Sigh. I submitted this story in a hurry this morning before I left for work; and I typed "one-in-a-million" when the part of my brain that isn't dead had meant to type "once-in-a-millenium," which is the actual argument TEPCO makes.
I hate getting old.
Actually elements up to iron can be made in a star. Elements heavier than iron can only be created in a supernova. This is because a star can fuse lighter elements into heavier ones, up to iron. Iron cannot be fused into heavier elements without energy, lighter elements when fused release energy, and so keep the star going. But once the star has started to make iron, it starts to loose energy while gaining mass. Eventually the energy output cannot keep up with the force of gravity from the increasing mass in the star's core and then the star 'implodes'. This is one form of a supernova.
Right. That's why, in the post to which you replied, I wrote "That big boom also serves to make very heavy elements -- such as uranium, for instance -- that cannot be made even in a star while it's burning away."
This is a good post, and expresses valid concerns.
As far as the best use of talented minds, I think the best use of a talented mind is generally not to tell them what problem to work on, but rather to let them decide for themselves. If you take a smart person, and give them a problem to work on that they have no interest in or love for, and you order them to do something brilliant and creative . .
Money, OTOH, is another matter. You're absolutely right that resources are finite, and that sometimes we have to make tough decisions. That's very pertinent to this discussion, because we made such a decision almost twenty years ago when we decided not to build the SSC, which would likely have answered all the questions the LHC can a long time ago, and other stuff too. But we decided we couldn't afford it; and maybe that was the right decision. All I can really say in response is that we absolutely should ask the kind of questions you're asking, and we do; and sometimes the folks in control of the money say "yea" and sometimes "nay," and rarely does everyone agree. Any one of us can think that a funding decision or decisions should have played out differently (for or against a line of research); but the mechanism for asking those questions and using the answers to motivate the funding decisions does exist.
Full disclosure: I'm a physicist with some high energy/field theory in my background; but I stopped doing anything with high energy theory twenty years ago. Maybe someone who works in the field will disagree with me. And also, some of what I'm saying here I said on
With that said . .
But nevertheless, I don't want to suggest that that's the eventual result here, because I don't believe it will be. I think that would be disingenuous of me. I highly doubt that an improved understanding of Higgs physics will ever produce any wonderful and amazing technological advance. To me, the motivation is simply that understanding and knowledge -- especially of something like how the Universe got to be the way it is, and why it works the way it does -- is inherently a good thing. It has value by definition. Perhaps my least favorite thing about our society is that we are trained to evaluate the worth of things in terms of their economic value. Just like love, understanding has its own value, in my mind -- bereft of any "practical" value.
Let me give you an example of what I mean. To the best of our ability to tell, there's only one place where elements heavier than carbon (such as nitrogen, oxygen, sodium, etc. etc.) can be formed in large amounts -- and that's inside a star. Only elements as heavy as carbon or lighter can be formed in the early universe (and, for that matter, the amounts of Li, Be, B and C formed in Big Bang Nucleosynthesis are very very small); for heavier elements, and for larger amounts of carbon etc., you need a star. Now, if you didn't already know this, stop and think about it for a second. A huge chunk of you, perhaps all of you, was inside a star at one time. It appears that you and I are star debris. And it gets even better. The way that large amounts of these elements, forged within a star, can get out of the star is if the star supernovas -- dies at the end of its lifetime with a big boom. That big boom also serves to make very heavy elements -- such as uranium, for instance -- that cannot be made even in a star while it's burning away. There's uranium, and other similar very heavy elements, on our planet. Do you see what I'm getting at? Much of the atoms that make all of us up, that make this planet up, were at one time inside a star (or stars) that lived its life, supernovaed, and spewed out debris. Eventually, maybe a few hundred million years later, that stuff is part of our planet, part of our atmosphere, our water, part of you and me. We are all brothers and sisters; we all came from the same place, sorta.
Now, that knowledge will never make me any money. It will never have any practical benefit in my life. And yet, I consider myself immensely richer for knowing it.
Understanding has its own value.
The next person to mention spaghetti stacks to me is going to have his head knocked off. -- Bill Conrad
