[stairlane]

> The only cost is then the electricity and used capacity. Not consumer pricing. So negligible.

I don’t think this is valid, as this point seems to ignore the fact that the data center that this compute took place in required a massive investment.

A paper like this is more akin to HEPP research. Nobody has the capability to reproduce the higgs results outside of at the facility the research was conducted within (CERN).

I don’t think reproduction was a concern of the researchers.

[morbia]

The Higgs results were reproduced because there are two independent detectors at CERN (Atlas and CMS). Both collaborations are run almost entirely independently, and the press are only called in to announce a scientific discovery if both find the same result.

Obviously the 'best' result would be to have a separate collider as well, but no one is going to fund a new collider just to reaffirm the result for a third time.

[stairlane]

Absolutely, and well stated.

The point I was trying to make was the fact that nobody (meaning govt bodies) was willing to make another collider capable of repeating the results. At least not yet ;).

[Rastonbury]

Kinda but Google sells compute so it makes money off the data centre investment, assuming they had spare capacity for this it's negligible at Google scale