Thread: Plunging the dephts of Quantum Mechanics

Strangly enough, one of our big costs on those is testing them, for hours and hours and hours.

It would be a good news story, mysterious power surge blacks out Copenhagen or wherever.

CERN public funding is (was about 6 years ago) about £0.50 per person in the EU per year. Worse problem is placing these things, you need 30km circumference tunnels in geologically stable areas. It helps if they're isolated as well, the detectors in CERN can detect the TGV going past about 30 miles away.

When you consider the discoveries made at CERN, the quibbling over financing it really does look obscene doesn't it.

Trouble is the public perception of the work. It is very easy to say it is all academic, abstract concepts and a lot of maths, where's the products? The space program produced loads of spin off products, where's my CERN non-stick pan? I don't know how to solve this because to understand the value, one needs to understand some of the concepts, and many people cannot or will not. Roll an anti gravity device out of the door and that'll be different.

>>> circumference tunnels in geologically stable areas

Geneva is far from a good choice of location. The entire alpine region is still subject to tectonic activity. I would have thought a site in an ancient shield would be better. Still, the thing seemed to work.

CERN's location is more political. All the important parts are in Switzerland, a neutral country, so that in case of war, it should all be left alone, and all the scientists should be safe.

>>> CERN's location is more political

Again, I was aware of that, and as usual, politics and sense rarely go hand in hand.

>>> a neutral country

I wonder if that term really has outlived it's day. I don't think in the current situation, Switzerlands neutrality would count for much, especially when one considers their involvement in the world financial markets. This is, however, a total digression.

To come back to the subject, you said earlier...

>>> The evidence for quarks having structure is shakey at best.

... I'd be interested in looking at any research which showed a structure within a quark, however tentative. Where did you see this? (I did see something about a resonant state in the b quark about 6 months back - but that was found to be a fault in the data).

As another aside, the b and t, do you call them top and bottom or truth and beauty?

Internal Quark structure was claimed by a group out of Fermilab about 2 years ago but the data wasn't good. I've not heard anything since... but I've not been reading as much as I could about this.

They're top and bottom to me,

>>> They're top and bottom to me,

Me too. I've seen the truth and beauty a few times recently though - yuck.

>>> Fermilab about 2 years ago but the data wasn't good.

This may actually have been the same thing then. If I remember correctly, some dubious data from some commisioning/calibration runs after an overhaul on the Tevatron got included in a research project which showed a possible resonance within the b quark. It was later totally debunked. It was the debunking I was reading about 6 months back.

If anybody's interested, I have about fifty chapters of Volume
One of Feynman's lectures on physics in pdf format. I'd be
happy to post them on my website for anyone who wants them.
I might be able to get more.

Drop a line here.

rick barclay

I would be, I've read some of them, not all of them and I understood a fair bit too.

>CERN public funding is (was about 6 years ago) about £0.50 per person in the EU per year. <

>When you consider the discoveries made at CERN, the quibbling over financing it really does look obscene doesn't it.<

Half a pound per person sounds like quite a bit to me. How does
that figure measure up against EU spending per capita for
social services? Defense? Et cetera, et cetera? All those 1/2
pounders can add up to quite a bundle. Then subtract your
per capita spending from that which the common bloke spends
on himself just to survive, and then I think you might have a
better idea of what's obscene and what's not. Most people
would rather eat and watch soccer than research tachyons
and such. Perhaps we could ask Osama for a contribution?

rick barclay

Originally posted by RobS
I would be, I've read some of them, not all of them and I understood a fair bit too.

I'll get on it in a day or two. Please be patient.

rick barclay

rick barclay:

Whatever you say.

In direct taxation I pay about £5000, of which £0.50 gets sent to CERN. It does add up though, latest EU population figures are 380 million, so they get given a fair amount of cash.

So about 190UKP a year. Covers buildings, plant, maintenence, power etc, not to mention a small army of staff who are employed and paying tax rather than unemployed claiming benefit. And it produces some good science. Bargain I'd say.

That's only the public EU funding, other countries and research institutes also put in funding since it allows them access to the facilities and the data.

Yes, I'm well aware of the external funding. My point really is that .5 UKP is little more than the price of a postage stamp here, and as you also point out, the science is made available.

Consider the amounts of public money that the US puts into places like Brookhaven and Sandia, and much of that work is never made public.

I maintain that CERN is not an excessive demand on the member governments in the way that rick, with his talk of food and football, would like to believe.