Austria To Pull Out of CERN

andre.david notes an AFP report that Austria has announced its intention to withdraw from CERN, citing budget concerns, adding: "Austrian particle physicists are not happy with this. From HEPHY, the Austrian Institute for High Energy Physics: 'All of a surprise Johannes Hahn... announced that he wants to terminate the Austrian membership at CERN... This [would] affect spin-off projects like the planned cancer treatment center MedAustron... which is dependent on collaborating with CERN... Strangely enough this intention just arrives at a time where scientists are about to harvest the fruits of LHC...' Will other countries follow suit?" "Austria is pulling out of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), Science Minister Johannes Hahn announced Thursday, citing budget concerns. The €20M ($26.9M) yearly membership in CERN... makes up 70 percent of the money available in Austria for participation in international institutes and could be better used to fund other European projects, he said. Hahn said he hoped Austria could find 'a new kind of cooperation' with CERN and described Vienna's withdrawal from the project as a 'pause,' noting that some 30 states were already working together with the Geneva-based centre without being members. The newly-available funds will now allow Austria to take part in new European projects, boost its participation in old ones as well as help the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), the country's main organization funding research."

Comments

That's ok...

[TheRealFixer]

I guess that means more particles for the rest of us!

Re:That's ok...

[Jurily]

This [would] affect spin-off projects like the planned cancer treatment center MedAustron... which is dependent on collaborating with CERN...

I guess that means more particles for the rest of us!

In light of the above, I'm not sure that's a good thing.

Re:That's ok...

[Hoi Polloi]

Unless they all get smashed first.

Re:That's ok...

[Mr2cents]

Maybe Austria just realized it was one big "Will it blend?"-ripoff?

Seriously though, it's a shame people can be so shortsighted. It really saddens me when they fail to see how fundamental science is what brings us new knowledge and technologies. It's not because the benefits are far out in the future, that they aren't real..

Re:That's ok...

[Red Flayer]

I know, right?

I mean, whoop-de-doo, Austria's all "put another shrimp on the barbie, mate" and "crikey! we've got killer spiders mate" and "go root yerself, we're pulling out of CERN!".

The rest of the nations participating in CERN will be just fine without them.

Re:That's ok...

[Z00L00K]

Then - no free ticket to Austria for possible positive outcome of using the CERN accelerator then.

This is expensive business, but it's also bleeding edge research and that means that it's possible that something completely new will come out of this research.

By understanding the building stones of the universe you may also find the path to cheap energy or other things that we can't imagine.

Re:That's ok...

[MyLongNickName]

And maybe Austria has the sense to stay within budgets? Yeah, I want to see science funded well. However, I don't want to see nations spending themselves into oblivion. My country has spent the last eight years spending recklessly, and isn't showing signs of stopping. Right now, my country pays enough on the interest of its debt to pay for a cern project EVERY SINGLE WEEK.

Think about that for a minute. It boggles my mind. But debt kills. Austria dropping cern is sad. But if it is for balancing a budget in a rough time, then so be it.

Re:That's ok...

[digitalunity]

Fundamental science is good, but the LHC is a huge and expensive project. By my calculations, they have about $38 million annually to spend on projects of this nature. That's a drop in the bucket compared to the overall cost of the LHC, so the international community is unlikely to really feel a large effect.

That $27 million they have to spend now could be put to much better use domestically or on smaller scale projects.

Re:That's ok...

[coastwalker]

Looks like the Austrian school of economics is living up to its reputation of I'm all right jack so screw you and your joint project for the sake of humanity. How can you take an economic system seriously when it comes from this bunch of loons? Its not so much the lack of enthusiasm for fundamental science that gets up my nose as they signed up in the first place, its the going back on your word and shafting your friends because you can save a few bucks mentality. Seriously though isnt Austria one of the most venal international partners in the first world?

Re:That's ok...

[key.aaron]

I'm not sure if you are joking of if this is just plain /facepalm.

Re:That's ok...

[MadCow42]

I guess if they're not important enough for you to know that they're not Australia, then how important can they be to an international project like CERN, right?

God I hope you were trying to be funny... but I'm afraid you weren't.

Re:That's ok...

[timeOday]

Most of the comments here are assuming this represents a reduction in spending on science by Austria. But the last sentence of the blurb says "The newly-available funds will now allow Austria to take part in new European projects, boost its participation in old ones as well as help the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), the country's main organization funding research." Are they actually reducing science spending at all, or just re-allocating from one project to others with more perceived bang for the buck? That happens all the time in science. IMHO drawing a salary to conduct research I find interesting is a privilege that can't be extended to everybody, so it has to be earned and continually re-established by competing with others who want the money for their ideas.

Re:That's ok...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh sure, Austria dumps a worthwhile membership in CERN, while the US continues to fund that third-world Wally World called the United Nations.

Can't we cite "budget concerns" too?

Re:That's ok...

[Anonymous Coward]

IMHO drawing a salary to conduct research I find interesting is a privilege that can't be extended to everybody, so it has to be earned and continually re-established by competing with others who want the money for their ideas.

So some guy spends a decade or two of his life getting the specialized training necessary to be scientist and then he gets out-competed by someone else and ends up on food stamps working minimum wage at McDonalds?

You don't just wake up one morning and decide you're going to quit your job as a mailman and go lead a research project at CERN - and then when the project gets canceled go back to your job as a mailman. To work at CERN (as a scientific researcher) you've got to plan years in advance and spend years and years studying all kinds of specialized topics.

The idea that it's OK for politicians to capriciously reallocate funding from year to year ignores the very real human cost. And it discourages people from becoming scientists. Why spend years of your life preparing for a specialized career if some politician may arbitrarily cancel it at the last minute.

What I would like to see is more of an open source model of scientific research - in that the government finds some motivated and educated people and pays them enough to live comfortably but simply. These people could then attach themselves to whatever projects seemed promising or drift away from whatever projects seemed to be stalled without all kinds of bureaucratic hassles from the politicians. If they thought CERN was promising they could work at CERN but, if not, they attach themselves to other projects.

There would still be mechanisms for accountability but it would be more about good faith effort than about politicians micromanaging science (that they know little about). Basically, you'd create positions like Einstein had at Princeton Institute for Advanced Study but for average working scientists rather than just for the super stars.

Re:That's ok...

[Anonymous Coward]

wooooosh

Re:That's ok...

[SleepingWaterBear]

Austria isn't decreasing it's science budget, just reallocating it. Frankly, it seems very unlikely to me that CERN will produce as valuable scientific results as that same money spread over many smaller projects could, so i think Austria might have the right idea.

Re:That's ok...

[coffeechica]

The papers here in Austria say that according to the minister of science/research, part of the funds will be allocated, but not necessarily all of them. They aren't saying anything about specific new projects yet, only that it frees up 20 million Euros a year.

Re:That's ok...

[timeOday]

So some guy spends a decade or two of his life getting the specialized training necessary to be scientist and then he gets out-competed by someone else and ends up on food stamps working minimum wage at McDonalds?

Normally if somebody is not going to cut it, they should get weeded out during the educational process. If not, they usually still end up doing science, but in a supporting role with less discretion than the stars. Actually all researchers start that way, then some move up more quickly than others.

You don't just wake up one morning and decide you're going to quit your job as a mailman and go lead a research project at CERN - and then when the project gets canceled go back to your job as a mailman. To work at CERN (as a scientific researcher) you've got to plan years in advance and spend years and years studying all kinds of specialized topics. The idea that it's OK for politicians to capriciously reallocate funding from year to year ignores the very real human cost. And it discourages people from becoming scientists. Why spend years of your life preparing for a specialized career if some politician may arbitrarily cancel it at the last minute.

A reduction in funding at CERN doesn't necessarily mean scientists are becoming burger flippers. It may mean that some of them have to move onto other projects at places other than CERN, executing the spending priorities of whoever has decision-making authority. Hopefully those decision-makers are accomplished scientists with a broader vision rather than just "some politician." Though, at a very high level, the stewards of tax money are politicans so they do make general decisions about the course of taxpayer-supported science, e.g. send money to DoD vs. NSF, or NIH, or NASA.

What I would like to see is more of an open source model of scientific research - in that the government finds some motivated and educated people and pays them enough to live comfortably but simply. These people could then attach themselves to whatever projects seemed promising or drift away from whatever projects seemed to be stalled without all kinds of bureaucratic hassles from the politicians. If they thought CERN was promising they could work at CERN but, if not, they attach themselves to other projects.

That's basically what "tenure" means. Of course, the competition to obtain tenure at research universities is fierce - it's a privileged position.

There would still be mechanisms for accountability but it would be more about good faith effort than about politicians micromanaging science (that they know little about). Basically, you'd create positions like Einstein had at Princeton Institute for Advanced Study but for average working scientists rather than just for the super stars.

Even if you doubled the number of such positions, the field of applications would soon double as well, and you'd be back to selecting the stars again. Getting paid to follow your curiosity is simply too desirable a position to be available to just anybody who wants it.

Re:That's ok...

[bhima]

There are little or no subscribers of the so called "Austrian school of economics" left here in Austria. Without the nearby threat of communism, the reality of their ridiculous and shrill assertions became blatantly obvious... So we decided they were all kooks.

Re:That's ok...

[andre.david]

That $27 million they have to spend now could be put to much better use domestically or on smaller scale projects.

Without the member state contributions, CERN cannot operate. Following the logic above all member states should invest domestically...

Re:That's ok...

[Anonymous Coward]

You must be confusing Austria with Australia ^)

Re:That's ok...

[Nathrael]

If Austria needs money, there are a lot of things which they could fund less instead of science. The Bundesheer (our military doctrine - hold them off serving as cannon fodder until our "friends" from the EU arrive to help us), state-owned transport systems (which do not really work anyways), or our politicians (which receive a lot of cash without doing much for it) - just to name three examples. It's not like the state isn't earning a lot of money with their atrociously high taxes, they just don't know where to spend it.[/rantaboutacountrywhichI'llsoonleaveanyways]

Re:That's ok...

[Anonymous Coward]

You do mean Australia, right. I don't think Austria is the home of "shrimp on the barbie..."

Re:That's ok...

[Xest]

Austria and Australia are different countries.

Australia is the one you describe, Austria is the one that's given us such gems through the years as Adolf Hitler and Josef Fritzl.

But they also have given us the likes of Gödel, Mozart, Schrödinger and his cat I suppose ;)

Re:That's ok...

[Red Flayer]

Thanks for clearing that up. I can't believe all this time I thought "down under" was in the heart of Europe.

Now that I've looked at a map, it also becomes clear why, though Australia is infested with crocodiles, Belgium isn't. I had always wondered about that.

But I still have one unanswered question... why is the alphorn so similar to a didgeridoo? Surely that isn't coincidence.

Re:That's ok...

[deepershade]

Actually, we can't confirm the cat's existance. We never opened the box.

Re:That's ok...

[Anonymous Coward]

Very amusing.

CERN is the biggest waste of money that mankind has ever known.
A bunch of self-appointed 'experts' con politicians into stealing OUR taxes to pay for the world's biggest white elephant, which will NEVER WORK.
They set themselves with jobs for life, engaging in this useless fraud, and it's always "jam tomorrow", i.e. just after they retire. Only, it will be moved forward a few more decades each time one of the 'experts' retires.

What purpose does fusion serve?

What's wrong with super insulated houses, and wave, wind and solar energy?

Re:That's ok...

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you sure about the cat?

Re:That's ok...

[ps2os2]

I thought the mini black holes that were going to be creating would "absorb" all those particles.

Whole lot of pulling out going on

[Anonymous Coward]

Palin pulls out of CPAC

Levi not pulling out of Briston Palin, however

not surprised

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no biology here, so no diseases to cure so in the minds of the ignorant it is wasted money. I'm not surprised but definitely annoyed.

Science for science sake is worth while no matter the cost or the expect benefit. The US stimulated its economy by a factor of 10 more then what it put into landing on the moon. One of people who help the British economy the most was a guy named Michel Faraday who thought his discovery of electrical induction was neat but useless. And that isn't even touch on things we take for granted every day, i.e. transiters and LCDs to name only two.

Re:not surprised

[Tablizer]

The US stimulated its economy by a factor of 10 more then what it put into landing on the moon.

It's been difficult to really calculate such, especially compared to alternatives such as *direct* funding of technology research. Its value as inspiration, though, may justify it. It became an icon of "can do".

Reminds me of a conversation we had at work once:

PHB: "If we can put man on the moon, then you can certainly get project X up and running!"

Techie: "But Apollo had a hundred billion to spend; we don't even have a cub-scout model rocket budget."

PHB: Yeah, and you are about as effective as a cub-scout.

Techie: Cub-scout pay, cub-scout results.
   

Re:not surprised

[Man On Pink Corner]

It's been difficult to really calculate such, especially compared to alternatives such as *direct* funding of technology research.

Direct funding of directionless research has a pretty terrible record by any metric you can think of. NASA spent about $25B total on the Apollo project, which yielded numerous useful spinoff technologies and companies, inspired countless numbers of engineering and science students, and put men on the moon. Microsoft spends roughly $6-$7B per year on their in-house research budget, which has yielded, well, let's see, Microsoft Bob(tm) and Songsmith.

Admittedly I'm comparing 1960s dollars with current dollars, but still... Bill, just give the money to NASA, for Chrissake.

Even when you're talking about pie-in-the-sky "pure research," people don't tend to appreciate the amount of tangible technology that comes out of those efforts. If you need to do some leading-edge photonic RF work, the papers you read are from NRAO. If you're working on next-gen MRI machines, you're probably interested in superconducting magnet tech developed for accelerators. There are any number of other cases where things you use every day came from applications you wouldn't have cared about at the time.

Re:not surprised

[Bakkster]

Science for science sake is worth while no matter the cost or the expect benefit.

Fortunately, it sounds like Austria plans to take this money (70% of its international science budget) and put it towards multiple other projects. It's still going to be going toward science, just different science.

Re:not surprised

[mmmscience]

There is no biology here, so no diseases to cure so in the minds of the ignorant it is wasted money. I'm not surprised but definitely annoyed.

I think it has less to do with the fact that CERN isn't tied to a biomedical center and more to do with the fact that so much money has been put into a project that has yet to run a real experiment, let alone yield real results. Yes, biomedical sciences are granted an exuberant amount of money every year, but that field is also producing results. That's the nature of science: Producing results = more grant money. When CERN launches again in the fall and starts churning out data, it too can access more funds once again. The old adage remains true: publish or perish.

Re:not surprised

[Anonymous Coward]

Admittedly I'm comparing 1960s dollars with current dollars, but still...

Do you realize how big the difference is? Based on this calculator, 25 billion dollars in 1960 has the same buying power as 180 billion dollars in 2009...

Re:not surprised

[Man On Pink Corner]

Sigh. Yes, which is why I said as much.

Same order of magnitude, though; the point stands.

Re:not surprised

[Lemmy Caution]

I don't know, my Cub Scout years were some of the most productive of my life.

Re:RSS?

[drinkypoo]

SLASHDOT TO PULL OUT OF HTML

Does slashdot not have testing servers, or what? Hey guys, you shouldn't make changes to live servers until you test them first...

OTOH, perhaps this is their response to everyone's bitching about the front page. Don't like the way slashdot looks? Write your own interface, bitches.

Trend?

[Mendoksou]

Is this the start of a trend due to economically troubled times? This conCERNs me.

Bad puns aside, I guess with an economy like this, CERN should expect some resistance. ;)
http://press.web.cern.ch/press/PressReleases/Releases2008/PR14.08E.html

Re:Trend?

[Tablizer]

I can see them saying they'd cut back during recession, but to *completely* pull out could be problematic from a diplomatic perspective. Do what they do at my company: say "check will be a little late this time", and drag feet.

Re:Trend?

[andre.david]

I guess with an economy like this, CERN should expect some resistance. ;)

But the LHC is superconducting! No resistance :D

Re:Trend?

[Mendoksou]

It's supposed to be, but that's what failed during tests. See the link.

Re:Trend?

[andre.david]

What actually failed was one of the connections between the superconducting strands. Not the superconductor itself.

Re:Trend?

[Mendoksou]

Nevertheless, "a resistive zone developed" which kicked off the whole problem.

Not surprising

[Anonymous Coward]

they want to use their cellars for other things.

Re:Not surprising

[Chrisq]

I think neutrino detection could certainly benefit from the cash saved from pulling out of CERN

Re:Not surprising

[XDirtypunkX]

Well, LHC isn't yielding the advances in basement containment devices that they thought it would.

Re:RSS?

[MyLongNickName]

Sadly enough, I think I prefer it to the other HTML changes that Slashdot has made...

Rhythm Method?

[TehCable]

Austria cited CERN's recent decision to go off the pill as its primary reason for pulling out, but says they are still not willing to go back to using condoms.

Obvious Economics of Small Intellects (OESI) ...

[foobsr]

Bank rescue ~90-billion-Euro: big worthy chunk

CERN Euro 20M: too small a particle to care for

As we can learn, big mountains do not help much to gain perspective.

CC.

Re:RSS?

[tpgp]

Does slashdot not have testing servers, or what?

Testing is for wimps. Real men upload their data to an...

They didn't fly under the cost radar . . .

[PolygamousRanchKid]

CERN gave themselves way too much publicity, about how advanced and expensive the LHC is. And then it fizzled out after all the hype. (Apologies to the CERN folks, but this is how a lot of government folks will see it.)

Given the current economic conditions, politicians are looking to cut costs, to spend on stimulus crap. And they are looking for big stuff, not school lunch program chump-change.

Anyone remember the US's "Superconducting Supercollider?" Politicians shit-canned it. With so many "supers" in the name, politicians were sure to think it was expensive.

A better name would have been "Little tiny subatomic bit of dust thingie (real cheap!)." Then the cost cutters would not have gone after it.

Re:They didn't fly under the cost radar . . .

[Tablizer]

Anyone remember the US's "Superconducting Supercollider?" Politicians [canned] it. With so many "supers" in the name, politicians were sure to think it was expensive. A better name would have been "Little tiny subatomic bit of dust thingie (real cheap!)." Then the cost cutters would not have gone after it.

How about Pork-A-Tron?
   

*coff*

[Maury Markowitz]

> Strangely enough this intention just arrives at a time where scientists are about to harvest the fruits of LHC.

Uhhh, which are what, exactly? The mass of the Higgs? Yeah, that's worth 16 billion.

Can anyone name a single discovery in HEP in the last 25 years that has led to a practical improvement of anything whatsoever? The only thing HEP has generated is paper.

Still waiting for my top-quark amplifier...

> Science for science sake is worth while no matter the cost or the expect benefit

I call BS. Demonstration please, using the example above.

> The US stimulated its economy by a factor of 10 more then what it put into landing on the moon

No it didn't. If you look at this claim, made by NASA of course, the reality of it comes crashing down. They include things that had absolutely nothing to do with the space missions, including Tang and Velcro. The primary direct outcome was engineering

> transiters and LCDs to name only two

Transist_o_rs were invented as part of a very focused and practical development program at Bell Labs, which you can read about in "Crystal Fire". The key advance was discovered by accident. They had to develop the theory of how they worked as part of the program.

LCDs were developed over a period stretching about 100 years, all of it experimental up to the 1960s, when it became a major practical development effort. There's very little pure science involved. The wiki article covers it fairly well.

Don't get me wrong, there's been a lot of purely theoretical research that makes it into everyday life. Quantum is a good example. But in the VAST majority of cases the science was discovered as a part of basic research and had to wait on the theory. There's many, many products in daily use today that we still have no idea how they work.

Maury

Re:*coff*

[Anonymous Coward]

Take your realism and go home. People like you are not appreciated here.

Re:*coff*

[ettlz]

Uhhh, which are what, exactly? The mass of the Higgs? Yeah, that's worth 16 billion.

Can anyone name a single discovery in HEP in the last 25 years that has led to a practical improvement of anything whatsoever? The only thing HEP has generated is paper.

Price of everything/value of nothing.

Re:*coff*

[Red Flayer]

Can anyone name a single discovery in HEP in the last 25 years that has led to a practical improvement of anything whatsoever? The only thing HEP has generated is paper.

Why so short-sighted? Why is it so important that something pay off tangibly within 25 years? Some of the great strides in medication today are applications of HEP-ph of the 30s and 50s that we continue to refine. Who knows what the future holds?

That's the great thing about knowledge. Sometimes the quest for knowledge is the most important part; sometimes the Answers are the important part; sometimes incidental discoveries are the most important part. But we'll never know unless we go for it.

Re:*coff*

[key.aaron]

> Can anyone name a single discovery in HEP in the last 25 years that has led to a practical improvement of anything whatsoever? The only thing HEP has generated is paper.

That's an easy one: The particle accelerators developed for research in HEP have directly resulted in the accelerators used in hospitals for radiation therapy.

Re:*coff*

[MrMr]

You never know what comes out of these projects. I vaguely remember this guy from CERN in 1990 playing with two computers.

Re:*coff*

[Tablizer]

[Transistors] were invented as part of a very focused and practical development program at Bell Labs, which you can read about in "Crystal Fire". The key advance was discovered by accident.

Perhaps the gov't should then fund accidents . . . . . . oh wait, nevermind (Katrina, Iraq, Fanny Mae, Shuttle foam ...)

Re:*coff*

[Anonymous Coward]

wow, talk about idiocy.
First you say how ridiculous the statement that science always has value is then turn around and prove the point by pointing out all the accidents that have developed from science. And then even state "There's many, many products in daily use today that we still have no idea how they work."
If you want to limit things to just theory, which seems to be what you are applying, then I have to agree but I believe the GP was referring to science in a general term and not just mucking with mathematics to explain something.

From working in the field, the most effective use of understanding problems comes from both experimental and theoretical work. Engineering is just a watered down form.

Oh and just to prove that even the LHC may have a use, CERN was instrumental in the development of the world wide web. Every heard of Tim Berners-Lee? And since you seem only focused on the engineering aspect, what advances will CERN and the LHC help push forward? These things are called spin-offs, much like velro and tang from NASA.

So to summarize, expenditure in science will eventually pay off, it just may take a couple of decades and probably not in the way you expect.

Re:*coff*

[habig]

Can anyone name a single discovery in HEP in the last 25 years that has led to a practical improvement of anything whatsoever? The only thing HEP has generated is paper.

Still waiting for my top-quark amplifier...

25 years is pretty short-term here. How long was it after Franklin defining charge and Thomson discovering electrons was it before you got your run-of-the-mill electron-based amplifier? And lightning bolts were much more obviously potentially practical things to be investigating.

Will ignore the obvious comment that without HEP in general and CERN in particular we wouldn't be writing this in html, as that was pretty tangential to the whole process :)

Re:*coff*

[*coughs loudly*]

"Why so short-sighted? Why is it so important that something pay off tangibly within 25 years? Some of the great strides in medication today are applications of HEP-ph of the 30s and 50s that we continue to refine. Who knows what the future holds?"

Because the money in the here and now is finite, and decisions about allocating it need to be made with that in mind. E.g, not all states in the US fund deep brain stimulation treatment for Parkinson's disease; if the US federal money spent on nuclear research were distributed to the states for the sake of DBS, then thousands of people and their families would have a hugely-improved quality of life for months on end, something that is preferable, for most people, to years of research without any significant advance.

Re:*coff*

[Nutria]

The particle accelerators developed for research in HEP

How expensive were those other other particle accelerators, compared to CERN?

Doing fundamental science is good, but doing a really uber-over-budget really-frickin-expensive search for the God Particle using my money is physics mental masturbation, when they are a jillion other more worthwhile areas of basic research that could/should be funded.

For example, how many Earth-exploring satellites and research ships trolling the oceans taking measurements to improve the data fed into climate-change models could have been funded instead of pouring it into the LHC?

Re:*coff*

[key.aaron]

Thing is the point of the LHC isn't really to find the Higgs boson (the God particle name really is oversensationalized). For most physicists the existence of the Higgs boson is a foregone conclusion. When they see the experimental proof it will be little more than a hmm, well looky there, what we knew all along is true.

The true purpose of the LHC is to uncover the unknown by probing energy ranges that have never been seen before. The LHC will payoff when they find a result that they have no idea how to explain which will push for new physics.

All of these things may or may not have a direct practical application. When they started building accelerators they had no clue that it would later be used for cancer treatments. Does that mean that just because practical benefit is not immediately obvious that pushing the boundaries of experimentation is a waste of money?

I think not.

Disclaimer: IAAP (in training, no Ph.D. yet) and have studied with a professor that is directly involved in the LHC.

Re:*coff*

[SnarfQuest]

I think I must have gotten one of these. Ended tossing it out because of all the corrosion and the disguisting mess inside. I thought it was mice, but with this revelation...

Re:*coff*

[confused one]

Not specifically HEP but how about MRI and PET scans used in both medicine, medical research and materials research.

Re:*coff*

[Nutria]

Does that mean that just because practical benefit is not immediately obvious that pushing the boundaries of experimentation is a waste of money?

I think not.

It does when we're 10 trillion dollars in debt...

Re:*coff*

[Red Flayer]

And yet a lot of practical research stands on the shoulders of the non-practical research that has come before.

It shows remarkable short-sightedness to publically fund only here-and-now practical applications, especially since practical applications are exactly where private industry has an incentive to pay for research.

Re:*coff*

[hughk]

Can anyone name a single discovery in HEP in the last 25 years that has led to a practical improvement of anything whatsoever? The only thing HEP has generated is paper.

And the web. Nothing directly to do with HEP, but it was necessary as a way of distributing data from so many different computers. Other people had worked on proprietary toys (remember Gopher) but TBL's idea succeeded because it was open, developed at a public research institute and not protected.

Oh and all those expensive toys that the physicists use, they are carefully spread out amongst the contributing countries.

Re:*coff*

[Anonymous Coward]

There must be some fancy latin term for this fallacy.

Yes, if your choice is between a) funding LHC and doing *no* other research at all and b) doing immediately practical work and ignoring LHC, b) is probably the better choice.

But realistically, we have a choice between a) spending a few percent extra on more immediately practical work or b) having speculative stuff like LHC at a small reduction in funding for other things.

Ignoring basic research is short sighted, to say the least. All the really big leaps have come from unexpected directions, not doing the obvious work to improve existing technology or understanding.

Re:*coff*

[Anonymous Coward]

the web? (html)

Re:*coff*

[smaddox]

Show me "many, many products in daily use today that we still have no idea how they work" and I will show you many, many engineers that, in order to design that product, consulted thousands of research papers that were funded directly as basic research, or relied on the understanding brought by basic research. Just because you don't understand how something works doesn't mean there isn't someone out there who does.

Basic research is behind everything you enjoy in your modern life. Those accidents made during "very focused and practical development" would not have led to anything if basic research had not laid the foundation for understanding. Imagine trying to design transistors without knowing anything about atoms, electrons, and quantum mechanics. It would be impossible.

Just because you are too shortsighted to see the benefits of the LHC to future humanity doesn't mean they don't exist.

Re:*coff*

[smaddox]

So forget about all those billions upon billions of people in the future that could have dramatically improved quality of life, we need to worry about the few thousand alive here and now? Do you think the same way about finances? Forget the bills I have to pay in 6 months, I'm buying this $100,000 television that will make ME happy NOW.

The value of $1 in basic research is infinitely returned in the future, as there will be exponential growth in the human population. That is assuming, of course, that we invest the time and resources to do the research such that our descendants can continue to grow and thrive. If we don't? We'll, then we will probably all be wiped out in a billion years.

Re:*coff*

[Anonymous Coward]

And screw the quadrillion dollar technologies that will probably emerge as a consequence of basic science research.

Re:*coff*

[Jamu]

By following b) you're looking towards the stagnation of future technologies. b) is good for the short term only. Limiting fundamental research always end up costing a lot more in the long term.

Re:*coff*

[ggraham412]

Pure science for the sake of itself is certainly a worthwhile goal. However, there is also science beyond HEP, and I think that is the point that the Austrian government is heeling to. A 25 year "dry spell" is a tough record to run on for any scientific endeavor. Some might even date this to the advent of the Standard Model in the early 70's, since many of the "discoveries" since then (Eg- WZ, bottom, top quark, etc) are just filling in the blank slots of that theory. There has been no paradigm shift.

(Arguably the only fresh discovery coming out of HEP in the last 25 years is the discovery that neutrinos have mass. However, even this amounts to measurement of a free parameter in the standard model and, though it leads to beautiful quantum effects like neutrino oscillation, these effects are well known from other sectors like the K and the B.)

Until now, I think HEP has basked in the glow of the remarkable mid-20th century advances in nuclear physics, eg- the atom bomb, atomic power, etc. With accelerator based experiments churning out discoveries and results that agree with Standard Model theory at "six 9's" precision, it may be time to declare the game over.

Re:*coff*

[Anonymous Coward]

So forget about all those billions upon billions of people in the future that could have dramatically improved quality of life, we need to worry about the few thousand alive here and now? Do you think the same way about finances? Forget the bills I have to pay in 6 months, I'm buying this $100,000 television that will make ME happy NOW.

You are doing comparison the wrong way. The GP thinks that we should spend now what we need to and then, if we have money left, spend on what might potentially be good in the future. Your comparison has "We know that there will be large bills in 6 months and we know that you could now spend a lot for something really nice" but the real situation is "We know that there are currently a lot of things that desperately need money and we think that something good might come up at some point if we spend enough money on it instead."

So more appropriate comparison would be "Do you want to pay your bills now or not pay them in order to save money just in case that something nice and worth buying will come up.". And I think that paying bills first and saving what's left for the future is a better alternative.

Re:*coff*

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm not sure we're disagreeing here.

Most of the arguments on the lines of "LHC is a waste of money, we should be spending the money on medical research etc." seem to paint it as an either/or, when it isn't.

Oh, and to the original poster: 25 years? That's one hell of a short timescale. How long did it take from the first serious investigations into electricity and magnetism until the first practical radio?

Re:*coff*

[eurowolf007]

This guy has a name: Al Gore, so please give credit where it is due ;)

Re:*coff*

[mzs]

I'm am not sure I am parsing you correctly but PET and MRI are direct benefits of from HEP research. The positron part of PET is pretty clear. The high gauss magnets in MRI are direct descendants of the powerful magnets used to steer and focus beams in HEP.

Also the detectors used in things like nuclear stress tests are descendant on HEP track detectors.

That is just medicine and over the past 25 years. In the last five or so, it is actually becoming feasible to detect neutrinos in a facility the size of four or so semi trailers. The application being detecting nuclear materials (read bombs) in ports. (Enough material will stop the neutrons, nothing stops the neutrinos.) Expect to hear about that publicly in the next ten years or so.

Also HEP needs lots of amps, in the last 25 years the electric grid has adopted technology pioneered at CERN and Fermilab to make long range utility transmission lines more efficient.

Then there are is all the technology that was driven by HEP that you take for granted today. First supercomputers, then big fast clusters. Also fast huge data storage and retrieval, first tape based, now disk based. How about gate arrays? HEP needed that and drove it in the beginning. How about PCI? Fermilab was one of the early members since it needed an alternative to the old IP standard. High speed digitizers are now used in many applications outside of HEP, at first labs made their own and licensed the tech to the companies that manufacture them now. That continues to this day where labs make ever faster digitizers that eventually get used in industry.

Even color NTSC TV is a descendant of tech at Fermilab. At first there were many competing proposals, but eventually simple scheme employed for the monitors there became the accepted standard.

Re:*coff*

[andre.david]

I vaguely remember this guy from CERN in 1990 playing with two computers.

And his boss's evaluation of his proposal was "vague, but exciting".

Re:*coff*

[mzs]

Actually the observance of neutrino oscillation is what indicates that neutrinos have mass. The fact that it exists means (if the standard model is right) that there must be a difference in mass between the different neutrinos. If all of them had a mass of zero, the difference would be zero as well. It also means that mass may be more fundamental than previously thought and the standard model might need to be tweaked in regards to that, especially if Higgs related HEP works reveals some surprises, precisely the research that will be done at CERN after the next start-up. This was a lot more fundamental and earth shaking of a discovery than simply a free particle in the standard model. In fact it is not known what the masses actually are!

Re:*coff*

[smoker2]

Do you know what the "God" particle is ?
It is the particle that (they hope) imparts mass to matter. Imagine what it could mean to science if we could directly manipulate mass. Light speed anyone ? Without pinning down what mass actually _is_ and where it is located you have problems trying to manipulate it.

Members of CERN :
Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovak Republic, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United-Kingdom, plus financial contributions from Russia, Canada, India, Japan and the United States. It has been running since 1954.

I suppose you suggest we disband it and concentrate on swine flu treatment. It costs the average Austrian 2.44 per year, say $3. I expect you have lost more down the back of the couch.

Re:*coff*

[FrameRotBlues]

And that's science's fault... how?

Just because our country is fiscally irresponsible, science should take a back seat? How cash-strapped do we have to become before the education of our children gets cut?

Trouble is, everyone's priorities are different. Ask 10 people how we should be fixing the economy and you'll get 20 different answers, because not everyone has the same priorities.

Re:*coff*

[Maury Markowitz]

> It shows remarkable short-sightedness to publically fund only here-and-now practical applications

I'm not talking about "here and now", I'm talking about ever.

Are you sure you understand this point? LHC is being built to demonstrate something we already think we know. There is absolutely no science that comes out of LHC, unless it fails. If it finds the Higgs, we learn absolutely nothing.

That is not the case for HEP in the past. In the past, in the 60's say, every time you turned on an accelerator you found something you never saw before. Every time there was a new particle there was a new problem. This is key: it was the experiments that led to the physics.

It was a decade of hard work that finally solved this via QCG. But since then, every single discovery that's come out of HEP was _pre-predicted_ by QCG (et all). There hasn't been any new physics in ages. And now we're spending $16 billion to find the one remaining particle the others didn't find. Any why? Because there's nothing else to do in HEP. It's a dead science.

This is a colossal waste of money. Just be happy Congress figured that out and killed the Texastron. What, you don't remember Texastron? Exactly, THAT'S how important this really is.

Maury

Re:*coff*

[Nutria]

Without pinning down what mass actually _is_ and where it is located you have problems trying to manipulate it.

When I'm broke (as the US most certainly is!), I've got to prioritize.

Re:*coff*

[Maury Markowitz]

Nuclear medicine accelerators are descendants of x-ray machines, not betatrons. Linacs have many uses, only a few of which have anything to do with HEP.

Re:*coff*

[JesterXXV]

The term I believe you're looking for is "false dichotomy".

Re:*coff*

[Nutria]

Just because our country is fiscally irresponsible, science should take a back seat?

Overgeneralizing from "drop out of LHC" to "cut all science"? Shame on you?

How cash-strapped do we have to become before the education of our children gets cut?

Pretty darned strapped. The big sinks are "welfare" (Social Security, Medicare/Medicade, SCHIP, etc) and the DoD/DHS.

Re:*coff*

[Maury Markowitz]

> The true purpose of the LHC is to uncover the unknown by probing energy ranges that have never been seen before.

The LHC has energy to find the Higgs and not much else. There's nothing in range for the newer models. If it does find anything else, THAT will be interesting. $16 billion interesting? No.

Re:*coff*

[Maury Markowitz]

> having speculative stuff like LHC at a small reduction in funding for other things.

The LHC budget would pay for every single major ground based telescope. These are generating real, new physics. The SM can't explain any of their observations - dark energy, dark matter, large scale structure, etc.

> Ignoring basic research is short sighted

Are you sure you understand the term "basic"? Because LHC isn't it.

Re:*coff*

[Red Flayer]

Just be happy Congress figured that out and killed the Texastron. What, you don't remember Texastron? Exactly, THAT'S how important this really is.

I *do* remember it, and I'm still unhappy about it.

There are a lot of incidentals positives that you completely disregard.

Furthermore, IMO, the fundamental search for knowledge is one of the noblest human endeavors in existence.

I understand your point completely, I've heard it a thousand times about scores of ideas or projects, and all I have to say is -- I disagree. Completely. I will never be convinced differently, and I will always believe that people in search of short-term yields only are idiots.

Now, I know that you're not saying something about short-term yields, you are questioning whether there are yields at all. Ancillary to what the accelerators are looking for are all the engineering advances coming from building the damn things, some of which may make their way into industrial or other processes. Advances in superconductors -- and experience with using them in situ -- alone may be worth the investment in the long run.

At any rate, when it comes down to opportunity cost for the funding, picking another research instrument as a target because it 'takes money away from "more worthy" projects' is also short-sighted. Why not take funding away from defense spending? Or from elsewhere? It's a logical fallacy to assume that one must fund either HEP or something else.

Re:*coff*

[Maury Markowitz]

> There has been no paradigm shift.

Precisely. And even the builders will agree that it's unlikely LHC will do that. I hope I'm wrong.

> Until now, I think HEP has basked in the glow of the remarkable mid-20th century advances in nuclear physics

Indeed. And the late 60's particle zoo. Back then you could build an accelerator and be pretty sure it would generate new physics. Today it's the other way around.

Re:*coff*

[Hubbell]

Oh, you mean those climate change models that fail every single time to predict the future, and can ONLY be used to model past events? What use do they serve again?

Re:*coff*

[Maury Markowitz]

> At any rate, when it comes down to opportunity cost for the funding, picking another research instrument as a target

That's not the argument though. The argument is that *this* experiment is a waste of money. Here, I'll put it in capital letters so everyone sees it:

IF LHC WORKS AS EXPECTED, WE LEARN NOTHING NEW.

Doesn't that worry you?

Maury

Re:*coff*

[Maury Markowitz]

> These things are called spin-offs, much like velro and tang from NASA.

Neither velco or tang were spin offs from NASA.

> wow, talk about idiocy.

Indeed.

Re:*coff*

[khallow]

Why so short-sighted? Why is it so important that something pay off tangibly within 25 years? Some of the great strides in medication today are applications of HEP-ph of the 30s and 50s that we continue to refine. Who knows what the future holds?

The fundamental reason why you need to see near future pay off is feedback. How do you know you're advancing the state of knowledge versus chasing your tail with some wrong theory (Lamarckism, polywater, etc)? How do you know that information is useful?

The first question is settled via the scientific method. You make predictions, finds tests, etc. As we all know, you can't anticipate everything. You don't know how your theory, if it survives, will look in 200 years. Neither can you afford to wait centuries for test results. So 200 year old tests are out. You just don't have the time for them.

The problem of evaluating the utility of scientific knowledge is similar. First, given that we have limited resources, it doesn't make sense to uncritically pursue scientific lore. Some sort of prioritization needs to happen. Allocating resources willy nilly means your scientific research is suboptimal. Just like the scientific method, the only tools available to us are to evaluate the near future value of scientific research.

Re:*coff*

[confused one]

Forgive me, my brain dropped out for a minute and I wasn't equating HEP with High Energy Physics. I was equating it with another, similar acronym.

Re:*coff*

[Anonymous Coward]

That's an easy one: The particle accelerators developed for research in HEP have directly resulted in the accelerators used in hospitals for radiation therapy.

Except medical accelerators are more than 50 years old, so that rather fails the 'in the last 2 years' test.

Re:*coff*

[ljw1004]

Furthermore, IMO, the fundamental search for knowledge is one of the noblest human endeavors in existence.

I think that's important. LHC and the like are the greatest achievements of our civilization. On a par with the pyramids of Ancient Egypt. Looking back, it was awesome that King Cheops of Egypt built his pyramid at Giza, but pretty much insignificant that King Userkare of Egypt raised import duties by 0.1%.

Re:*coff*

[Anonymous Coward]

LHC isn't basic research? The point is to learn more about the fundamental laws of nature. Doesn't get more basic than that.

I'm not sure why you're trying to play particle physics off against astrophysics either. I suppose there's some overlap - dark matter may be due to some (possibly the most stable SUSY particle, for example, if it exists), but what's your point? Astrophysical measurements are unlikely to have discovered the nature of the weak interaction, or the different quarks, or the structure of hadrons. Different things. In any case, one of the purposes of the LHC is to look for new physics beyond the standard model.

And if these telescopes are generating new physics, it looks like they got their money, so we should both be happy.

Re:*coff*

[mzs]

Ever hear of Loma Linda University and Medical Center? Very linac tech based accelerator, and you know why? Because it was essentially designed and built with the cooperation of the linac people from Fermilab.

If you are thinking accelerators that produce nuclear materials for medicine by bombarding non radioactive materials, sure but accelerators that produce beam to treat people, such as those with tumors, those are either cyclotron or linac style. All descended from HEP tech BTW.

Also linacs in HEP are quite common. They are a great way to do initial acceleration where the particles are no where near c at first and exit close enough to c to have sufficient momentum so that bending magnets will not unfocus the beam into the beam pipe.

Finally the neutron therapy facility at fermilab, essentially a wall, chair, and a bend magnet in the regular linac has saved countless lives over the last 25 years.

Also why no response from you in my comment where I list numerous advancements outside of HEP because of HEP research. Are you still loking for some small issue with what I wrote to latch onto and attack?

Here is another one, Where do you thin eurocard was used extensively first? Hint it ends RN and starts CE. Eurocard became VME which was an industry standard (in fact the dominant one in industry for some time) and also in the US NAVY. Fermilab was one of the principle members of VITA (the org that runs VME) as well. Lots of companies made their fortune on VME initially, probably the two largest were Motorola and Sun Microsystems. These two companies in particular really left a stamp on technology in the first 20 years of your last 25 years question, all of it completely unrelated to HEP. Also lots and lots of money directly and indirectly.

Re:*coff*

[mzs]

Oh I forgot one thing. The tech that the DOE had rights to which was done at Fermilab related to magnets. The DOE granted rights to it very cheaply to GE for it to use in MRI machines. GE and all the other companies involved in that industry have made a fortune because of that. This directly created an entire new industry, a very big deal in macro economic terms, and also a good for further medical science and biology as well as the quality of life of humanity.

Re:*coff*

[mzs]

I'm sorry my frustration was directed to the fellow you were answering and I forgot who I was responding to as my fingers went into a furry answering him as well.

Re:*coff*

[Anonymous Coward]

Supersymmetry for a start. And there's always the hope for something completely wacky that nobody expected.

How would you suggest we look for new physics? If the LHC really does discover nothing unexpected that'll be a damn shame, and it'll leave people scratching their heads as to just where to look next to discover more about fundamental physics. Finding the higgs and nothing else would be the *worst* result really. Sadly, the nature of research is that it isn't nice and predictable.

Oh, and the LHC doesn't cost $16 billion. But if it did, that's pretty cheap for fundamental research given that it's many countries paying for it, it's over a period of many years, and other public expenses are so much larger it's not funny. Last time I checked, US military funding was over 600 billion dollars *every fucking year*.

Re:*coff*

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not true. If the LHC works as expected, we don't know what we'll discover. That's the point.

*If the laws of nature are what we have previously observed and there is nothing more*, the LHC will spot a Higgs and nothing else. That is not the same as what you said, because a) this isn't necessarily what we expect and b) we will have learned something. I'll grant you that isn't as exciting as having a splatload of SUSY particles turn up, or some micro black holes, but we will have learned something.

But it's not what we expect. It's just what we expect if a certain set of assumptions is true. Plenty of times it's not - we didn't expect neutrino oscillations, for example.

Re:*coff*

[oliderid]

Science for science sake is worth while no matter the cost or the expect benefit.

I call BS. Demonstration please, using the example above.

I do practical stuffs all day long, I'm a business owner. Some people are glad to subsidize painters, opera, religions, armies... I prefer things like the CERN.

They try to answer at their level the big "why". Why am I here ? What are we made of and what is this strange world we live in?

And between a LCD screen and discovering the complexity of the universe, I assure you that my interest goes to the later as a taxpayer.

CYA

[Tablizer]

They don't want to be blamed when the Galactic Sector Disaster Investigation Committee convenes to figure out what happened to the Orion Arm of the Milky Way.

Austria's budget

[Anonymous Coward]

They are going to put the money into building everyone secret underground rooms.

Re:Austria's budget

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL.

Always "about to harvest the fruits"

[Anonymous Coward]

Just like any street thug that was killed was trying to turn their life around, any government project that's killed was just about to yield results.

Re:Always "about to harvest the fruits"

[Selfbain]

Did they at least make a vague promise to call sometime?

Re:RSS?

[Anonymous Coward]

WHAT THE FUCK, slashdot? Now I can't see how many comments are on each story? What's the good overriding reason why you just couldn't possibly stand to have the number of comments available anymore? How am I supposed to know which ones to troll with "fr0sty p1ss" now?

If you want to improve something, make it so that loading the Javascript necessary to post doesn't take so goddamned long. I seriously doubt it takes your Web servers that long to send me a few kilobytes of Javascript and this is a fast machine. You know why they had to call it Javascript? Because only Java is anywhere near as slow for basic things so they had something in common.

Easy to say, not to do

[DesScorp]

"Science for science sake is worth while no matter the cost or the expect benefit."

That's nice and all, and true, but it still ignores fiscal realities. This kind of research is expensive, and there's an economic slump going on right now. What should the Austrian government cancel to pay for this research? Roads? Schools?

Its easy to tell them to keep up the good work, when you're not footing the bill.

Re:Easy to say, not to do

[Anonymatt]

Yeah, how many times have I heard someone talk about what a grand quest it is to see small stuff or figure more about the beginning of the universe and how justifiable and noble that type of curiosity is--but what we're really talking about is SOMEONE ELSE'S curiosity. I don't give a hoot. I'm really curious about some girl in my office, "I wonder if she's into me?" No one would spend ten dollars of tax money to satisfy my curiosity about how a nice Thai lunch would go if I took her out. I mean, if it worked out, maybe we could make BABIES. Maybe that baby would turn into some kind of genius and invent velcro 2.0. Maybe! Let's find out! I'm curious!

Re:Easy to say, not to do

[Anonymous Coward]

This kind of research is expensive, and there's an economic slump going on right now. What should the Austrian government cancel to pay for this research? Roads? Schools?

If I was supreme dictator I'd be canceling the CEO incentive bonuses.

Failing that, and being something of a Keynesian, I'd like to see the government save up a bit of a surplus during times of economic growth to be used to cushion the blow during economic downturns. That is, I wouldn't want to see the government canceling anything - because anything that gets canceled means putting more people out of work.

Now, if we are going to be canceling stuff, the question is what. In the short term we can do without a lot of stuff. We don't need scientific research. We also don't need much in the way of road maintenance (a few extra potholes are OK). We could also probably cut a lot of education since most people already have the education they need. We could also cut a lot of military projects. Certainly the military research could be cut - but we've also got a lot of military personal sitting around idle - we could cut them as well. Basically, if you're not in active combat, you're fired. We could also cut military pensions down to the poverty level - and we could make veterans buy their own health insurance.

But now you say, "Wait a minute, these veterans have served their country, they deserve their pensions, etc." Thing is, pretty much everyone serves their country in one way or another. We could play the "What if there was no military?" game but we could play that game with pretty much any profession: "What if there were no garbage collectors?" - Oh, the horror of mounds of disease ridden garbage collecting in the streets.

And then there's the problems of expectations: if you do start firing people or cutting their compensation, etc. then you're going to have a harder time attracting people to that career in the future. If the military gets crapped on then kids won't choose a career in the military but if scientists get crapped on then kids won't choose a career in science.

I agree that in the long term spending needs to match revenue but I don't agree that it's obvious what to cut and what not to cut.

Re:Easy to say, not to do

[timeOday]

This kind of research is expensive, and there's an economic slump going on right now. What should the Austrian government cancel to pay for this research? Roads? Schools?

The other alternative is to simply not balance the budget when the economy is in a slump, and help it recover faster with deficit spending, like what the US is doing. It's a reasonable plan, except that we never seem to get around to paying it back when the economy is good...

Re:Easy to say, not to do

[Dripdry]

How about finding a way to slash bureaucracy for a change? I'll bet (but I don't know) that's one of the biggest drains on any modern government's budget: Bureaucrats who want to entrench themselves so they can get paid forever.

Re:Easy to say, not to do

[drsquare]

What should the Austrian government cancel to pay for this research? Roads? Schools?

I wouldn't object if they cancelled the Austrian School.

Re:Easy to say, not to do

[SnarfQuest]

If I was supreme dictator I'd be canceling the CEO incentive bonuses.

You mean like Someone, who has the capability of firing the CEOs of major corporations, and cancelling the contractual pay of their employees even after Congress had previously Ok'd it. You could also force investors to settle for pennies on the dollar or face severe sanctions from the government, while turning the company over to his union boss friends without any investment at all. And the press would adore you for it.

Re:Easy to say, not to do

[Anonymous Coward]

How many times have I heard some myopic retard give his opinion of CERN's uselessness over the world wide web.

Re:Easy to say, not to do

[Anonymous Coward]

Spoken like a true American! Concerned about nothing but sex, food, babies and velcro.

Re:Easy to say, not to do

[Anonymous Coward]

If I was supreme dictator I'd be canceling the CEO incentive bonuses.

You mean like Someone,...

Were you somehow under the impression the CEO's who've run their companies into the ground have not walked away with hundreds of millions?

Or maybe you think that's a good thing because there was a "contract" involved?

Re:Easy to say, not to do

[Anonymous Coward]

How many of the stocks your 401K bought at like $10 a share got bought out by the CEO's buddy for $1 a share? You didn't have any say in it but your retirement fund just went go buy some guy a boat and you go screwed.

Clearly for religious reasons

[sabre86]

Given Austria's religious makeup, can we be surprised that they're pulling out?

Re:Clearly for religious reasons

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know if thats a joke about Catholics and birth control, or that religious people are commonly depicted as hating science.

Isolationism

[A beautiful mind]

I guess this has nothing to do with the fact that right-wing parties in Austria have won a large share of votes in recent elections, furthering the already prevalent mindset of isolationism that is present in Austria.

It is a telling fact that the 20M budget for CERN is outstandingly tiny compared to the 3.4 billion EUR science budget Austria has.

Re:Isolationism

[Anonymous Coward]

the 20M budget for CERN is outstandingly tiny compared

How does it compare to the politicians' 'expenses' budget?

Re:Isolationism

[A beautiful mind]

I don't know. There is one thing I'll know, though, that if I'll be a politician, I'll have an expenses budget that includes blackjack and hookers. In fact, forget the blackjack.

Re:Isolationism

[Anonymous Coward]

You're forgetting one thing...

A politician is a hooker. They both screw for money.

Re:Isolationism

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess this has nothing to do with the fact that right-wing parties in Austria have won a large share of votes in recent elections, furthering the already prevalent mindset of isolationism that is present in Austria.

It's unlikely for several reasons.

For one the right-wing parties are not in government. This decision to quit CERN has been made by the socialist party and the people's party (they are a party for the middle class).
Second Austria entered the ESO (European Southern Observatory) only a couple of months ago, so there doesn't seem to be a prevailent mindset of isolationism.

The reasons are most likely fiscal as the summary suggests. The majority (70%) of the research money for international projects goes to CERN. While the research done there is impressive for the money spent it seems to offer not much payback in terms of scientific archievement that can be directly linked to Austria, which would be important for the government in order to justify the project. In comparison to that the 3 Million for the ESO offer far better returns.

While the particle physicists will surely be hit hard by that decision it offers opportunities for cooperations in other areas. I am sure the scientists in other disciplines will be glad for that.
Another thing is that everything that has to do with nuclear research is highly suspect to the general population in austria, mainly due to misconceptions about the danger and pollution that nuclear power plants cause, which might also have influenced this decision.

Personally I would like austria to continue funding CERN, but the fiscal realities today don't really allow for the expension of the research budget that would be needed to do that and still diversify austrias involvement in international projects.

Sensationalism?

[hh4m]

Why are we overreacting over this? Austria will cease to be a member of CERN but it WILL continue cooperating with CERN as other non member countries do. Science is a relevant expense but the world is facing tough economic turbulence and some things need to be restructured. The benefits of science can be reaped by everyone at the end of the day, i mean i wasn't part of any of the great inventions yet i sit here benefiting from them.

Re:Sensationalism?

[andre.david]

[...] i mean i wasn't part of any of the great inventions yet i sit here benefiting from them.

If no one does science, there are no benefits to have. Or have I missed something?

Forward thinking...

[Anonymous Coward]

By Alpine Kat there.

A tunnel that crosses through Switzerland and France,
Sixty nations contributed to scientific advance!

Whew! It still runs!

The real reason Austria pulled out

[Concerned Onlooker]

After taking a public relations beating like this I'm surprised anyone is willing to fund the LHC.

Visit to the large hadron collider

Ivory Tower's Crumbling!

[RCC42]

You ivory tower intellectuals must not lose touch with the world of industrial growth and hard currency. It is all very well and good to pursue these high-minded scientific theories, but research grants are expensive. You must justify your existence by providing not only knowledge but concrete and profitable applications as well.

It's OK

[daem0n1x]

They need the money for more useful purposes, like bail out banks that will give bonuses to their executives, that will spend them in whores, champagne and expensive cars. This will get the economy running, again.

Who the fuck needs science and technology? Nothing like getting our priorities right.

Re:It's OK

[Anonymous Coward]

Executive compensation in Austria is nothing like the nonsense going on here in the states ...

too bad.

[yodleboy]

don't let the quarks hit you in the ass on your way out the door Austria.

and isn't pulling out considered a poor method of birth control anyway?

Isn't this really about free-ridership?

[syd02]

They point out that 30 countries are working with CERN without being members, and it seems like they would like to be one of 31. I mean, why wouldn't they? Being a member sounds expensive.

Re:Isn't this really about free-ridership?

[andre.david]

They point out that 30 countries are working with CERN without being members, and it seems like they would like to be one of 31. I mean, why wouldn't they? Being a member sounds expensive.

That is a great question.

What a country loses for not being a member is that you can't vote in the CERN Council. I think it also becomes harder for your nationals to get hired (both for training and employment) and for your country to get tenders.

HEP research in everyone's world

[andre.david]

Can anyone name a single discovery in HEP in the last 25 years that has led to a practical improvement of anything whatsoever? The only thing HEP has generated is paper.

In order to make discoveries in HEP, there were some byproducts like:

- Positron Emission Tomography (think neuroscience advances by having functional tissue imaging or accurate breast cancer screening),

- high-speed radiation-tolerant digital electronics (think satellites),

- single-photon counting detectors (think lowest possible dose Xrays),

- HTTP (think "the web"),

- grid computing (think UN agencies managing disasters by harnessing grid computing or drug discovery screening without slow and expensive in vitro trials)

- cancer hadro-therapy (think accurate targeting of cancer tissue)

And these are only the ones I know of, from the top of my head.

Typical Austrians?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

They hate everything with "nuclear" in name. They threatened us with Ed Fagan over one of our nuclear power plants. I wouldn't be surprised if subconscious decisions had something to do with this.

And CERN Director quoted as saying:

[fishtorte]

"Very well. You may expect to be the first to be sucked into our singularity. MWAHAHAHAHAHA!"

you can pull out of CERN, but.......

[gadget junkie]

Austria is pulling out of the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), Science Minister Johannes Hahn announced Thursday, citing budget concerns.


They do not have to worry. LHC will pull Austria out of its place eventually.

the minister was in the one-arm bandit busniness

[kubitus]

maybe he does not believe in the jackpot of physics?

Congress can have a whip-round

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't pay the government, YOU pay the government and government pays THEM.

So if congress want to OK an insane benefits package for a incompetent boob, let them open their wallets.

Where the web was born

[Anonymous Coward]

It's ironic how this comment derides CERN, while being allowed to do so only thanks to the very technology developed there.
CERN - Where the web was born
http://public.web.cern.ch/Public/en/About/Web-en.html

Perspective

[Roger W Moore]

What should the Austrian government cancel to pay for this research? Roads? Schools?

How about bailing out their banks less? They apparently spent 100 billion Euros on this which would pay their CERN membership for the next 5,000 years.

Obviously, like everyone else, they needed to stabilize their banks to prevent their economy from short term disaster. It's just a shame that they can't see the long term disaster for their economy of encouraging all their future scientists to emmigrate. It's ridiculous to think that if they can afford 100 billion euros to bail out the banks that they cannot afford 20 million euros for CERN.

Oh the irony

[Roger W Moore]

Can anyone name a single discovery in HEP in the last 25 years that has led to a practical improvement of anything whatsoever?

This is a very ironic question to find on a website given where the web was developed. However there are many medical applications of HEP: accelerators, detectors, magnets and antimatter (PET). In addition there are increasing use of HEP detector technology and physics in security screening applications.
However to really find the applications you have to turn the clock back to the HEP of 80-100 years ago: quantum and nuclear physics. Both of these have completely changed our world giving rise to numerous industries.

I call BS. Demonstration please, using the example above.

Read the answer above. I would also point out that no country in recent times has done well without investing in basic science. As well as the applications (which are always years down the line) having research programs excites the minds of young scientists and gets them into the field. The majority do not stay there but take their technical and scientific skills into industry where they further stimulate the economy.

Transist_o_rs were invented as part of a very focused and practical development program at Bell Labs

...which relied on a knowledge of quantum physics to be able to understand and exploit the effect. Certainly integrated circuits would have been impossible without QM.

Don't get me wrong, there's been a lot of purely theoretical research that makes it into everyday life. Quantum is a good example.

Quantum mechanics is NOT theoretical research! Nobody in their right mind would ever have believed QM if it were not backed up by thorough experimental evidence. Indeed lots of people, including Einstein himself, refused to believe it even though there was overwhelming experimental evidence.

There's many, many products in daily use today that we still have no idea how they work.

There are? Like what exactly? I cannot think of a single product that we do not understand the basic physics of - this is why we have to build large colliders because we already understand the everyday objects. Just because you personally don't understand how things work does not mean that others don't.

Pulling Out?

[adavies42]

Collidus interruptus?

Re:RSS?

[Anonymous Coward]

I noticed this as well ... Not much point loading the article when >250 people have already posted their inane (and generally off-topic) comments.

Wuz: (Re:That's ok...) :: is :: So Long and Thanks

[metaforest]

I cant afford to fund 'big science' out of my pocket. Don't get me wrong... I 'd like to, but near-freezing organic cultivation studies are all I can afford to contribute at this time.... and y'all don't seem to appreciate my papers.... so I'll be moving on.... I hope the particle smasher does well....

Sincerely,

Austria

Re:RSS?

[Phoghat]

OK, move along, nothing to see here. No more /.ing /. BTW, matter of conCERN, very witty, but dry, with odors of oak and a bit of tannin. A hint of pear around the edge. Serve chilled.

Particle Physics isn't that big in Austria

[pwilli]

As a citizen of Austria I would like to state that particle physics and membership at CERN only was interesting for one university in Vienna (capitol city) and therefore I think it was the right thing to take the money elsewhere (why should ONE university get to spend 70% of the budget for this kind of memberships?). We have many good universities in many different fields of science.

Austria is heavily involved in quantum physics (e. g. University of Innsbruck), and I think a good chunk of the saved Euros will likely flow in that direction in future, as it promises some nice inventions like quantum computers or cryptographics.

It definetly had nothing to do with recent elections (right wing parties are not part of the government) or religious composition of the people - although mostly catholic christians, religion has imho no measurable impact on politics or science in Austria. We've seperated those things long time ago.

Re:RSS?

[Sparr0]

Go into Help & Preferences, Index, turn off Low Bandwidth. I have clarified this bug on the slashcode tracker on sourceforge, hopefully it will be fixed soon.

Re:Obvious Economics of Small Intellects (OESI) ..

[Anonymous Coward]

This sort of thing always bothered me.. 20 million for research? way to expensive! 1 billion for an essential subway line? hell no we don't have that kind of money! Oh the banks want 90 billion to keep afloat when they screwed up? please, go ahead, we can afford it!
The priorities of these corrupt bastard politicians are fucked up.

Online Petition now available!

[Anonymous Coward]

http://sos2.teilchen.at/petition/

Anonymous Coward

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably the assessment made by experts in Austria is that million dollars investments in accelerator physics are not more profitable than in other areas of fundamental physics, such as the physics of cosmic rays. It seems to me that the scientific results of the last two decades support this view. The economic cost and environmental impact of accelerators reached the limit of sustainability; now the scientific rationale is probably over. A new season will open, and we hope it will give resuls as good as the physics from the past (including LHC).

Re:RSS?

[Cow Jones]

[sorry for replying out of context, but I'd like this to be as visible as possible]

Austria's chancellor Werner Faymann has just overruled the science minister's decision:

AUSTRIA WILL NOT LEAVE CERN.

It took us a while to impress on our government how much damage pulling out of CERN would do to the scientific research in Austria, as well as the country's international reputation. The petition (German version) has gathered over 30k supporters in just a few days, which (I hope) has had some effect.

Finally, here's a link to the online version of the "Standard" newspaper with the announcement:
http://derstandard.at/?url=/?id=1242316123780

I'll try to translate in a follow-up.

CJ

Austria won't pull out of CERN

[thred]

After a week long discussion Federal Chancellor Faymann just announced, Austria won't pull out of CERN (news Austrian Television (Google Translated)).

Backpedaling

[Anonymous Coward]

Austrias Chancellor, Werner Faymann, probably due to international pressure, intervened in this situation and canceled the cancellation of Austria from within Cern.