New particle found by the Large Hadron Collider

Many years ago there was a device called a "laser" that was developed from pure research. For many years it was spoken as "the solution looking for a problem". Could we manager without it now?

Not to be a complete Luddite but yes, we could quite happily survive without laser. Come to that we could survive without mobile telephones, computers, the internet, the internal combustion engine, in fact many things we take for granted. Life would be very different but if we had never known it then the world would still continue to go round. We can't un-invent things but we can do, or should do, is use the technology, knowledge and resources we now have to resolve the worlds problems not create more.

I wonder how much is spent at CERN compared to how much is spent in F1?

Probably a lot more but then my taxes don't pay for F1.

I kind of agree in the sense I have no idea how people managed to get CERN off the ground and I don't see where funding for another major project will come from in Europe, at least major in the sense of the +50km machines that are being talked about (Japan or China may be possibilities).

The UK government spends about £5.9 billion on research at the moment, £150 million of which goes directly to CERN. Plus money spent on staff/material for people working on projects related to CERN but based in the UK.

We could all live happily with 50 year old technology (or more) but I think it's kind of exciting and important that you have people working on this stuff in the hope of moving us forward even if there's no obvious immediate benefit.

So now another 5 sub-atomic particles have arrived, fortunately they all seem to be quarks. "Up", "Down", "Charm" and "Strange" are such lovely names for quarks, scientists also talk bout them as families with some being cousins and others brothers and sisters.

LHC: Five new particles hold clues to sub-atomic glue - BBC News

As an aside there was an article the other day which has upped the amount of dark matter in the universe to 95%. I am so old that I can remember it being about 20% but that was before scientists started a bidding war.[/sarcasm]

It's all those Super heroes out there saving the Universe.

Bill Boddy said:

So now another 5 sub-atomic particles have arrived, fortunately they all seem to be quarks.

Click to expand

Actually none of them are quarks. They are all baryons, bound states of three quarks.

Which is all very interesting but how close are we to anti-gravity boots and teleport booths?