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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."
I guess that means more particles for the rest of us!
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.
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.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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
DISCLAIMER: I am very rarely serious. If the above comment seems asinine makes no sense, it is most likely a bad joke.
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.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
Does slashdot not have testing servers, or what?
Testing is for wimps. Real men upload their data to an...
My pics.
> 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
"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.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Given Austria's religious makeup, can we be surprised that they're pulling out?
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.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
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.
After taking a public relations beating like this I'm surprised anyone is willing to fund the LHC.
Visit to the large hadron collider
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
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.
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.
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.