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The LHC cost was 2% of the yearly revenue of Apple I am fairly certain that we can "afford" it.

Apparently the next-gen LHC replacement will cost on the order of $100 billion. As a society (US, EU, or global), we can certainly 'afford it', but no-one is going to be writing that check anytime soon.

Yet Musk was prepared to spend $42B on the twitter purchase which would almost have been a null-op for the world in comparison to funding basically any kind of venture or experiment with the same amount of money... If only Musk was more interested in the universe's structure :)

>Yet Musk was prepared to spend $42B on the twitter purchase

Musk wasn't donating $42B to Twitter. He raised capital to purchase Twitter with the aim of actually making a return on that money.

A better example is someone like Warren Buffet donating ~$50B dollars to charity instead of building another particle collider. If only Buffet was more interested in the universe's structure eh.

[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattdurot/2022/06/14/warren-buf...

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