on.

The $5 billion is only a down payment on the wall. The total cost is estimated at $15-25 billion https://www.cnbc.com/2015/10/09/this-is-what-trumps-border-w...

So you're saying we should build a big collider and make Mexico pay for it?

Collider wall!

I am not sure why the above comment is being downvoted.

I remember ... early 90s ... when the Superconducting Super Collider was being proposed/started in Waxahachie Texas. The original claim to the broader scientific community funded by NSF, DOE, and DOD was that building this wouldn't impact other science funding.

Then my thesis advisors grant was reduced as part of cost savings to move money around for the SSC.

So ... far from being a good expenditure, real science was cut to make room for a project that ultimately was shut down. Hit me directly, as I couldn't take a research assistant position with my advisor, I had to take a teaching position to provide me income and tuition support.

These were not fun times.

Sabine's article is quite good, and she asked a meaningful set of questions. A new collider is probably not the best use of funds ... though ... honestly ... I'd like to see a helluva lot more money pushed to real science, so we can build the infrastructure (non-retired) scientists need, fund the software they need to develop.

Doubling or trebling NSF budget would help. Similarly for NIH, CDC, and others.

Not that I think we should repeat the funding mistakes of the past (Ph.D. in physics in 90's, think 1000 applicants for each open tenure track position, and 100's of applicants for each national lab position). We should make sure we are doing quality work, and enable researchers to take risks. Current grant process doesn't really allow this.

Eh, the SSC example is a case about poor scoping and oversight, the arguments Hossenfelder make are more fundamental.

Still, it is a bit weird to get upset about the Future circular collider when the International Linear Collider is the next big High energy physics project.

The US is not even a member of CERN.

True but the U.S. has contributed hundreds of millions to the LHC and still does. https://www.aip.org/fyi/2008/us-contribution-lhc-budget-and-...

Accelerator itself is mostly CERN responsibility, but detectors are usually international collaborations. US contributed a lot to the CMS detector at LHC (as well as Russia, another non-member state).

https://science.energy.gov/~/media/hep/pdf/files/pdfs/uslhcc...

http://cms.web.cern.ch/news/using-russian-navy-shells

You have to consider more than the upfront cost. These machines are incredibly expensive to run and consume a tremendous amount of energy. The long term environmental cost needs to be factored in as well.

That's still pretty minor compared to the energy and environmental costs of anything else.

No it's not. The LHC uses as much power as a small to medium sized city [0]. The next generation collider will obviously require a lot more energy.

What's your point anyways? We should only consider the cost and environmental impact of something if it's comparable to the most costly and impactful endeavors out there?

[0] https://home.cern/science/engineering/powering-cern

How much energy do you think the US military goes through in a day? LHC is probably .1% of that.

So why do we bother doing anything? Why recycle at all? Let's just give up everything since the US military blows us all away in terms of scale.

To first order, environmental impacts are roughly proportional to the amount of energy used, which is proportional to the amount of money spent. To first order.

The argument the article is trying to make is that as bets go, it's actually not a good one. It's not obvious we should spend the money on a larger collider for no other reason than "because scientific progress." There is much more nuance to it than that.

Particle accelerators are used for cancer research :)

https://home.cern/news/press-release/cern/new-cern-facility-...

https://www6.slac.stanford.edu/news/2018-11-28-future-fighti...

Put it all toward life extension and physicists can spend hundreds of years deeply researching these problems instead of having to start from scratch every generation only to get only 20-40 years of useful working life per individual.

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