physics 101
Out of context: Reply #15
- Started
- Last post
- 18 Responses
- detritus0
I don't get where the accusation that NASA has somehow undermined the development of the LHC comes from? The US is still paying its fair share to support the project, and it was FERMILAB who supplied the exploding magnet that delayed the LHC firing up. That Congress is cutting back funding for large science projects isn't in question - but it is the next, even larger version of the LHC (the ILC) they're cutting back on. Funding for the ITER fusion experiment has long been questionable as newer technologies undermine the relevancy of a programme that's been on the drawing board, essentially unchanged, for 30 years, but that's hardly relevant here.
We've got similar science funding woes here in the UK - we've just pulled funding for the European X-Ray synchotron project and for the Northern Hemisphere telescope array we've just spend the last 15 years funding, thereby pissing the $140m up the wall.
It would appear that it's hard for the gleaming lights of western civilisation to fund optimistic mega projects when they are breezily engaged in a dystopic, ceaseless military campaign in the middle east. It's such a fucking shame - this level of science, as arcane and impenetrable as it may be, is the one platform that demands that the best of all the peoples come together and help develop. At the LHC there are scientists from countries across the world, including Iran, working together for the mutual benefit of all mankind.
So, we engage in wars where we don't even fund our individual soldiers properly, yet spend untold billions supporting the industrial military complex, and for what? Pissing off even more people and pouring petrol on conflagration we're already burning in.
Woo. Go us.