[FridgeSeal]

"Groundbreaking science is too expensive, we are only capable of investing in one thing at a time!!!"

Like it on not, science and research is what powers humanity flourishing, if you want to get your pitchfork out about misused resources, go complain about corporate tax cuts or money invested in pointless ad-tech, not science.

[mjfl]

> Like it on not, science and research is what powers humanity flourishing

Not all science and research though. That's the whole point of my argument - we should direct funds towards projects that actually have tangible benefit to humanity in the future. I will eat my shoe if any application of neutrinos comes about in the next 50 years. Transistors? Great - those weren't invented by accident, and John Bardeen certainly deserves his two Nobel Prizes.

[ben_w]

Remote monitoring nuclear reactors for signs of weapons development: http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1742-6596/593/1/01...

Communication through any obstacles, including (in principle) the entire diameter of the planet: https://arxiv.org/abs/1203.2847

[mjfl]

Considering we have already have cheap things to detect nuclear proliferation, such as seismic detectors that have proven effective w/ North Korea and how expensive a neutrino detection system would be to build, I don't see any marginal benefit to humanity there. Considering the fact that you would need to build a beamline for any transmission of a neutrino message and a 5 ton detector to receive it (unlikely to be reduced since it's so hard to stop neutrinos) I'll stick with my > 50 year timeline for neutrino message passing being used in any practical sense. Maybe they could put it in a nuclear sub, but the design process would take 50 years, thanks to similar incentives built into the military industrial complex.

[ben_w]

Seismic can only detect an explosion. Neutrino can detect the construction. If the threat comes from someone who has reactors and already knows how to make bombs, seismic is too late.

A 5 ton detector isn’t particularly implausible in a whole range of scenarios.

Eat up. :)

[mjfl]

Still waiting...

[FridgeSeal]

Someone literally just provided you with an explanation of a possible application, you can't just dismiss their comment because you don't like it.

[GlennS]

Isn't there already an application of neutrinos: to detect nuclear material (so weapons inspection and so on)?

[FridgeSeal]

And how will we know what science is going to be useful and "profitable" until we do it?

I'm not even going to dive into the huge discussion that is "why profit driven science is an objectively terrible idea".