Let's say over the next 20 years, several trillion dollars is spent and thanks to ever bigger colliders, we now know all elements up to 150 and their properties. Most vanish an instant after they are created and we would consider something with a half live of a second extremely long lived.
What is the point? We can never make any financially viable quantities of these new elements, whatever mundane properties they may possess (we can know to a degree because of their proposed structure). Surely there are better areas in science deserving of such money, like curing illnesses?
As science progresses to ever larger power sources, it may cost relatively peanuts to produce elements upto 150 only fifty years from now.
I agree kandeda .... why waste a load of money on stuff that comes in from the heavens for free. 
The funding for CERN and Fermilab etc doesn't even come close to trillions of dollars over 20 years! Even spread across several countries, that's 10+ billion every year, which is way higher than real funding levels (10~250 million dollars, depending on who and what and over how long).
The research is done because of several reasons. Furthering our understanding of the universe is one. Another would be because we can't be sure of the properties. How do we know Element 146 won't be some kind of room temp super conductor or a stable, dense material for ultra thin nuclear reactor sheilding etc. Solid state physics is littered with cases of "Bloody hell, we didn't expect that!!". 'Fringe benefits' or new ideas have often come from high level and seemingly questionable validity research.
Sure, you can say "Stuff the LHC, let's try to cure AIDS" but then perhaps not invading Iraq and pumping that money (many many times CERNs budget for the next decade!!) into welfare and health would have reaped even more benefits? But that might mean Americans had to have an extra nickel on their gas prices and they won't stand for that!
The research is done because of several reasons. Furthering our understanding of the universe is one. Another would be because we can't be sure of the properties. How do we know Element 146 won't be some kind of room temp super conductor or a stable, dense material for ultra thin nuclear reactor sheilding etc. Solid state physics is littered with cases of "Bloody hell, we didn't expect that!!". 'Fringe benefits' or new ideas have often come from high level and seemingly questionable validity research.
Sure, you can say "Stuff the LHC, let's try to cure AIDS" but then perhaps not invading Iraq and pumping that money (many many times CERNs budget for the next decade!!) into welfare and health would have reaped even more benefits? But that might mean Americans had to have an extra nickel on their gas prices and they won't stand for that!
QUOTE (AlphaNumeric+Dec 24 2006, 02:17 PM)
The research is done because of several reasons. Furthering our understanding of the universe is one...
Reason is one thing, the effectiveness the other and everything is a matter of priorities. I don't think, the contemporary science is working effectively. We should invest in finding of environmentally safe sources of energy at first. Each day of burning fossil fuels brings the Earth more closer to the desolate desert. With respect of the cold fusion research the mainstream science stance is very strange. We're still living in medieval times.
Reason is one thing, the effectiveness the other and everything is a matter of priorities. I don't think, the contemporary science is working effectively. We should invest in finding of environmentally safe sources of energy at first. Each day of burning fossil fuels brings the Earth more closer to the desolate desert. With respect of the cold fusion research the mainstream science stance is very strange. We're still living in medieval times.
QUOTE (Zephir+Dec 24 2006, 05:27 PM)
With respect of the cold fusion research the mainstream science stance is very strange. We're still living in medieval times.
Damn that global conspiracy everyone but you is in on
Given the US government/military's love of having the latest cutting edge over anyone and everyone, don't you think if they had a cheap, limitless, portable source of enormous power they'd use it? If someone gave the US military a way to have tanks which didn't need Iranian/Iraqi/Kuwaiti oil, planes which could fly as long as the pilots could last and warships which got their fuel from the stuff they float in, don't you think they'd be developing it like mad?!
But no, instead they use 'outdated' fuels and technology which costs them men, time and money and gives them a distinct global tactically disadvantage due to reliance on persian oil, because you think there's a conspiracy in the global community.
Do you not see the flaw in that logic of yours? It would require organisations which will do anything to gain an advantage on one another to actually agree to throw away one of the biggest developments in human history in order to maintain a conspiracy in the scientific community!
Yes, more money needs to go into new energy sources and we need to move away from oil, but I imagine more money has been urinated down the drain on cold fusion (especially after that hoax a number of years ago) than on string theory in the last 30 years! Why? Because it simply isn't a viable technology at the moment, if at all possible. We can't do it. Instead, we know fusion works, it's just technical difficulties which a chunk of cash will solve.
If the US government wanted fusion to be commercially available in a decade, they could do it. They have the resources, it would just be a hard, expensive decade. Instead, it's cheaper and easier to just go find more oil, even though everyone knows it's a stop-gap measure.
Come out of your aether induced fairy land Zephir (after all, "[i]There is nothing more irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge" - Fear & Loathing) and smell the coffee. There's tons more unworthy sinkholes for money in the world than scientific research into atomic physics and there is no global conspiracy.
Damn that global conspiracy everyone but you is in on
Given the US government/military's love of having the latest cutting edge over anyone and everyone, don't you think if they had a cheap, limitless, portable source of enormous power they'd use it? If someone gave the US military a way to have tanks which didn't need Iranian/Iraqi/Kuwaiti oil, planes which could fly as long as the pilots could last and warships which got their fuel from the stuff they float in, don't you think they'd be developing it like mad?!
But no, instead they use 'outdated' fuels and technology which costs them men, time and money and gives them a distinct global tactically disadvantage due to reliance on persian oil, because you think there's a conspiracy in the global community.
Do you not see the flaw in that logic of yours? It would require organisations which will do anything to gain an advantage on one another to actually agree to throw away one of the biggest developments in human history in order to maintain a conspiracy in the scientific community!
Yes, more money needs to go into new energy sources and we need to move away from oil, but I imagine more money has been urinated down the drain on cold fusion (especially after that hoax a number of years ago) than on string theory in the last 30 years! Why? Because it simply isn't a viable technology at the moment, if at all possible. We can't do it. Instead, we know fusion works, it's just technical difficulties which a chunk of cash will solve.
If the US government wanted fusion to be commercially available in a decade, they could do it. They have the resources, it would just be a hard, expensive decade. Instead, it's cheaper and easier to just go find more oil, even though everyone knows it's a stop-gap measure.
Come out of your aether induced fairy land Zephir (after all, "[i]There is nothing more irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge" - Fear & Loathing
) and smell the coffee. There's tons more unworthy sinkholes for money in the world than scientific research into atomic physics and there is no global conspiracy.
QUOTE (AlphaNumeric+Dec 24 2006, 09:08 PM)
...damn that global conspiracy everyone but you is in on...
LOL, who talks about conspiracy? This is your fixed idea, not mine. I don't believe in power of conspiracy, but human stupidity and opportunism.
LOL, who talks about conspiracy? This is your fixed idea, not mine. I don't believe in power of conspiracy, but human stupidity and opportunism.
QUOTE (AlphaNumeric+Dec 24 2006, 09:08 PM)
...Because it simply isn't a viable technology at the moment, if at all possible. We can't do it...
This is just a matter of prefeences. The tokamak is not viable technology by the same way.
This is just a matter of prefeences. The tokamak is not viable technology by the same way.
QUOTE (Zephir+Dec 24 2006, 07:40 PM)
I don't believe in power of conspiracy, but human stupidity and opportunism.
Yet you claim it can be (and has been) done with classroom equipment. Yet noone has developed it? The US military? No business after 'the next big thing'? No other government who can't afford to rely on oil or doesn't have their own fossil fuel resources?
You claim it's stupidity and opportunism, but you ignore the fact that if your claims of it being done many times with simple equipment were true, someone would have developed it because it would be worth TRILLIONS of dollars to such a company or organisation in saved resources on fossil fuels.
How do you explain a lack of such development? Are you saying EVERY company, organisation and government on Earth is just ignoring such a HUGE development out of stupidity? You really are ignorant of human nature (particularly greed and want of power) if you think certain groups would just ignore such an easily demonstratable and developable technology.
Or is it just more likely such a technology doesn't exist...
Yet you claim it can be (and has been) done with classroom equipment. Yet noone has developed it? The US military? No business after 'the next big thing'? No other government who can't afford to rely on oil or doesn't have their own fossil fuel resources?
You claim it's stupidity and opportunism, but you ignore the fact that if your claims of it being done many times with simple equipment were true, someone would have developed it because it would be worth TRILLIONS of dollars to such a company or organisation in saved resources on fossil fuels.
How do you explain a lack of such development? Are you saying EVERY company, organisation and government on Earth is just ignoring such a HUGE development out of stupidity? You really are ignorant of human nature (particularly greed and want of power) if you think certain groups would just ignore such an easily demonstratable and developable technology.
Or is it just more likely such a technology doesn't exist...
QUOTE (Zephir+Dec 24 2006, 07:40 PM)
This is just a matter of prefeences. The tokamak is not viable technology by the same way.
All it needs is more powerful magnets and stronger alloys, not exactly out of reach for long. Cold fusion isn't even workable on a theoretical level.
Unless you've hard evidence otherwise. That gif you always post and a paragraph of text from you isn't evidence.
Unless you've hard evidence otherwise. That gif you always post and a paragraph of text from you isn't evidence.
QUOTE (AlphaNumeric+Dec 24 2006, 10:49 PM)
...someone would have developed it because it would be worth TRILLIONS of dollars to such a company or organisation in saved resources on fossil fuels. How do you explain a lack of such development?
What we know, the cold fusion occurs sometimes. Nobody says, the cold fusion is very reproducible process. This is exactly, what the science is good for. The purpose of science is not to study the phenomena, the causality of which is obvious or even trivial. This is the job for applied & technology research, not the science. Whereas the system of funding has lead the mainstream science into quite opposite stance.
What we know, the cold fusion occurs sometimes. Nobody says, the cold fusion is very reproducible process. This is exactly, what the science is good for. The purpose of science is not to study the phenomena, the causality of which is obvious or even trivial. This is the job for applied & technology research, not the science. Whereas the system of funding has lead the mainstream science into quite opposite stance.
How very ignorant of us as a race if we chose not to learn. Would you take comfort in the fact that there was no research in a certain area because humanity didn't care? No one has the ability to judge the time for when we should stop learning.
But it is true that we are focusing our efforts in the wrong areas. And it is also unfortunately true that humans have a tendency to repeat the same mistakes and fall back upon the cycle of doomed history. Due to this, and the fact that there are always better (depending on opinion) ways to spend our resources, it is inevitable that we will always, in a way, be wasting what we have.
But it is true that we are focusing our efforts in the wrong areas. And it is also unfortunately true that humans have a tendency to repeat the same mistakes and fall back upon the cycle of doomed history. Due to this, and the fact that there are always better (depending on opinion) ways to spend our resources, it is inevitable that we will always, in a way, be wasting what we have.
The wikipedia page on cold fusion is rather interesting. Seems like there is some controversy even in the higher ranks and just because we don't know how it could work doesn't necessarily mean it can't.. seems kind of presumptuous to think, no?
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