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Tevatron To Shut Down At End of 2011
universegeek writes "It appears Fermilab's Tevatron will be shutting down by the end of 2011. Rumors confirmed today at the ISP220 conference say that the DOE denied further funding for the project. Looks like the LHC is our only hope in the hunt for the Higgs after all."
A very large fraction of biomedical research and nanoscale self assembling materials research is dependent on unfathomably expensive high energy physics tools like the Advanced Photon Source at Argonne. Without this kind of beam we'd have lost a big chunk of the most impressive medical treatments now available and a lot of computer technology we take for granted, and the next generation of technology (meaning a 30 year generation, not an iPhone generation) is going to be an order of magnitude more dependent on high energy scattering. And the generation after that will likely include things like fusion.
The thing that's not adding up for you is your lack of knowledge about recent research. If anything, long term research pays off much more now than it did in the early 20th century. And you even point out that we're just now realizing things theorized or primitively demonstrated back then, which is a further demonstration of the huge long-term payoff of basic science research!
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
The Large Hadron Collider, a.k.a the largest scientific endeavor in human history, cost 6 billion dollars.
A Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carrier costs 8.5 billion dollars, and the US Navy will be introducing ten such aircraft carriers into their arsenal, the equivalent of fourteen LHCs.
I don't think it's science programs that need to be cut.