Science and the LHC part II
Posted 10-09-2008 at 06:53 PM by MizVoldemort
continued...
And the same goes for a lot of the world’s problems. Global warming? It’s going to be scientists who find the answer. Impending doom via asteroid, volcano, flesh eating space aliens. You guessed it, scientists will be the ones to find the answer.
Okay, so it’s easy to see how funding biology can help produce these crops, or funding chemistry can help with global warming, but physics? That’s a very difficult one to relate.
The problem with physics is that it takes a looooong time for a new technology to develop. I can guarantee you that whatever the LHC discovers, we won’t see an impact (other than nerds jumping up and down about Higgs and their standard model being correct) for another fifty or so years.
Physics relates to everything. If you’re reading this, then you’re on a computer. Thank physics for that! Everything in that little box is a result of that research, decades ago. Heck, even the light bulb needs physics to understand all of those lovely electrons. If you’re reading this, then you’re on the Internet too. You have CERN to thank for that too; they invented it.
People owe their lives to the research of physicists years ago. If you know/are someone who has come through cancer, then you have physics to thank. Chemotherapy wouldn’t exist without physics.
Without physics a lot of people would be dead. If you took anything not touched by the research of a scientist of the generations before us out of a hospital you would be left with an empty shell. I owe my mum to physics. And probably a lot of other lives to the work of chemists and biologists. Where would we be without the vaccinations?
Because if anyone has done any half decent study of biology, they’ll know that all a vaccine is is a molecule that imitates the protein antigens on a bacteria’s surface, kicking those amazing immune cells of yours into action, giving you immunity before you’re unlucky enough to meet the antigen on the actual bacteria. Like chicken pox through a needle.
You know that copy of New Scientist I told you to look at earlier. Read it. A lot of it will be new physics discoveries.
Your children could well be using computers with their discoveries. They can trap photons, make microchips out of nanotubes. Stuff that you can’t even see with a microscope is being discovered and applied to electronics. And of course this is going to have amazing medical implications. In the next fifty years time. Because this stuff takes time and money to develop. they have the time, and people are begrudging them the money.
Earlier I mentioned that it will be science that ends global warming.
Check this out: http://physlink.com/News/080801CobaltOxygenHydrogen.cfm
They have the physics now. And if you’re my age, you might get to see it in your lifetime. Global warming could be taught in the same lessons in which we’re taught about how they used to chuck chamberpots of human waste onto the streets.
Take a look at some of the other articles on there too.
Just because you aren’t one of the ones with the desire or brainpower to understand the LHC and background physics (and don’t think for a minute that reading a dozen articles about it gives you understanding, because it doesn't) doesn’t give you the right to say that it’s not going to be of any use to modern man and the money should have been spent elsewhere. When your child’s life is saved because of the effect of these discoveries on medicine and technology you might well have different thoughts on how well that £4.4 billion was spent.
I’ll leave you with one last sentiment.
If you don’t like something. If it goes against your morals, or beliefs, or anything else, then the usual way to complain about it is to make a stand. Get your voice heard. That’s why I’m writing this blog. And you boycott it. Don’t like the fact that cows are killed for meat, become a vegetarian. Don’t want the industry to kill for fur, don’t buy fur, join PETA and tell the world through adverts and campaigns. Hate crocs? Bash anyone wearing them, glare at shops selling them, join anti-croc groups on facebook and don’t buy any.
Don’t like scientists spending billions on the future? Well, for starts click that little red X in the top right hand corner. Who invented the Internet? Turn off your computer - everything in the microchip is kind of dependant on this whole physics thing. And we can’t have any electricity, can we now. Don’t forget to unscrew those electron dependant light bulbs. And remember, you’re not allowed to go to hospital. Kiss your medication goodbye, it was made by biochemists, using the whole atoms and molecules physics related thing - pesky intermolecular forces. And don’t even think of going to that doctors/hospital appointment you have booked. And don’t forget you can’t have a car, by now that’s jam packed full of physicsish science. And if you’re really serious, don’t forget that you can’t use anything remotely related to electronics. You’ll be growing your own food now, of course, given that aside from those nasty electronic checkouts, they’ve got the whole completely reliant on computers thing going down.
Pretty much stuffed, aren’t you?
Maybe a couple of hundred years ago you’d have thrived (as well as you can with smallpox still around and people thinking that frogs urine could cure diseases). After all, science was truly only just beginning then, and it was pretty easy to avoid anything touched by physics.
But now? Unless you have the skills of Ray Mears, you’d be dead within weeks. And not from the LHC.
And the same goes for a lot of the world’s problems. Global warming? It’s going to be scientists who find the answer. Impending doom via asteroid, volcano, flesh eating space aliens. You guessed it, scientists will be the ones to find the answer.
Okay, so it’s easy to see how funding biology can help produce these crops, or funding chemistry can help with global warming, but physics? That’s a very difficult one to relate.
The problem with physics is that it takes a looooong time for a new technology to develop. I can guarantee you that whatever the LHC discovers, we won’t see an impact (other than nerds jumping up and down about Higgs and their standard model being correct) for another fifty or so years.
Physics relates to everything. If you’re reading this, then you’re on a computer. Thank physics for that! Everything in that little box is a result of that research, decades ago. Heck, even the light bulb needs physics to understand all of those lovely electrons. If you’re reading this, then you’re on the Internet too. You have CERN to thank for that too; they invented it.
People owe their lives to the research of physicists years ago. If you know/are someone who has come through cancer, then you have physics to thank. Chemotherapy wouldn’t exist without physics.
Without physics a lot of people would be dead. If you took anything not touched by the research of a scientist of the generations before us out of a hospital you would be left with an empty shell. I owe my mum to physics. And probably a lot of other lives to the work of chemists and biologists. Where would we be without the vaccinations?
Because if anyone has done any half decent study of biology, they’ll know that all a vaccine is is a molecule that imitates the protein antigens on a bacteria’s surface, kicking those amazing immune cells of yours into action, giving you immunity before you’re unlucky enough to meet the antigen on the actual bacteria. Like chicken pox through a needle.
You know that copy of New Scientist I told you to look at earlier. Read it. A lot of it will be new physics discoveries.
Your children could well be using computers with their discoveries. They can trap photons, make microchips out of nanotubes. Stuff that you can’t even see with a microscope is being discovered and applied to electronics. And of course this is going to have amazing medical implications. In the next fifty years time. Because this stuff takes time and money to develop. they have the time, and people are begrudging them the money.
Earlier I mentioned that it will be science that ends global warming.
Check this out: http://physlink.com/News/080801CobaltOxygenHydrogen.cfm
They have the physics now. And if you’re my age, you might get to see it in your lifetime. Global warming could be taught in the same lessons in which we’re taught about how they used to chuck chamberpots of human waste onto the streets.
Take a look at some of the other articles on there too.
Just because you aren’t one of the ones with the desire or brainpower to understand the LHC and background physics (and don’t think for a minute that reading a dozen articles about it gives you understanding, because it doesn't) doesn’t give you the right to say that it’s not going to be of any use to modern man and the money should have been spent elsewhere. When your child’s life is saved because of the effect of these discoveries on medicine and technology you might well have different thoughts on how well that £4.4 billion was spent.
I’ll leave you with one last sentiment.
If you don’t like something. If it goes against your morals, or beliefs, or anything else, then the usual way to complain about it is to make a stand. Get your voice heard. That’s why I’m writing this blog. And you boycott it. Don’t like the fact that cows are killed for meat, become a vegetarian. Don’t want the industry to kill for fur, don’t buy fur, join PETA and tell the world through adverts and campaigns. Hate crocs? Bash anyone wearing them, glare at shops selling them, join anti-croc groups on facebook and don’t buy any.
Don’t like scientists spending billions on the future? Well, for starts click that little red X in the top right hand corner. Who invented the Internet? Turn off your computer - everything in the microchip is kind of dependant on this whole physics thing. And we can’t have any electricity, can we now. Don’t forget to unscrew those electron dependant light bulbs. And remember, you’re not allowed to go to hospital. Kiss your medication goodbye, it was made by biochemists, using the whole atoms and molecules physics related thing - pesky intermolecular forces. And don’t even think of going to that doctors/hospital appointment you have booked. And don’t forget you can’t have a car, by now that’s jam packed full of physicsish science. And if you’re really serious, don’t forget that you can’t use anything remotely related to electronics. You’ll be growing your own food now, of course, given that aside from those nasty electronic checkouts, they’ve got the whole completely reliant on computers thing going down.
Pretty much stuffed, aren’t you?
Maybe a couple of hundred years ago you’d have thrived (as well as you can with smallpox still around and people thinking that frogs urine could cure diseases). After all, science was truly only just beginning then, and it was pretty easy to avoid anything touched by physics.
But now? Unless you have the skills of Ray Mears, you’d be dead within weeks. And not from the LHC.
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