But I think my main point, that applications of particle physics itself (and not the human and technological advances made to support it) are essentially non-existent stands.
The technological advances made to support particle physics may not have been possible without the effort to do the particle physics.
I.e. they are actually a result of the effort to understand the universe, even though they aren’t written down in the standard model.
It’s not at all obvious that we would have devised them any other way.
> One would argue that modern electronics are possible because research was done about Quantum Physics, a fundamental nature of reality.
which was making the connection that understanding frontier physics from 100 years ago directly enabled new technology, and that was a reason to support particle physics today (presumably b/c it might directly lead to similar advancements).
What does it mean to distinguish these two?
But I think there is a real difference in expectations between technology that operates on known physical principles and that which involves wholly new ones. Historically the latter has been associated with dramatic shifts in what is possible, for example our understanding of electromagnetism and quantum mechanics enables much of the modern world.
So I think presenting the study of particle physics in that light could mislead the public on just what is being done and what kind of outcomes it might precipitate.
We didn’t know what our understanding of electromagnetism and quantum mechanics would enable in advance.
Suggesting that any science would lead to specific outcomes would be misleading, otherwise it wouldn’t be science - it would just be engineering. R&D.
Science is always just exploration, and the outcome in terms of tools is always incidental.
No, but we did know what we had large gaps in our knowledge, even of things at close to human scales -- before those theories were discovered and worked out. It was then reasonable to expect that filling in those gaps might lead to new technology and applications also at human scales. And I'm not talking about direct applications, I'm talking about applications decades or more out -- but the fact that the energy scales were somewhat close to home meant such thing were possible.
From what we know about the current frontier in particle physics, nothing informs physics at human scales. This is a strong statement -- its many many orders of magnitude off in energy scale.
It could be that we're wrong about some that (and that's one of the reasons I think this research should continue) -- but it's not something that should be reasonably expected.
> Science is always just exploration, and the outcome in terms of tools is always incidental.
My comments were about how the science should be presented to the public in an honest way. And I think trying to sell people on science by quoting past developments that are quite different in character and expectations to what is being done today is dishonest and is a disservice to everyone involved.
The point that should be made is exactly the one you make above: science is about exploration -- full stop -- and we shouldn't make exaggerated claims about applications to sell people on it.
We shouldn’t make pessimistic statements about the potential benefits of the process of doing the research itself.
Science is valuable because of what we find, but it’s also always valuable because of what we learn to do in the process.
I agree we shouldn’t make exaggerated claims about benefits, but neither should we act as though one part is somehow incidental and not fundamental to why we do the exploration.
As an analogy, I currently work on developing a medical imaging system where we track the trajectories of protons and heavy ions after they traverse a patient - in order to infer their energy loss and also the patient's "stopping power" map. With better knowledge of the stopping power we will be able to improve cancer radiation treatment with protons and heavy ions.
We would be nowhere without recent work in particle physics on large scale pixel sensors, Monte Carlo simulation software, readout systems, experimental cross sectional data (although not directly from the high energy experiments), particle tracking algorithms, electronics design for very thin sensors and radiation hard equipment ++.