Science - strawberry float YEAH

Just a thought, but all the Billions we spent on the LHC would probably have put a man on Mars by now.

Carlos wrote:Just a thought, but all the Billions we spent on the LHC would probably have put a man on Mars by now.

All the billions we spend on anything would probably do the same. So?

The only agency likely to put a man on Mars is NASA, who are mainly funded by the US government. The LHC was not a US project.

Carlos wrote:Just a thought, but all the Billions we spent on the LHC would probably have put a man on Mars by now.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dichotomy

Karlprof wrote:

Carlos wrote:Just a thought, but all the Billions we spent on the LHC would probably have put a man on Mars by now.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dichotomy

But that money could have cured cancer, fed the third world and given us all our own personal jetpacks.

Science is not like building a house, you can't just throw money at people and expect them to construct anything useful. You can throw billions on a project but that's no guarantee that anyone will have a breakthrough. The universe and its secrets don't give a gooseberry fool how much you've spent. This is why grants and other such resources are awarded to scientists according to who comes froward with workable theories and projects that look like the investment is worth the gamble for the size of any possible discovery. So it's not as simply as just saying "it would be useful if we had this, let's invest lots of money in these guys until we get it". If that actually worked we could just heap billions of nuclear fusion research and rest assured the energy crisis would get dealt with.

Karlprof wrote:

Carlos wrote:Just a thought, but all the Billions we spent on the LHC would probably have put a man on Mars by now.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dichotomy

Also, just to continue this, how is putting a man on Mars any more useful than being able to see atoms?

An Amazing Star Explosion. This composite image of the Tycho supernova remnant combines X-ray and infrared observations obtained with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and Spitzer Space Telescope, respectively, and the Calar Alto observatory, Spain. It shows the scene more than four centuries after the brilliant star explosion witnessed by Tycho Brahe and other astronomers of that era. The explosion has left a blazing hot cloud of expanding debris (green and yellow) visible in X-rays. The location of ultra-energetic electrons in the blast's outer shock wave can also be seen in X-rays (the circular blue line). Newly synthesized dust in the ejected material and heated pre-existing dust from the area around the supernova radiate at infrared wavelengths of 24 microns (red). Foreground and background stars in the image are white. Oliver Krause, from the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany, recently studied reflected light from the supernova explosion seen by Brahe. Use of these "light echoes" - not shown in this figure - has confirmed previous suspicions that the explosion was a Type Ia supernova. This type of supernova is generally believed to be caused by the explosion of a white dwarf star in a binary star system.

That is cool as hell.

http://www.cracked.com/blog/11-deep-spa ... toshopped/

Space.

Falsey wrote:What else have you got, universe?

Proof of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming might be a good place to start.

Broken record, much?

Cal wrote:

Falsey wrote:What else have you got, universe?

Proof of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming might be a good place to start.

But it has to be presented in an unscientific manner so you can understand it, right? How about a puppet show?

aaronayl1 wrote:

Karlprof wrote:

Carlos wrote:Just a thought, but all the Billions we spent on the LHC would probably have put a man on Mars by now.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dichotomy

Also, just to continue this, how is putting a man on Mars any more useful than being able to see atoms?

I prefer my scientific research to be largely symbolic than groundbreaking and or revolutionary too.

Some images taken by Hubble,

The Eagle Nebula


The Carina Nebula

Kind of looks like it's giving Earth the finger....

Interstellar Twisters of the Sagittarius Nebula

Half a light year long.

Those pictures are incredible.

Meep wrote:So it's not as simply as just saying "it would be useful if we had this, let's invest lots of money in these guys until we get it". If that actually worked we could just heap billions of nuclear fusion research and rest assured the energy crisis would get dealt with.

Why wouldn't it work? Seems like a damn good idea to me. Better than pissing about with useless 'renewables'. That really is chucking good money after bad.

Cal wrote:

Meep wrote:So it's not as simply as just saying "it would be useful if we had this, let's invest lots of money in these guys until we get it". If that actually worked we could just heap billions of nuclear fusion research and rest assured the energy crisis would get dealt with.

Why wouldn't it work? Seems like a damn good idea to me. Better than pissing about with useless 'renewables'. That really is chucking good money after bad.

Why are you so against creating a better world Cal? Regardless of whether man made climate change is real, renewable energy can only be a good thing.

Karlprof wrote:

Carlos wrote:Just a thought, but all the Billions we spent on the LHC would probably have put a man on Mars by now.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dichotomy

How is that a false dichotomy? He was merely making a comment about the fact that the LHC was very expensive.

Fatal Exception wrote:

Cal wrote:

Meep wrote:So it's not as simply as just saying "it would be useful if we had this, let's invest lots of money in these guys until we get it". If that actually worked we could just heap billions of nuclear fusion research and rest assured the energy crisis would get dealt with.

Why wouldn't it work? Seems like a damn good idea to me. Better than pissing about with useless 'renewables'. That really is chucking good money after bad.

Why are you so against creating a better world Cal? Regardless of whether man made climate change is real, renewable energy can only be a good thing.

It is pretty much the definition of "a good thing".

Fatal Exception wrote:Why are you so against creating a better world Cal? Regardless of whether man made climate change is real, renewable energy can only be a good thing.

Explain to me the how world's most abundant and readily-available energy sources - fossil fuels - haven't elevated mankind from his mud hut? How they haven't benefited mankind in ways too numerous to mention? How they are somehow a 'bad' thing for the very progress they have powered - and continue to power?

Windmills may have been good for grinding the corn but in the end they didn't build a modern society. It was coal that modernized farming and built empires.

There is no 'energy crisis' - there is only the wishful thinking of politically-motivated NGOs like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth who fervently pray for us all to abandon our 'wicked' fossil fuel ways and go live on a commune somewhere, no doubt worshipping Gaia three times a day.

Forcing 'renewables' on everyone will do f*ckall to protect the Earth. Quite the reverse. History shows us that forests, habitats and species the world over will remain in peril precisely because so many are denied basic rights such as cheap and reliable fossil fuels.

Fossil fuels build societies that can eventually afford to give a damn about saving the rainforests - because they don't need to clear the land any more; when that happens, when they have escaped a pitiful subsistence life of grinding poverty, perhaps then (like us) they can spend more time worrying about endangered species and precious habitats - because they'll have met their basic needs (just like you and me, with our always-on electricity and our centrally heated, double-glazed houses and our cars and all the other things that make our every-day lives - and work - so easy that we can find time (and money) to worry about all the other stuff).

There is no 'energy crisis'. There is no such thing as 'peak oil' - there never was. It was myth first put about as far back as the 50's, perhaps even sooner. When I was a boy in the early 70's all the talk was about how the oil was 'going to run out' by the year 2000. We never learn from such folly. The truth is - as vast new shale gas finds reveal - the world is abundant with fossil fuels which won't be running out any time soon.

The argument is not about using windmills and solar panels to solve a non-existent problem - no matter what 'green' alarmists would have you believe, but instead - in world rich with natural energy sources just waiting to be tapped - about how better to manage our fossil fuels to empower and elevate Least Developed Nations to a point where they, too, can afford to invest in their natural heritage and in genuine environmental protection.