Can anyone redpill me on particle accelerators? I have a hard time believing that government are spending billions of dollars building these massive monstrosities just to learn.
That sort of spending only comes if there are military applications. What is it they are trying to accomplish?
It gives a job to nuclear physicist so that you have them ready once you need them to build weapons
People really care about science. They are trying to accomplish understanding of the universe and means of advancing technology.
Alternate universes
If you are really interested I can link you to two hour long videos on this which explain just about everything.
If not, take my word for it. It' s a huge nothingburger. I mean. We are learning how particles behave, yeah. But no Blackhole maling bullshit spawned by the media that eats up the world.
T. Physical chemistry major.
>That sort of spending only comes if there are military applications. What is it they are trying to accomplish?
Antimatter weapons are pretty much the holy grail of military technology.
They're creating gold
>Can anyone redpill me on particle accelerators?
Yes. They are a giant waste of time and money. There is no fundamental particle. Particles can be infinitely divided.
>and means of advancing technology.
See, that I think is the part they aren't telling us. I think there's a certain technology they are specifically trying to unlock, something they don't want the world to know about, which is why they just keep it at the blanket "trying to accomplish understanding of the universe"
That might be the answer I was looking for, from my limited understanding it sounds like harnessing antimatter would provide basically unlimited energy along with unbelievable weaponry, is that right?
they are trying to open a portal to hell
I'd watch those
...
>military technology is paranormal
You are retarded
There are several things
>big projects like these drive innovation, some technologies invented for this purpose may well be commonplace in 20 years (chief example: the internet, and later www. you can find other examples all over, albeit less widespread).
>governments are hopeful for military applications, as a remnant of the cold war
> is also right (that's what might drive individual people to do research, but I can guarantee you that the orgs that put up the funding don't give a shit about muh understanding the universe)
> is also right
You're not talking about military technology, you're talking about as if there's a conspiracy to not let normies know about the secret superweapons we're researching.
Take five years of physics in uni if you're not a brainlet, and you'll be able to read and understand physics research papers. Then they can't hide their secrets from you anymore.
No. It takes MUCH more energy to make antimatter (thousands or even millions of times more, given the inefficiency of particle accelerators) than you get back when you allow detonation.
Also, containment methods aren't very good. If you allowed air into a Penning trap you were holding, the number of particles which would annihilate is so small you wouldn't never notice. (No blast anyway. Radiation might be dangerous.)
Fission/fusion weapons are already more than powerful enough to destroy any enemy. US bombers used to carry a pair of 20 megaton bombs. I think the biggest weapon in our current arsenal is about a megaton, maybe less. Huge bombs are wasteful and inefficient. They simply pulverize the enemy city into ever finer dust. The Soviets built The Mother of all Bombs, the Tsar Bomba. It was impressive but even they realized it was useless and abandoned the whole thing.
Particle accelerators are built to study basic physics. That's all.
If you think they have some sinister, ulterior, military purpose, ask yourself why the US cancelled the Superconducting Supercollider in Texas after spending a few billion of digging a hole (and more money filling it in)?
The simple truth is that the US no longer feels that basic scientific research is important. At least, it's not worth supporting it financially.
Europe and China know better.
Most of the physicists who work at CERN are just like your mom or dad. Everything is as it seems more or less. If you were going to build a giant machine that makes doomsday weapons, why would you announce it to the world, let grad students work on it, and plonk it in fucking Geneva?
They are looking for a way to flatten the Earth.
The yearly cost of operating the LHC is 0.2% the yearly cost of the US military. I think they can handle it.
they are trying to construct a time machine
/thread
No.
But the Earth is already flat
CERN is financed by an international cooperation, whos biggest contributor is germany with rughly 200 million a year. So no, no government is actually spending billions on them. Exactly because it doesn't produce any direct result.
Also, while a billion sounds a lot to a person, to a big government that is not that much. A big government spends hundreds of billions, or even trillions on things it really cares about. If you could directly discover a weapon with a particle acclerator, the american government would build ones that are so huge and expensive they would make the current ones look like childs play.
>I think there's a certain technology they are specifically trying to unlock
This isn't a fucking video game, if they knew what kind of knowledge they were going to unlock then they wouldn't have to build them, they're more for exploring the unknown and testing the limits of the currently known
The first accelerators discovered quarks and produced radiation for medical purposes, then they discovered things like the W/Z bosons, now they discover things like the Higgs bosons and Pentaquarks
>what is Planck's space