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India To Build Neutrino Observatory
TeriMaKiChooth writes "Only the fifth in the world, the facility is being called one of the biggest and most ambitious scientific projects ever undertaken by India. About 90 scientists from 26 organizations will be involved in the Indian Neutrino Observatory (INO), organizers say. Neutrinos are elusive, nearly mass-less elementary particles, sometimes called 'ghost particles.'"
I remember this from somewhere... hmmmmmmm
Eat sleep die
First post!
Somebody in India has clearly been stealing ideas from 2012.
I do not see how this type of project is sanctioned by the Indian government.
Half the population is living in slums
Most parts of the country have only intermittant electricty
There is almost no safe water (by Western European standards)
The majority of the population is functionally illiterate.
The roads are amongst the most dangerous in the world
Pollution (air, water, and waste) is a HUGE problem
I suggest that this money could be better spent addressing those problems
is a real bad swear word!
Terrorist could use NeutrinoComm(tm) to circumvent the blackberry-surveillance!!
I'm a particle physics grad student, and I swear I have never heard anyone refer to them as ghost particles. This seems to be BBC science writers only...
xterm -n 8
as long as its not built by cowboys
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Sorta, but not exactly. Sure, it eventually trickles and creates that Keynesian multiplier.
But, and here's the important part, so would spending that money on something more useful like schools or water pumps. The money spent on those would create just as many jobs, you know, and you'd also have some schools or clean water instead of a national penis size symbol.
Think of it this way. If you spend X dollars, a Keynesian multiplier of Y says effectively you've put X*Y dollars into the economy. But if you invested that original X into something pointless, effectively you now only have X*(Y-1) that actually goes into anything the country actually needs. Unless Y is at least in the hundreds, you'll still see a difference.
And actually a more reasonable multiplier to expect is somewhere around 1.25 to 1.5. The highest ever multiplier recorded for a government investment was 1.73.
So basically even if you're uber-lucky, a million invested in useless crap will also bring 730,000 that trickles into more useful stuff. Whereas if you invested that million into something useful, well, now you'd have 1.73 million worth of useful stuff.
Basically that multiplier isn't a blank check to do any stupidity whatsoever with the public money. It doesn't mean you can just blow it on any crap and let the multiplier distribute it for you. At the end of the day, a million wasted is still a million wasted.
But it gets even better, actually. The multiplier itself is different for different things you do with the money. A million invested in something could have a multiplier as low as 0.23 (actual historical case too: yes, it's possible for such an investment to actually be a loss) or as high as 1.73. Like any investment, basically, you get a different ROI. It doesn't mean just blow the money or anything and expect it to trickle just the same.
Or in less complicated terms, think of it like this: a country has a certain amount of resources, including manpower. Tying up X thousand people into one project (including making those bricks and supplying the factory and whatnot) means X thousand you won't have for something else. Even if it creates Y thousand other jobs somewhere else too, that original X thousand is still tied up in activity A instead of activity B. If A is less needed than B, that's not a good use of manpower.
Also, I'd say that one should look at the actual conditions in a country before cheering for a waste. The exact multiplier and number of jobs created depend a lot on the local conditions. The way it works in a western post-scarcity economy, where really at worst you just diverted some people from marketing jobs and services and other ultimately just ways to do something when you don't need them in actual production, may not be the same for a country which still has a scarcity economy.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
And yet their people still live in a third world country, bailed out by Western countries to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars each year.
"Dr Jaikumar expects the project to enhance understanding of the universe and the Earth's structure, as well as volcanic activity and how tsunamis are formed." Oh okay, but HOW do neutrinos affect volanic activity and tsunamis exactly? Could we get a 1-2 sentence further explanation of what the heck you are talking about?
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Sometimes; but only if you're an idiot.
India to build only the world's 5th ever neutrino observatory at 1/4th the cost of an Indian home http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antilia_(building)
Analysts says that in the first quarter of 2011 the mine industry of Cho Ming Tibet will sky rocket and will need to hire people from other areas just to meet the large demand of mine worker.
I'm an Indian and I do believe in science but there are tons of basic things in India that needs to be corrected first... and here they are finding neutrino!! Awesome.
India to build $55 Neutrino Observatory.
>Neutrinos are elusive, nearly mass-less elementary particles, sometimes called 'ghost particles.'"
Gee, thanks for defining that for us. I mean, it's not like the general public have been hearing about these "neutrinos" since the 70s. I mean, Carl Sagan certainly never talked about them. And it is so incredibly rare to hear the science media mention them - they hardly get any airtime at all, like k mesons, and unlike electrons or photons.
Climate Progress - Hell and High Water
stand anymorE, paper 7owels
It is really amusing to see so many people raise their hands and start shouting - poverty, slums, drinking water, health, etc. etc. - whenever any mention of India investing a substantial sum of money in a challenging scientific endeavour, apparently reserved for the developed first world countries, comes up.
:-)
How easy it is to do so, without having any ground knowledge of the state of things in the country, right?
Perhaps, a bit easier, than taking the troubles to know that all the basic things to be taken care of, as mentioned above, are already financed by a multitude of schemes for each one of them under various mininstries, programs and plans of the Indian governement.
Nowhere in the country, at no point of time in the last 2 decades at least, has a water, electricity, housing, education or health program suffered because of lack of funds from the top of the pyramid, but because of the apathy shown towards sincere planning and execution of those projects, including brazen corruption prevailing at all levels, which accounts for consuming most of the funds meant for the upliftment of the social condition.
Without digging for exact statistics and quoting all the schemes, it would not be an exaggeration to say that India regularly allotts huge sums of money, running into billions of dollars, for each of those basic amenities, under its Five Year Plans, Annual Budgets etc.
It is definitely a matter of debate about the ratio of funds allocated for different purposes, the methods of allocation, accountability and responsibility. But just because apparently there seems to be less red-tapism for the scientific agencies in produring and applying funds for advancing research activities, or the pot-holed roads, hungry kids and uneducated & unemployed youth make for a more sensational news items whenever the former happens, India shouldn't be accused of trying to become a scientific powerhouse in spite of all the adveristies.
In fcat IMHO, the funds allocated for such scientific activities, is still far less than what should have been for a country the size and aspirations of India, and certainly much less than other countires like China.
Relativity is a bitch
Suspend all research spending?
Not ALL research spending, but how about research spending on project directly related to solving these issue first?
How do you know that they're not doing that?
Just because a story is published about India doing physics research, how does it logically follow that they're not also working on social and economic issues?
Putting moderation advice in your
Aren't you anxious to know if a really hot curry actually does emit neutrinos, or if it is hot because it somehow interacts with neutrinos?
Putting moderation advice in your
Aren't you anxious to know if a really hot curry actually does emit neutrinos, or if it is hot because it somehow interacts with neutrinos?
I was just wondering how far down I'd have to scroll to find some racist troll rolling out the traditional curry joke. Some people just can't comment on anything India-related without having a pop at their funny food, funny accent or funny customs, can they?
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Those neutrinos are some totally radical dudes!!!
California used to be the power supply joke of the developed world. How are things now?