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Re:How a Shrimp Treadmill Became a Political Plaything by Houshalter on Friday November 14, 2014 @10:24PM (#8610732)
Has the LHC ever produced any benefit to humanity? Serious question.
Re:How a Shrimp Treadmill Became a Political Plaything by MereInterest on Saturday November 15, 2014 @10:00AM (#8611784)
First off, let's start with Benjamin Franklin's "What good is a newborn baby?" quote, when asked what good electricity could ever do. Primary research leads to unknown and unknowable benefits, because it is impossible to know what will come of it.

As an example, let's consider the magnetic moment of the proton. It's a rather esoteric measurement. The proton acts as a tiny magnet, and some researchers wanted to know exactly how strong of a magnet. So, they set up a strong magnetic field and looked to see how the proton behaved. They ended up finding two different values.

As it turned out, those two different values were the result of electrons getting in the way of the measurement. As it turned out, there were two different chemical environments in the molecule being studied, and that caused the two different values. The chemists loved it, because then they could directly measure the electron density.

Then the doctors realized that the chemists had an awesome tool. They could use it to measure the concentration of water inside a patient's body. Bam, MRI.

All this from esoteric primary research.

Re:How a Shrimp Treadmill Became a Political Plaything by themusicgod1 on Saturday November 15, 2014 @04:41AM (#8611302)
It's probably going to take some time for knowledge of this kind of seep into our day to day lives, but for a lark:

It's confirming evidence of the Standard Model. It's kind of like checking for your chair for a thumb tack, when you work in an office of pranksters -- if there isn't a thumb tack, was there any benefit to checking? Maybe, but you probably wouldn't say that if there was. If the standard model fell, there would be implications that we could probably engineer around up to and including utilizing nonlinear aspects of particle interactions to build computers with. But alas, it confirmed the model.

Also the standard model has implications on the nature of dark matter and dark energy, which in turn have implications on the likelihood that we get clobbered by a random piece of space rock. Of course even if we did know this to a better degree...it's unclear whether that's a benefit or not. I'm assuming for the purposes of this comment however that knowing our degree of mortality is a benefit, but ymmv.

In general, the more tangible benefits of lhc are probably going to come from stuff related to anything in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physics_beyond_the_Standard_Mo..., and nanoengineering efforts yet to come.

Re:How a Shrimp Treadmill Became a Political Plaything by tinco on Saturday November 15, 2014 @03:18AM (#8611193)
Not yet, but similar fundamental scientific research has led to the inventions of extremely beneficial technologies like TV, GPS, CAT scans and nuclear energy.

All of these technologies based directly on fundamental research came years or decades after the discoveries. Science is often a game of patience.

Re:How a Shrimp Treadmill Became a Political Plaything by hellgas00 on Saturday November 15, 2014 @12:59AM (#8610984)
Yes, humans now have a better understanding on how the fundamental building blocks of the universe work. Has this directly affected your quality of life, no. Do you derive enjoyment from knowing that your fellow man now has a better understanding of the inner workings of every atom that make up the mass around you? I do. Could it possibly benefit you in the future, that is unknown.
Re:How a Shrimp Treadmill Became a Political Plaything by SynchrotronZ on Saturday November 15, 2014 @07:33AM (#8611559)
I'm not sure which come directly from the LHC, and which predate it (but probably still benefit from the research) but a lot of medical techniques rely on particle interactions and acceleration which benefit from the research such as PET-scans, and particle-therapy.

There is also research being performed at cern into new superconductors and new ways of coating various materials with thin layers.(as a direct resut of building the LHC).

Re:How a Shrimp Treadmill Became a Political Plaything by infinite8s on Saturday November 15, 2014 @10:58AM (#8611903)
You could ask that of any basic scientific discovery in the history of humanity, with the answer of "eventually".