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China's Expensive Super Particle Collider Jeopardized By Criticism (scmp.com)
China's plan to build a particle collider that's four times the size of the Large Hadron Collider in Europe "may be in jeopardy" after criticisms of its cost went viral. Long-time Slashdot reader hackingbear quotes the South China Morning Post:
On Sunday, Dr Yang Chen-ning, co-winner of the Nobel Prize in physics in 1957...released an article on WeChat opposing the construction of the collider. He said the project would become an investment "black hole" with little scientific value or benefit to society, sucking resources away from other research sectors such as life sciences and quantum physics... Yang's article hit nearly all social media platforms and internet news portals, drawing tens of thousands of positive comments over the last couple of days...
Yang's main argument was that China would not succeed where the United States had failed. A similar project had been proposed in the U.S. but was eventually cancelled in 2012 as the construction far exceeded the initial budget... Yang said existing facilities including the Large Hadron Collider contributed little to the increase of human knowledge and was irrelevant to most people's daily lives. But Dr Wang Yifang, lead scientist of the project with the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of High Energy Physics, argued research in high energy physics lead to the world wide web, mobile phone touch screens and magnetic resonance imaging in hospitals, among other technological breakthroughs.
The collider is expected to cost $21 billion, and won't be completed until 2050.
Yang's main argument was that China would not succeed where the United States had failed. A similar project had been proposed in the U.S. but was eventually cancelled in 2012 as the construction far exceeded the initial budget... Yang said existing facilities including the Large Hadron Collider contributed little to the increase of human knowledge and was irrelevant to most people's daily lives. But Dr Wang Yifang, lead scientist of the project with the Chinese Academy of Sciences' Institute of High Energy Physics, argued research in high energy physics lead to the world wide web, mobile phone touch screens and magnetic resonance imaging in hospitals, among other technological breakthroughs.
The collider is expected to cost $21 billion, and won't be completed until 2050.
I have a sneaking suspicion that there's simply no way to value any particular pure science project in any kind of precise terms. In aggregate pure science of course is a big part of our civilization's success.
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No way that article gets published without the imprimatur of the communist government, which must mean the government wants to back out of the plan. Having Dr Yang Chen-ning kill the project let's the government save face.
Similarly, I think it's almost impossible to justify any 10 billion dollar project in precise terms. Combine such a large cost investment with one pure science project/facility, and I think it's pretty fair to have some pointed questions and concerns before writing the check.
One particular question: what other science projects with tangible results may be underfunded or non-existant as a result of this one project?
People should listen to him.
People do listen to him. Most Americans would be challenged to name a living Nobel laureate. But in China, everyone knows who Chen-ning Yang is. He is a national icon. He is as well known in China as Kim Kardashian is in America. When he married Weng Fan, it was huge news. An American equivalent would be like when Brad Pitt married Angelina Jolie.
If he is speaking out against the collider, that carries a lot of weight. There is no way he can just be silenced. He has too much stature for that. Even Xi Jinping would not want to butt heads with him.