| Things like "enormous" are not subjective in physics. We know that we need a certain density of energy to probe a particle. There are no miracles: it has to come from somewhere and it is not like there are sources of such energy that can pop up from nowhere. We simply do not have a place to harvest such energy on the global scale, and we know we won't have anytime soon. There are simply no sources for that. > Even minor things can have major impact when combined with further research We are talking about things happening at energies which are way beyond normal interactions. Let's imagine we pick a simple artificial signal from the sky, from a place that is 5000 light years away. People will get crazy about aliens and loose their shit on how we are not alone. And so what - from a practical perspective there is exactly zero interest in this. We cannot use that information at all because whatever is there is unreachable. There are however plenty of place in physics which are worth the effort (I mentioned solid state physics as one of the most promising ones). Not to mention biology where we are only right at the beginning and there are plenty of outcomes. If we had infinite resources then fine. We do not have them. And putting 20B€ in some fancy research with zero practical interest (such as this one, or middle-ages French literature, or Platon philosophy, ...) is a tremendous waste of opportunities. I understand that we need to fund research with no practical interest - this is part of what makes us human. Just not 20B€ when people are starving, dying, etc. |