can someone explain where Cern gets the $50B+ to build and operate the LHC? their discoveries have a dubious theoretical and practically zero commercial application. there must be a hidden weapons / military application to justify a massive money hole
Since first "high energy" particle accelerator in 1932, we have used particle accelerator to smash and study subatomic particles. First we found a whole zoo of them, but then 1961 Gell-Mann's quark model explained how all those subatomic particles are not elementary particles, but made of various combinations of quarks.
From 1975 we've had the standard model of particle physics, and after 2012 with the experimental discovery of the Higgs boson, now we've found all the particles in the standard model. But the road up to 2012 was: Keep building bigger accelerators, keep adding more energy, keep finding new particles. Why stop now?
Some skeptics say that now we have maybe found them all. And we don't have a good theory that would predict new particles, so maybe we won't find new elementary particles, no matter how we go on. Maybe we should pause and reconsider. Work on new theories.
But, we also have theories: Supersymmetry, and string theory. Supersymmetry predicts the existence of the superpartners of all the 17 elementary particles. Maybe their discovery is just behind the corner, if we just keep going? Or maybe supersymmetry is wrong, and the superpartners don't exist at all.
Timeline of discoveries of the elementary particles:
1800-1895 photon
1897 electron
1937 muon
1956 electron neutrino
1962 muon neutrino
1969 down quark
1969 strange quark
1969 up quark
1974 charm quark
1975 tau
1977 bottom quark
1979 gluon
1983 W boson
1983 Z boson
1995 top quark
2000 tau neutrino
2012 higgs
It's the continuation of the same line of work that long ago gave us nuclear power, nuclear bombs, nuclear medicine (MRI and PET scans, cancer treatments). We don't know if this line of work has / will have practical value anymore. But we have been at this for such a long time, there is momentum and it's maybe difficult to stop and reorient.
Or rather, planning useful projects only gets you things you already knew to ask for. Doing basic research is a way to create things you didn't know to ask for.
