[s-t-876]

>"As long as you have funding, quantum gravity is basic research at its finest. If not, it’s pretty much useless knowledge"

the issue of the public seeing basic research as useless has always bothered me. and I'm not sure if basic research is truly useless because of its innate nature or if basic researchers themselves make it look useless on purpose because they like it to be secluded from "real life" or maybe it's too exhausting to try to explain to people while it's still ongoing.

reading Rutherford's own notes and biography was truly enlightening and refreshing, there is more to physics than the purely theoretical part.he didn't think he was too good to work with his hands.

Engineering physics / applied physics / medical physics are all interesting interdisciplinary fields where you can see physics come to life.

[ravi-delia]

Notably none of these use quantum gravity, and none will for a while. I'd really really like us to collectively figure out where the hell spacetime comes from, and I definitely think it's worth the money, but let's not pretend that if theoretical quantum physicists would just roll up their sleeves and get their hands dirty there'd be lots of practical applications.