| > There's nothing wrong with realizing the juice isn't worth the squeeze. The LHC employs a lot of people working on smart things. CERN gave rise to the world wide web and there are many other innovations in computing, construction, and theory that come from the work being done there. > The Large Hadron Collider took about a decade to construct, for a total cost of about $4.75 billion. [1] > Since the opening of Mercedes-Benz Stadium in 2017, the Falcons organization has publicly pegged the cost of the building at $1.5 billion [2] It's the same order of magnitude of cost as a sports stadium. It's a tiny slice of the worldwide economy. We don't know where the key discoveries in "theory state space" are, so we continue to search. Finding the right evidence or surprises could lead to rapid changes in how we think and view the universe. I'm sure some medieval people must have found scientific tinkerers wasteful as well. Diversification of investment is good. It's not like all research dollars are going to high energy physics. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2012/07/05/how-much-d... [2] https://www.ajc.com/sports/atlanta-falcons/mercedes-benz-sta... |