Was The Hadron Collider A Monumental Waste Of Money?

Hello. Today I was watching StoryVille on BBCiplayer and it had a documentary charting the "The Hadron Collider". I'm sure most of you have heard of it.

This cost billions and billions of dollars. Basically to find Higgs Boson (or god particle) with it's density indicating if we are in a "multiverse" or if the universe is "supersymmetry". The gist of it seemed to be, if it was 140, it would be a multiverse, suggesting we wouldn't get anymore particle elements to find. And that the universe would be chaotic and eventually die out. Or supersymmetry which would indicate a structure with more elements we are unaware of.

Anyway, as this documentary got to it's end and I watched the scientists patting each other the back, cheering at finding this thing through a spike surge on a graph. The thought "what a fucking waste of money" came to mind. After you find out one or the other, what then? How does this benefit society in anyway? Who gives a shit?

How do you feel about masses of money and time being put into such as project? Is it worth it to find out the origins of teh unvierse? or would more immediate matters (e.g. poverty, jobs, arguably useful technology) be better spent? For me the answer is pretty clear.

No it's not

I don't know. I'm not a scientist and thus not qualified to answer this question.

No. Finding the Higgs Boson is not the only purpose of the collider, nor is it the only collider in the world. These machines provide invaluable insight into the subatomic world. So far the Hadron Collider has provided years and years worth of data for scientists to investigate. It gives us a brief glimpse into what the universe is made of. It help us to better understand the working nature of forces and it shows a brief view of the beginnings of the universe. You can't put a dollar value on the amount of knowledge that can be learned from such a machine. Yes social programs are important but you cannot advance as a society if all of your time and resources go towards social programs. Science, the arts, literature are all important facets of human advancement.

It fulfilled it's goal. It helped push science forward.

It was a crucial investment in the future of humanity. One that more people should recognize.

We live in a modern world filled with the end-result practical applications of advancements achieved through science that was (once upon a time) purely fundamental research in origin.

"Current applied research often relies on past fundamental research. Isaac Newton wasn’t trying to help put satellites in orbit or a man on the moon when he developed his laws of motion, but NASA engineers rely on those laws. Mathematician G. H. Hardy proclaimed that “pure” mathematics, and especially his own field of number theory, was “useless”, which Hardy considered a virtue because that meant that number theory could never be applied to any “warlike purpose”. But it turns out that number theory is central to public key cryptography, and Hardy’s other example of useless mathematics–Einsten’s equations of relativity–was key to the development of nuclear weapons. And it’s not just fundamental physics and mathematics that turns out to be highly applicable down the road. Genetic algorithms, a routine way to solve practical optimization problems, ultimately derive from Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection. It would be trivially easy to keep citing examples here, but you get the point. And no, I don’t think you can argue that we already have all the fundamental knowledge we’re ever likely to need, so that while funding fundamental research was worthwhile in the past, it no longer is."

So I would argue that pure science research, without end-use practical application in mind, can and does benefit humanity in the long run in ways we can't even conceive of now.

in 1924:

semiconductors: what a big fucking waste of money... 'myright?

Well, who bear the cost of the collider?

I mean think it this way, if we are going to put money into science until ALL OTHER humanity's problems are solved then you are never gonna start with that research.

Aside from the obvious reality that most of these scientific endeavors eventually help us....solve humanity's problems!

How will this help us though? Lets say they find more particles. What then? Aside from understanding, is that it? Most of the general public probably wont give a shit. As joe smoe it's vaguely interesting to me. But that's about the extent of it.

Something doesn't need to have immediate value to be important to mankind. A lot of great things we have today were discovered by accident.

So basically most people have no idea what good it'll do but it was expensive as **** so it must be good "because science". Fair enough =P

I'm all for investing in science but spending billions now on something that might be useful eventually is a bit hard to swallow.

@korvus:

Near as I can tell, no one here is saying that. What they are saying is that a large amount of the modern world we now enjoy comes from discoveries made which at the time had no practical applications in mind. Ever had an X-ray done?

@dsmccracken: As far as I can tell, we're saying exactly the same thing. A lot of money was spent on something that may have unknown practical applications in the future. I wasn't questioning the use of it in the long run, just saying that right now it doesn't seem to have any.