Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

The Next Big Particle Accelerator

Posted by Hemos on from the the-next-great-thing dept.

Guinnessy writes "This year more than a thousand physicists gathered for three weeks at Snowmass Village, in the Colorado Rockies near Aspen, to talk about the future of particle physics in the US. Physics Today has a report on the meeting which says that the community should build a 500-GeV electron-positron linear collider. That's powerful enough to make mini black holes."

4 of 257 comments (clear)

  1. Waste of money by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    As long as there are people living below the poverty line, blue skies projects like this should not get funding from the federal government.

    1. Re:Waste of money by Lordrashmi · · Score: 0, Flamebait

      People are poor because they don't apply themselves. Sure not everyone can be a millionare. I know I'm not but I work my ass off and make a decent living. Unless you are mentally retarded you should be able to support yourself with hard work, not federal handouts.

      I don't know if this project is justified, but think of all the benifits it could have. Maybe find a way to cheaper energy, solve some medical problems or many other things beyond what we can imagine.

      No one knows what it will do for sure, but giving 5 billion to lazy people isn't going to make life any better.

  2. Re:Ummmm... what? by RollingThunder · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    You're confusing corporate research with science.

    Science exists to find out what is, simply for the sake of it being.

    Corporate research exists to find out things to make money on (or minimize costs, same deal).

    I'm sure they didn't know for certain what they were going to get when they started playing around with most discoveries that led to the technologies that make our modern world what it is....

  3. Re:Ummmm... what? by jaoswald · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Yeah, but logic theory was cheap. They didn't come with cups in their hands saying "give me billions of dollars for something that might be useful in the unforeseeable future." What about all the math done at the time that is still useless? I guess you just didn't bother to learn that. For good reason.