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Comment by blasterford | Hacker News Reader

I know it's going to be a very unpopular opinion here, but I find it hard to see the worth in thinking about black holes and other physics/astronomy questions.

Is the large hadron collider really worth the money?

Can someone highlight some real world advances that this sort of thing provides? eg will it make holographic TVs possible or hoverboards?

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When the Queen asked Michael Faraday of what use his funny experiments with magnets would amount to, he is reported to have said - "Of what use is a new born baby?"

From another angle, during some collider hearings in congress, the physicist RObert Wilson was asked: "Did the collider have anything to do with promoting “the security of the country”"? He replied "nothing to do directly with defending our country except to make it worth defending".

In other words, fundamental research has definite technological implications, but also just satisfying our curiosity about nature is reason enough.

The solid state laser was initially described by it's inventor as "oh, it's probably useless, but it's a cool toy". Now it underlies the foundation of our modern communications infrastructure.

Research into the structure of the nucleus of atoms was initially done "just to see how it works". The unexpected results that came from 'pointless experiments' led to the theory of relativity, and from there, nuclear power, GPS, and dozens of other advances.

Point to almost any bit of modern technology, and you'll see advances that came because of earlier fundamental research that was conducted "just to see" without a specific goal.

So, yes, being able to understand the world around us is indisputably a requirement to be able to mould it around us.

Scientific research has a very high turnaround time. If you want to find out what you're profiting from now, look back nearly a century, when Einstein theorized about simulated emission of photons (laser). Or (more parallel to the LHC), the early particle accelerators, which taught us about the insides of heavy elements and let us construct nuclear power plants etc.

Generally speaking, by the time you can easily see the practical benefit of some piece of research, it's no longer science; it's engineering. Science necessarily does not bring practical benefits for long periods of time.

Edit to clarify wording and add: a pity up-vote for you - that was a good and fair question.

It's impossible to tell in advance what good will come out of such research.

Noone could have foreseen that the general theory of relativity would be fundamental in developing GPS for example

The discovery of the electron led to the electron gun that helped build the cathode ray tube which gave us television.

It's quite amazing to see how one thing leads to another.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron#Discovery

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electron_gun

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathode_ray_tube

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_television#Electroni...

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