Naked Science Forum
Non Life Sciences => Physics, Astronomy & Cosmology => Topic started by: thewowsignal on 12/11/2022 19:44:24
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For over two decades the LHC consumed lots of money. Is the LHC worth the money already spent on it?
Is there a way to evaluate this gigantic project? If yes, what criteria should be applied?
What is the total cost since the beginning of this project?
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For over two decades the LHC consumed lots of money. Is the LHC worth the money already spent on it?
Is there a way to evaluate this gigantic project? If yes, what criteria should be applied?
What is the total cost since the beginning of this project?
Imagine the military gains that could be gained through understanding gravity, lightspeed, anti-gravity, bombs beyond compare.
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The LHC cost about $US5Billion to build, and about $1Billion a year to run.
https://en.as.com/latest_news/how-much-money-did-cerns-large-hadron-collider-cost-to-build-and-who-paid-for-it-n/
The main member countries are Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy, France and Spain, with a combined population of 322 million people, or an operating cost of about $3 per person per year. Include contributions from USA, India, Russia, etc, and the operating cost is even lower.
With the large collider being built at CERN, the USA abandoned a project to build a competing device for a similar price. For big projects like this, a worldwide collaboration is a good idea.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_Super_Collider
Scientific developments for the accelerator magnets and detectors of LHC has fed into better MRI machines and PET scanners. CERN researcher Tim Berners-Lee invented the World-Wide Web (which we use every day), and the CERN Grid Computer which stores and processes LHC results is the fore-runner of the internet's "Cloud" which we also use every day.
As always, how governments invest their money is a matter of hot political debate. But scientific and technological advances have changed our society radically in the past 50 years, and CERN/LHC has contributed some of that progress.
- The alternative to civilian R&D (like the LHC) is often military R&D, where the results are kept secret and don't benefit the public; the results of military R&D often go up in smoke, destroying social capital, rather than increasing it (as the war in Ukraine illustrates so graphically).
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Is there any official financial data available on the Internet? The LHC is financed from the public money, isn't it? I am unable to find any official information about it, cannot find it on CERN's website neither.
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I found some information here: https://home.cern/resources/faqs/facts-and-figures-about-lhc (https://home.cern/resources/faqs/facts-and-figures-about-lhc)
I am still trying to calculate total amount spent since the beginning of the LHC project.
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The LHC cost about $US5Billion to build
That's about enough to build a railway line from London to....er.... London, apparently.
When President Reagan asked what the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory contributed to the nation's defence, he was told "It's what makes the nation worth defending".
Much the same can be said of the LHC.
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The topic is about the LHC and whether it is worth putting more and more money into it. I can clearly see, that the British, who contribute to this giant project, do not have many arguments to support the money already spent on it. Is this because of the search for Antimatter? or dark matter? or perhaps dark energy? how about the graviton?
I still hope to see strong arguments defending this project. And hope to be able to calculate total amount of money spent so far.
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I can clearly see, that the British, who contribute to this giant project, do not have many arguments to support the money already spent on it.
The Higgs Boson is British. What further justification is needed?
But I don't think you can justify your statement without conducting yet another referendum.
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Ok, fair enough. British or Scottish - to me no difference at all. So, if every decade there is some significant discovery, I am looking forward to the next one. Hopefully, this year!
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Re: LHC costs, is it worth it?
Of What Good is a new born baby?
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Re: LHC costs, is it worth it?
Of What Good is a new born baby?
8 billion today apparently on earth.
If some use comes of it it will be worth it. The ICBM programme gave us NASA which gave us GPS etc.
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Humanity has to invent smth greater than LHC since we are already 8 billion...
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The ICBM programme gave us NASA which gave us GPS etc.
NACA, which morphed into NASA, is a lot older and gave us most high speed aerofoil designs.
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Re: LHC costs, is it worth it?
Of What Good is a new born baby?
8 billion today apparently on earth.
Quite Correct!
India & China are Truly Unstoppable.
The Ship shall Sink...Soon!
P.S. - If i ever ticked you off or insulted you in the past, then I'm Truly Sorry for it.
✌️
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The ICBM programme gave us NASA which gave us GPS etc.
NACA, which morphed into NASA, is a lot older and gave us most high speed aerofoil designs.
Was that the Germans ?
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Lippisch did a lot of pioneering work on delta wings but his principal interest was to improve the performance of sailplanes by getting rid of the tail empennage. I think the Me163 and Me262 had fairly crude aerofoils by modern standards as very little was known about near- and transonic airflow until 1945. A modern airliner glides almost as well as a 1930s sailplane, and a lot faster.
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. I think the Me163 and Me262 had fairly crude aerofoils by modern standards
I believe these aircraft had swept wings because of some other reason than high speed aerodynamics too, it was by luck that they adopted the form better suited to their speed. But then again, the Germans where not spending a fortune on these programmes, unlike the people who employed chuck Yeager
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I would say they are coming to the end of smashing protons it can only go so far.
As for delta wings it suprises me that it took so long to figure out it was wake turbulance coming from the wingtips interfering with the lift on the wings.A design flaw that took a long time and many deaths to figure out.
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smashing protons it can only go so far
CERN is investigating a successor to the LHC; one proposal would have a tunnel 100km in diameter, with the current LHC boosting the particles ready to inject into the new machine.
- They still haven't decided whether it will smash protons, or electrons & positrons, or... (and it isn't funded yet!)
- The new machine would also have new technology in the magnets, a spinoff from another expensive high-technology project, ITER (a nuclear fusion research reactor).
- At least ITER is easier to explain - if we can ever get fusion to work, here is a source of low-carbon base-load electricity!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_Circular_Collider
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsolved_problems_in_physics (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsolved_problems_in_physics)
Any plans to answer one of them soon? How much money do you need? :)
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Any plans to answer one of them soon? How much money do you need? :)
Probably more money than is available. But this is no reason to stop searching and if discoveries are found which raise further questions then this is still progress. Would you not agree that its better to continue and try than to give up just because all the answers are not available at this time.
Discovery of the unknown is far more exciting!
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Of course, however the number of unanswered questions grows. It seems more we 'discover', more questions we generate. Is mathematics truly capable of explaining the laws of the Universe?
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Is mathematics truly capable of explaining the laws of the Universe?
Newton's equation F=ma explains a lot about the universe, when combined with his equation about universal gravitation.
Are we capable of explaining everything? No. Much of the universe is outside our light cone, so we would have no way of verifying such a theory, let alone generating it.
- Are we capable of explaining the physics principles underlying everything we see? Maybe - we see with light (electromagnetic radiation), and physics has explored many interactions involving electromagnetic radiation
- Are we capable of explaining the physics principles underlying everything we feel? Definitely not yet! In our galactic orbit, the Sun feels the tug of Dark Matter, and we don't know what that is. The LHC has not yet turned up any likely particles as candidates.
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Is mathematics truly capable of explaining the laws of the Universe?
Physics is the business of expressing our observations in mathematical terms. What we call the laws of the universe are those equations and inequalities that are true for everything we have observed and predict what we observe next. It's a matter of discovery, not explanation.
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It's worth it, and a puny sum compared to military investments.