Comments on: Large Hadron Collider? Our priorities are way off!

By: seyoum

seyoum — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 18:17:32 +0000

This is nothing but some nutty physicists childhood fantasy. It has no apparent real life application. The actual cost is $8 billion. The money would have have been well spent if it was put in to life science, medical, or engineering research. I strongly believe every scientist should be given the opportunity to pursue their curiosity, but priority should be given to those who can provide tangible result for the well-being and advancement of mankind

By: Scott Elford

Scott Elford — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 05:16:48 +0000

What a waste of money! Who could ever allow this when there is poverty and water quality issues all over the world! Things like this, space exploration, and building huge money wasters like the Burj Dubai need to be halted until we can figure out about our own future on the planet. Not only is our money and resources being wasted on these projects, but also our most brilliant minds! There is way to many issues on earth that need to be dealt with (poverty, water quality, population, climate change, alternative energy) before we go forward with these unnecessary projects of interest.

By: Life is grand » Blog Archive » Has the Large Hadron Collider destroyed the world yet?

Thu, 11 Sep 2008 19:31:10 +0000

[...] You can also ask yourself another question about the LHC; “Large Hadron Collider? Our priorities are way off!”. [...]

By: Paul M. Watson

Paul M. Watson — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 18:16:52 +0000

Stephen Hawking has something to say about it too; http://garymurning.wordpress.com/2008/09/09/stephen-hawking-on-the-large-hadron-collider/

By: Eddy De Clercq

Eddy De Clercq — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 07:27:27 +0000

Tom,

I’m rather surprised seeing the other commenters not feeling the same way as you do, which I find a pity. I find it laudable that you are showing people that every medal has its reverse. As mentioned in this blog I fully support your view on this LHC project.

Eddy

By: Tim (@Twalk) Walker

Tim (@Twalk) Walker — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 20:29:27 +0000

I was unsurprised that someone brought up the U.S. military budget, which is horribly bloated, and was half hoping that someone would have looked up the figures for spending (e.g.) on ringtones. My point: we waste a lot of money on a lot of things.

Given the affluence of the developed world, we ought to have plenty of money for the LHC, for renewables research, for aggressive promotion of energy efficiency to industry, with plenty left over to combat AIDS, malaria, TB, etc.

Here’s the operative question, to my mind: what do we do to muster the political (and corporate etc.) *will* to spend our money this way?

By: Glen

Glen — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 18:30:23 +0000

I expected someone to get to the US military budget. thanks, I’ll leave that one along. Most advanced science is hard to rationalize against in-your-face needs, whether it is renewable energy, educating the children of the world, curing diseases, or feeding the hungry. So let’s look very sci-fi for a moment. What if the LHC leads to a better understanding of worm holes and eventually to creating stable worm holes. There could come a time when you can walk through a door in London and arrive in New York. That would cut way down on all that air travel we talked about last week. In this potentially real future, the LHC would be credited to helping the environment by eliminating airplanes.

By: Anderson Wards

Anderson Wards — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 17:01:03 +0000

LHC could potentially open up a new era in energy production that doesnâ€™t require the large amounts of CO2 that are used for every known “green energy” we have today. So you could look at the money spent on LHC as research into matter which could in the future be used for a true green energy.

You could have also argued that setting up a date centre in Cork was a waste of money, money that could have been invested in some form of energy research in CIT or Cork University That would have made me happy and extended my research thesis.

I think in 60 years time we will have an energy equivalent to CERN, its taken that amount of time for CERN to get to where it is today and to get it’s huge budget.

By: Iarfhlaith Kelly

Iarfhlaith Kelly — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 16:09:44 +0000

There’ll always be someone ready to highlight that too much money has been spent on the wrong things. The wrong thing being something that’s purely commercially driven with no regard for the environment, and the right thing being a more altruistic and environmentally friendly project.

It seems pretty obvious to me that if the renewable energy market became as commercially attractive as the ‘bad’ or ‘evil’ markets then powerful people would take notice and invest.

Maybe the renewable energy industry needs to become more evil for it to take off. Don’t nice guys finish last after all?

By: Gavin

Gavin — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 15:29:24 +0000

We estimate (with galactic-sized error bars) that the construction footprint may have been between 3m and 20m tonnes of CO2.

We’re interested in the amount of energy required to cool everything to an amazing 1.8 Kelvin (-271.4Â°C)…