Somebody found a particle ... cost around $3 Billion apparently!

Ricardodaforce said:
I may not agree with Gramps on this one, but can't see the need to be so antagonistic towards him :shrug:
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It's the invitation to debate coupled with trappings that pretty much made debate futile, ie a fundamental lack of understanding of the subject matter and a willingness to ignore inconvenient truths. It is all just a bit insincere.
 
bass_junkie83 said:
Without wanting to sound like a hippy, imagine where we would be if there was no war. Take all that money and you could both fix a lot of wrongs in the world, as well as speed up our rate of extending our own knowledge.
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gramps said:
Hippy me, hippy me :D
This is so true but sadly not the priority of those who govern us ... or dare I say even of the majority of the governed!
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or more sadly still was there no war think of the innovations we'd be without. To name a few of the top of my head

Nylon
Biro
Computers
RADAR and the associated techs
Jet Aircraft
Sat Nav

I know I could keep going, but sadly, often war breads a very fast pace of innovation
 
gramps said:
I would forego all of those for world peace :)
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Off the top of my head I'd like to think I was nobel enough to agree with you.......but the more I think about that list (and they were intended to be a few examples, I could go on).....I'm not sure I do.

Please don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to condone it, I just think, sadly its an essential part of the human condition and without it we'd still be in caves
 
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Surely war is proof that we are still effectively 'in caves'?
 
boyfalldown said:
or more sadly still was there no war think of the innovations we'd be without. To name a few of the top of my head

Nylon
Biro
Computers
RADAR and the associated techs
Jet Aircraft
Sat Nav

I know I could keep going, but sadly, often war breads a very fast pace of innovation
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You have left off a lot of modern medicine and surgical techniques.
 
gramps said:
Surely war is proof that we are still effectively 'in caves'?
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this could get well off topic ;)

don't get me wrong, I'm just arguing that war is imply part of the human condition. Without that part of our characters we would still be in caves and purely in response to your and another posters comments mearly pointing out that wars are always times of great innovation.

Thats not saying its a good thing
 
menthel said:
You have left off a lot of modern medicine and surgical techniques.
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True, haemostatic bandages come to mind, but a shame that it takes war to produce such?
 
gramps said:
True, haemostatic bandages come to mind, but a shame that it takes war to produce such?
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it is, there is no denying that. Very quickly you can add modern antibiotics, many of the techniques used by paramedics and much emergency surgery to that list
 
boyfalldown said:
it is, there is no denying that. Very quickly you can add modern antibiotics, many of the techniques used by paramedics and much emergency surgery to that list
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Indeed, clearly war is a greater motivator than peace.
 
boyfalldown said:
or more sadly still was there no war think of the innovations we'd be without. To name a few of the top of my head

Nylon
Biro
Computers
RADAR and the associated techs
Jet Aircraft
Sat Nav

I know I could keep going, but sadly, often war breads a very fast pace of innovation
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And superglue, not sure if I could live without superglue! Right, lets drop some more bombs. :lol:

Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Maybe war and fighting really is just a natural part of being human. :thinking:
 
bass_junkie83 said:
And superglue, not sure if I could live without superglue! Right, lets drop some more bombs. :lol:

Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Maybe war and fighting really is just a natural part of being human. :thinking:
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:lol: there is possibly a fair amount you couldn't live without now though.

I'm sure you're right though :)
 
u8myufo said:
Well apart from Yv, I would just chain her up and
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Must be my feelthy mind but I thought you were going somewhere all together different with that one :naughty: :suspect:

also you don't need 3bn to take control of TP , as chris amply demonstrated on 'pink night' all you have to do is take a couple of birds round to marcels house and let him fondle them while you ply him with jaffa cakes :lol:
 
the way i understand it, theyve discovered The Force.

of course cracking the mystery of what is binding everything together means that clever people can a)make cheap energy b)kill us all with weapons that will make your molecules come apart
 
matty said:
the way i understand it, theyve discovered The Force.

of course cracking the mystery of what is binding everything together means that clever people can a)make cheap energy b)kill us all with weapons that will make your molecules come apart
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Which is your money on?
 
matty said:
the way i understand it, theyve discovered The Force.

of course cracking the mystery of what is binding everything together means that clever people can a)make cheap energy b)kill us all with weapons that will make your molecules come apart
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That's if we survive the black hole scenario! :lol: :runaway:

Gramps, I notice you don't have the most optimistic of outlooks. :D
 
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:D

Caveman34.jpg
 
ZoneV said:
Gramps, I notice you don't have the most optimistic of outlooks. :D
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Actually I do Ger but sadly if I explained why I would receive more abuse/get an infraction :shrug:
 
gramps said:
I think it's very low compared with making an existence where kids don't have to go to bed hungry or starving, elderly can't get hip/knee/cataract operations, whole areas of countries get swamped with water displacing millions ... I could go on!

Tell me how knowing about this particle will help resolve any of the really pressing issues that face mankind today.
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We could do that and more with the US arms budget for about a week.
 
It's hanging up over there. Don't go pinching any Jaffa cakes on your way out. ;)
 
bass_junkie83 said:
Feel free to question the figures, I have not thoroughly checked the sources, but they are just there to make a point.

Cost of the Afghan war to date = $460bn
Cost of the Irag war to date = $800bn
Costs attributed to alcohol to the NHS each year = £3bn
Costs attributed to smoking to the NHS each year = £1.5bn


The list could go on and on. The point being, kids are not starving in Africa because of scientific research at CERN, nor is it the reason that people have to wait longer than they should for operations or the like.
The money is there to do good with, it's just chosen not to.

If CERN didn't get the funding it did, do we really think it would go to a more publicly 'worthy' cause?
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how much tax revenue is there from people that smoke
one could argue that smokers are less of a burden as they pay more taxes and die earlier
 
my money is on weapon first...that said, im happy to be surprised.
 
menthel said:
You have left off a lot of modern medicine and surgical techniques.
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Indeed, it is the research done at Dachau and Auschwitz by the Nazis that forms the foundations of today's treatment for hypothermia.

Even the bad, produced some (very little!) good.
 
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purpleclouds said:
Indeed, it is the research done at Auschwitz by the Nazis that forms the foundations of today's treatment for hypothermia.

Even the bad, produced some (very little!) good.
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Yep, the human experiments that were performed by the Nazis were not one of medicines proudest moments but did give a number of insights and advances.

The thing is when there is a break down of morality in a controlled fashion (modern world conflicts), such barriers to research are broken down. A blessing and a curse, one might say.
 
It's bit strange how they have been looking for this particle for nearly fifty years and then found it in the Hadron collider at Cern? ..... What's the odds on that? :)
 
and all that time i thought it was down the back of the sofa...
 
bass_junkie83 said:
Feel free to question the figures, I have not thoroughly checked the sources, but they are just there to make a point.

Cost of the Afghan war to date = $460bn
Cost of the Irag war to date = $800bn
Costs attributed to alcohol to the NHS each year = £3bn
Costs attributed to smoking to the NHS each year = £1.5bn


The list could go on and on. The point being, kids are not starving in Africa because of scientific research at CERN, nor is it the reason that people have to wait longer than they should for operations or the like.
The money is there to do good with, it's just chosen not to.

If CERN didn't get the funding it did, do we really think it would go to a more publicly 'worthy' cause?
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You forgot to add this to the list :thumbs: And I would imagine the revenue from Alcohol was just as much
 
This all about knowledge for knowledge sake, and a darn good thing too.

Often called Blue Sky Research

Blue skies research (also called blue sky science) is scientific research in domains where "real-world" applications are not immediately apparent. Proponents of this mode of science argue that unanticipated scientific breakthroughs are sometimes more valuable than the outcomes of agenda-driven research, heralding advances in genetics and stem cell biology as examples of unforeseen benefits of research that was originally seen as purely theoretical in scope
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The discovery of electricity in the 19th century. At the time it was regarded as an interesting phenomenom with no practical application
 
Garnett said:
Stop trolling please! This endeavour produced the Internet which in and of itself helped every group mentioned already.
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Although I agree with your point..... technically it was ARPA who invented the internet back in the 60's.

It was a network designed to use packet switching instead of circuit switching, providing robust communications in the event of a major network disruption (read Russian A-Bomb attack).

CERN just added an 'app' you could call it (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol) in order to allow information to be passed readily amongst the intelligencia of the day.

When you consider the combined brain power there and those involved with the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model to allow the communications of which we are using to discuss results at the LHC, its quite sad that petty forum squabbles are whats born from their endeavours. :lol:
 
The 'money could be spent better elsewhere' opinions stems of ignorance I'm afraid. The computing, engineering and pure science advancements involved in these high energy physics projects benefit a huge swathe of applications outside it's core mission.

Not least of which is anything that leads us to the panacea for all other problems, namely cheap, clean, abundant energy, is priceless.
 
$3bn (though I thought the cost was more than twice that) over how many years? Small change to determine something that could have such a huge and wide ranging impact.

Regarding aid, etc. go look up how much money is out there, $3bn (or 6 or 9bn however much it did cost) isn't really much at all in comparison. Heck, the ridiculous public transport ticketing system in Melbourne, a city of only 4 million people, has cost not far short of $2bn (granted, that is a waste of money).
 
mid_gen said:
The 'money could be spent better elsewhere' opinions stems of ignorance I'm afraid. The computing, engineering and pure science advancements involved in these high energy physics projects benefit a huge swathe of applications outside it's core mission.

Not least of which is anything that leads us to the panacea for all other problems, namely cheap, clean, abundant energy, is priceless.
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Cheap, clean and abundant energy has been available for a long time, but suppressed.
 
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