HBP doesn't seem worth it. ITER is a huge failure that is scheduled to receive billions more euros for more than 25 more years. I don't know... Europe seems to fall victim to these sort of things very readily.
In my opinion, these projects are one of the last great human efforts to inspire generations with things that are not just about making more profit. But it's not about this project or that. It's about far more.
You say this money should go to hungry people instead. Let's say it's not just starving children in Africa, but maybe even a project to feed the homeless or help under-privileged children get an education...even in that case, do you actually think that if all that money was freed up, this would actually happen?
Of course it wouldn't. It would go to line even more pockets of some faceless international organisation / corporation / hedge fund / military investment buddies of some regime.
There is no way in hell that any poor or under-privileged person would benefit from the abandonment of these projects. No chance whatsoever. What little money there is, is all concentrated in the hands of a few people who have absolutely no other mission in life other than accumulating more money and power.
They have made most science happen for private sector profit-reaping already. This is some of the last stuff done for all mankind. We'd be making a huge mistake abandoning it.
Again, the people in charge will not help the poor or homeless. If you wanted to do that, you should tax multinational corporations and get rid of tax havens.
There is a kind of money hidden away in tax loopholes all over the globe that would make the LHC, HBP, heck, the ISS look like chump change.
Look there first.
(Also, if everyone in the EU paid $80 for the Higgs, that’s about three LHCs depending on where in its history you take the exchange rate).
Counterexamples: one of the early prime number researchers was proud that his work had no use at all, and now it’s the foundation of a major class of encryption. That was a century or two.
Or, Maxwell published “A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism” in 1873, and it took another 30 years to become voice radio.
Of course, as the LHC only discovered the Higgs in 2012, even your 10 year lowball would be four years in the future.
Like it on not, science and research is what powers humanity flourishing, if you want to get your pitchfork out about misused resources, go complain about corporate tax cuts or money invested in pointless ad-tech, not science.
Not all science and research though. That's the whole point of my argument - we should direct funds towards projects that actually have tangible benefit to humanity in the future. I will eat my shoe if any application of neutrinos comes about in the next 50 years. Transistors? Great - those weren't invented by accident, and John Bardeen certainly deserves his two Nobel Prizes.
Communication through any obstacles, including (in principle) the entire diameter of the planet: https://arxiv.org/abs/1203.2847
A 5 ton detector isn’t particularly implausible in a whole range of scenarios.
Eat up. :)
I'm not even going to dive into the huge discussion that is "why profit driven science is an objectively terrible idea".
You can only demand more if you're certain that more is achievable. I don't see what evidence you have that allows you to conclude that.
Yeah, as a scientist there's nothing like underfunding when it comes to doing great things! Having to reduce the team letting people go, work with obsolete/scarce equipment, and spend the majority of the time writing grant proposals to beg for some money to move forward, are great boosts indeed. And surely the great advances of science have not been associated to large labs with huge resources, often related to the deep pockets of the military...