They are updated frequently throughout the day and I find them both incomprehensible and fascinating.

I accept that people find it hard to countenance such huge expenditure on something so esoteric. I am carrying out publicly funded technical research myself, and find it impossible and nefarious to justify it in terms of ‘net return to society in terms of money invested’. What is the value of a Journal publication? Why should not the money paid to me to do the research not go to the homeless man who is always begging against the outside wall of my laboratory? I have no answer to that, and that makes me uncomfortable. As a result we are careful how we spend money. I can simply marvel that I live in a society that has decided to make what I do possible.

However, I object to your evocation of ‘angels dancing on pins’ and such like. Your whole stance seems to be founded on an understanding that research in academia can be reduced to an unproductive travelling club, full of eggheads detached from reality.

The experiment at CERN is the complete opposite. The scientists there are trying to determine what constitutes reality. Lots of intelligent people have decided, argued for, and been awarded the money that will allow them to test a scientific theory and generate lots of data that will give us new insights into our universe.

The fact that you cannot see why that is an admirable end, tells me more about you than it does about Science.

No comment about Schopenhauer required.

I’m sure there wasn’t a cuckoo clock on the wall before 8.30 and I note that our fridge is suddenly full of cheese.

Now, where’s the Toblerone?

This is the future of an EU President holding unlimited power.

http://rugfish.blogspot.com/

The other interesting thing is that every media report has had to feel the need to sex up their reporting by claiming that some “independent astrophysicists” believe it will create a black hole & destroy the world. Apart from the fact that it won’t create a black hole & that such a small hole would disintegrate instantly this appears to be based on 2 people in Hawaii one of whom is is an engineer with no experience of “astrophysics” & the other has a degree in biology & is teaching science & maths from “grade school to college”. A fine example of how the media are willing to search the world (literally in this case) to find someone to parrot the scare stories they want. Anybody wanting to become a famous scientist, at least for 15 minutes, knows this.

It’s already certain that we won’t discover the exact composition of the universe from this experiment.

So you would like to see research in Genetics, but not in Physics?

Genetics originated in Physics. The work done by Crick, Watson, and Franklin in X-Ray Crystallography owes much more to Physics than you seem to allow. Read ‘The Double Helix’ sometime.

I suppose, as to whether the information has any value, really depends on the individual. As Oscar said, ‘We are all in the Gutter, but some of us are looking at the Stars’. What are you looking at Tony?

I can assure you that there is the potential for just as much ‘academic pontification’ in the field of Genetics. I would suggest the only person pontificating here is you.

Those audiences were not trained in science, so that Faraday had to use his undoubted communication skills in explaining to them what he was doing. Perhaps this is where he learnt to parry the sword thrusts of the philistines. When one visitor asked him what was the use of what he was doing, Faraday made the famous retort ‘What use is a baby?’ To another, and more illustrious questioner, the Prime Minister, he made the prophetic reply: ‘In ten years you will be taxing it!’ Touche.

As you were correct, we can all see this. Had you been wrong, then we would not be around to point out your error.

More interestingly, you say that ‘for once’ you agree with ‘the scientists’. As a physicist by training, I’d be interested to know why and on what subjects, you disagree with us the rest of the time.

Do you ever wonder if theoretical physicists are having an enormous “Emperor’s clothes” style laugh on the rest of us who don’t have the slightest idea what they are talking about? I ask because I recently tried “Quantum theory for dummies” and felt like a stone age man trying to read an electronics manual (in French).