What technology can result from such expensive experiment as undertaken in CERN?

Question

I wonder what technology can be obtained from such very expensive experiments/institutes as e.g. undertaken in CERN?

I understand that e.g. the discovery of the Higgs Boson confirms our understanding matter. However, what can result form this effort? Are there examples in history where such experiments directly or indirectly lead to corresponding(!) important new technology? Or is the progress that comes from developing and building such machines greater than those from the actual experimental results?

Answer 1

The truth is we don't know. But when you think about it, how can we know? If we knew what technology would eventually come out of experiments like this, why would we not build that technology now?

Large expensive machines like the CERN supercollider help us to further understand the laws of nature. And through understanding these laws, new technologies arise. But we, the physicists, have absolutely no idea what wonderful technologies might result tomorrow because we invested so heavily in science today.

It's purported in 1850 after Faraday developed the electric generator, the British minister of finance asked him what practical value there was to electricity. Faraday could not have known that electricity would one day form the backbone of all modern society (but that didn't stop him from making a snarky remark). It's hard to predict the future; we labour in science in the hopes that what we do will prove useful for some new and amazing technologies. But we don't know what technologies will result from our expensive laboratories any more than Faraday knew that electricity would allow you to make a computer.

Answer 2

Places like CERN are a huge forcing function for computer science - think high performance computing, networking, data storage, etc. If my memory is correct, Tim Berners-Lee was at CERN when he started developing the WWW...

Answer 3

In practice very little new technology results from experiments like those at CERN. While they are pushing the envelope on some things like the design of resonators, power klystrons and particle detector technology, the immediate technological return on those things is relatively small, even though one can argue that modern x-ray imaging (tomography) has profited highly from folks who did high energy and nuclear physics as students.

More importantly, though, facilities like CERN and the hundreds of associated institutions are teaching tens of thousands of students to think far outside the box. Very few of these students will stick with high energy physics in the long run (there are not that many paid jobs there). Most of them will go on to do other things, and they will use what they have learned about technology and management under difficult conditions at an extreme science/engineering project like LHC to push the envelope in whatever they will be doing in their lives. That is of enormous economic value to participating nations. If all of us would be happy with plain vanilla jobs, then all of us would still be stuck on the farm.

Apart from that, having been part of something like that is a constant source of pride in anybody's life who has been there. It's not something you forget the day you walk out the door. It gives you an idea of what humans can do, if they set their minds to something!

Answer 4

Just to mention the latest developments brought up from neutrino science, it seems that the useless, wimpy, weakly interacting neutrinos (and their anti-neutrino sisters) can be harnessed to detect and monitor nuclear reactors anywhere in the world that violate non-proliferation agreements

I remember a discussion about a really big neutrino beam that could be in principle be directed to a rogue nuclear reactor and disrupt their isotopes, but I'm not sure if that is really feasible. But the fact is that 20 years ago this kind of technology wasn't even on the map, and now is being seriously considered for development and implementation

regarding detection: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01440389008403936#.VBi4Ry4qvdE

regarding bomb deactivation: http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-ph/0305062

Answer 5

There is already a number of good answers, but in addition let's compare LHC, the "useless" particle collider; with ITER, the path to the final solution of the humanity's energy hunger.

They share technologies in the fields of superconductivity, vacuum, radio frequency, diagnostic instrumentation... the latter would probably not being constructed right now, without all the research done for the former (and its predecessors).

Answer 6

You are thinking too much physics.

Instead, think about how you process the physics data that is generated from the experiments.
The answer is that there are not only physicists at CERN but also - and actually quite a lot - hardware and software engineers.

The detectors are one huge combination of custom built hardware. From there on it continues to custom processing boards(FPGAs etc.) to custom software that all needs to perform greatly to handle the huge amount of generated data.

This know-how is made public in papers and theses and from there on software engineers and chip designers all around the world can profit from it. This can also result in new open-source libraries or other projects.

Let me give you the interactive C++ interpreter Cling as an example which originated from CERN and is totally unrelated to physics.

Answer 7

This question gives me an opportunity to discuss one of my favorite stories in science and engineering. Though I doubt I am an expert on the history of the transistor, so if anyone knows more I am certainly interested to hear about it.

The merit of a study should not be determined by the applicability of the results alone. For instance, the transistor (the piece of electronics found in effectively everything you use) came from an obscure branch of quantum mechanics which was called surface physics. The theoretical work began in the early 1900's during the beginning of quantum and had no immediate (or even foreseeable) application/use. By the late 1940's to early 1950's, the first prototypes of the transistor were developed.

By the year 2006, the transistor alone would be responsible for over 30 trillion dollars (that is \$30,000,000,000,000 USD) in revenue (this comes from a 2007 MIT Masters thesis on a market evaluation of semiconductor technologies). A more recent report by McKinsey&Company found that search engines alone generate some $780 billion USD GDP annually across global markets.

The point is that seemingly intangible theory can result in very profitable applications, but that should not be the main driving purpose of basic research. However, if you need further proof, I will quote from a recent study [van Bochove, 2012] that states:

Directing basic research towards economic opportunities is detrimental to growth and may reduce the growth rate by as much as one half. The steady state is shown to be globally stable; in the steady state, the growth rate is independent of the research intensity, but the level of income depends on it. Given current OECD levels of R&D spending and saving, a one dollar increase of applied R&D spending will increase national income with 6-25 dollars and one dollar extra basic research by 20-100 dollars. These rates of return are ten and thirty times higher, respectively, than those on physical capital investment.

References
van Bochove, C.A. "Basic Research and Prosperity: Sampling and Selection of Technological Possibilities and of Scientific Hypotheses as an Alternative Engine of Endogenous Growth," CWTS Working Paper Series, Leiden University, 2012.

Answer 8

In my view (and all the answers are viewstoo), the work done at CERN (it's strange that in the search for the most little things possible, the highest price must be paid) is a big waste of money. The scientists working there are mostly of the white male species who want to prove their so-called objective models of reality, which are in fact subjective models in disguise, (don't get me wrong, some of them are truly curious) in the hope receiving a big money Nobel prize. Their PR is used to make the rest of the world think that what tey are doing is of the uttermost importance, and one day we'll pick the scientific fruits from the tree of knowledge (which is too heavy already) and everyone on earth will profit from their peeking on the smallest scales possible. We are bombarded with carefully chosen words to convince other people to keep the funding tap open.

But what "wonderful" technologies (only a very minor percentage of the world's population is giving shape to the surface of the earth, thereby destroying the wonderful Nature that's still left on our beautiful planet forcing other people to live in it) will CERN give us? Of what use can the confirmations of how the world of elementary particles behaves possibly be? I think none. And if so, why always creating new things with this knowledge (that is the industry). The unstoppable progress of technology, science, and knowledge is just a fairytale planted in the minds of people to give science green light to do their reproducible, standardized search for so-called objective knowledge.

I like science very much. It's like a puzzle book given to us by Nature. But I'm afraid that the fruits of science on the tree of knowledge will destroy the tree (biodiversity).