RE: Connecting the fate of the universe to the Higgs boson
Maybe is it a matter on not betting everything on the same horse? it is important to keep our minds open and not to focus on a single domain of science. Getting rid of particle physics may at the end of the day allow for reallocating money elsewhere, but remember that all major changes in our lifes can be traced back to fundamental research. Is it a bet you want to make?
On top of that, any single piece of technology developed at CERN is unpatented. What would all the people saved from cancer by hadrontherapy say?
I am not saying that the other problems you mentioned are not important, but research to a solution should be also funded and not funded instead of something else. The problem is that the pie is here very limited. And thus everyone is fighting to get everyone else's share.
Well I am all for diversification, but I think that certain areas are not as well funded as others. Yes I agree peoples lifes have been saved by technological breakthroughs created by cern/ Nasa to name a few, but when I then read a small article about a possible solution to water shortages, or a way to solve food shortages in areas where it is so needed. It feels wrong to me that as advanced as we are, we struggle to fix the most basic of issues.
Is that because we really can't fix it or are we just not that interested?
It leads me to to think we are focussing to much money on research that is of less importance.
Wouldn't you say we fail here?
I like your articles by the way! So will follow 😄!
Believe if or not, particle physics is not well funded at all. Our golden age is way behind us. The impression it is well funded may be that the funding is coming from several tens of countries funding all together CERN. This being said and as already mentioned, CERN is giving back a lot of money (operating costs, open access guarantees for the rest of the world, etc..) and not all research at CERN is LHC research (hadrotherapy, antimatter, neutrinos, etc...).
Take any other field, and multiply by the number of countries, and what you will find is surprizing. It is 10000 easier to get funding for nanoscience, for instance. I do not know, with the example you mentioned, why it is tough to get funding. Industries may be interested. There are open calls for such things, probably even more than for fundamental research.
To me, the real problem is that there is not enough money allocated to research at all, so that one cannot diversify as we should (even internally to a field of research). As a results, the different field are fighting against each other to get a larger share. Which is also what you say, in some sense.
PS: thanks for reading (and discussing ;) ).