First collisions at Large Hadron Collider...

I read about this. Honest question- I appreciate the knowledge we can and will gain, but what commercial applications if any are feasible?

Cold fusion? Something else?
 
Isn't it possible that what they learn here might be beneficial in the field of nanotechnology? And that might just lead to a better dishwasher if not better detergent.
 
I dont think there is any real connection to nanotechnology, the scales on which they are doing physics is millions of times smaller than nano.


I guess the most direct thing these big experiments produce is the next generation of scientists. There are a few thousand PhDs that will come out of the LHC.
 
I'm not really expecting any type of commercial application out of this for quite some time, but if we are on the scale of building blocks for the building blocks of nature then you never know.

In reality, isn't this more about the origins of the universe? Which really wouldn't have any type of commercial application, however I can see the physical tools created and the mathematics learned/confirmed to get the job done being used in engineering or even furthering some other branch of scientific learning.
 
I guess I think of Nasa when I say this but it seems like the cost should also implore that we receive (or at least those in Europe) some commercial application with the information learned. NASA is coming over serious pressure to justify the costs. This doesn't mean I don't support the collider- but just pointing out that it costs a lot of money.
 
The LHC is a work of pure science. It has some specific goals, to be sure, but the direct benefit to society from achieving those goals are negligible. There is treasure to be reaped for us all, to be sure, but like the explorers of long ago, we won't know what those are until we wander across them. The commercial applications of any knowledge gained will be tangential to the goals as stated. That is good, and that is how it should work.
 
I really thought the title was First Collision at Large HaRDon Collider...didn't know what to expect when I opened this thread, come to think of it, why did i open this thread thinking that? I must be a ghey
biggrin.gif
 
we will spend 23x the NASA budget on Medicare in 2009. Its not clear what commercial purpose healthcare for old (i.e., no longer productive) people serves.
 
Many of the particle detector technologies that physicists do the R&D on have straightforward applications in the medical field. Physicists do a lot of the R&D because the companies that manufacture imaging devices to sell to hospitals don't risk the money on R&D, only after the technology is proven on big experiments like LHC.

Physicists on experiments like these routinely set records for the largest and fastest data transfers, among other things related to computing.

Plus the thousands of highly trained scientists that come out of these experiments can't really be produced elsewhere. Most of them will go on to work in other fields. Guys from my experiment have gone on to work on Wall Street, on biomedical imaging, nuclear medicine, weapons research, proton accelerator therapy, administration in the DOE, NASA, and many many teaching positions.
 
Perham1, the problem with discovery is that it doesn't happen without trying something new. The more wildly new, the greater the likelihood for the range and types of discovery. Which is to say, you are more likely to find pocket change in the couch you haven't already combed over a hundred times.

You can dump cash on material scientists, and they will invent things with properties you've never considered, but that is only part of the problem of "efficiency". The other part is finding an application for the new materials. That is an area where the innovative large scale engineering projects (which typically come from science or the military) excel. The entire nature of the project is goal oriented with real constraints, which means you are much more likely to find new uses for existing materials or develop requirements for materials which don't yet exist, than you would by simply giving money to a research firm. Ultimately it is NEED which drives innovation, and that just doesn't come from a lab in a vacuum.

The fact of the matter all of the items I listed either were created from large engineering projects or became publicly available after large engineering projects solved the issue of mass distribution. Which is to say, none of them would effect you personally without big science/engineering. We wouldn't have gotten the microchip for public use for another 20-40 years minimum without NASA's push for development for Apollo and the US military's subsequent push for mass distribution for the Minutemen missile. People simply didn't think they needed them, and there was no market.

I can hardly think if a major innovation from the last 100 years which didn't start, or was made widely available, with the spending of large amounts of public funds.
 
The thing that gets me is we could have had one of these giga-colliders right here in Texas, but in the early 90s the political War Against Science commenced, and the project lost funding.
 
Ayup, the super collider is a half finished hole in the ground. I would love for this research to be led from our home soil.
 
These experiments will provide quantum leaps in the advance of physics, (yeah, I intended THAT pun), and the benefits to mankind will extend into eternity.

Bank on it.

The concepts being bandied are nothing less than what we, and the universe at large, are composed of. This is exciting, far reaching stuff even if you or I, (and especially "I"), never live to see the practical application of it.

<applause> for CERN.
 
You are one argumentative SOB, you know that?

It's a super-collider. It's built to study "quantum effects" in particles.

Saying it's destined to make "quantum leaps" in the advance of physics is only barely word-play and rises nowhere near the level of hyperbole.

Get the **** over yourself already.
 
Actually, they are IRC's words, not mine. Honestly, I'm not sure how you define a term like "quantum leap" in the context of scientific discovery. Is it total paradigm shift, or is it discrete and clear (yet non-linear) advancement of theory? I favor the latter, but would understand the application of the former.

I'll put it in words less grandiose and perhaps we can arrive at language we can agree on. The LHC will be adequately powered to reject or prove many competing theories within the standard model. By discarding competing theories this project can serve to advance physics by either zeroing in the standard model far better than ever before, or by illuminating areas where the standard model fails. Either prospect serves, however, as a discrete and quantifiable change from the current view of physics.

If the Higgs boson is discovered, and a workable theory for quantum gravity can be described, it would be one of the single largest advancements of physics since Einstein and Bohr. If the Higgs boson is NOT discovered, then it narrows down drastically the manner in which quantum gravity can function (if at all) within the standard model, but by having the question answered at this energy level (understanding that there are theories which require a higher energy level to attain that boson) particle physics as an institution will still have been markedly changed.
 
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