How can they alter humanity? What's the difference for humanity since CERN found Higgs particle? In what ways could the potential dark matter particle detection alter humanity?
Cancer treatment goes back to particle physics research at CERN, the Web was born there, cloud was previously known as Grid Computing at CERN,
Three examples of how humanity would not be as we know it today without CERN.
As Alumni, there are many other changes that trace back to CERN.
We don't sit only on the H1 beer garden and go skiing.
In what way would studying black body radiation alter humanity? Oh just the basis for quantum mechanics and thus transistors, lasers, MRIs, photovoltaics, and more.
The point is, you don't know in advance. I admit it's a bit more far fetched with these experiments that are so far removed from everyday life, but they're still worthwhile.
Less that and more "we built a really complex machine and we can apply those skills elsewhere".
It’s a place where extremely skilled people work highly motivated on humanities hardest problems at scale.
CERN pushed distributed computing and storage before anyone else hat problems on that scale.
CERN pushed edge computing for massive data analysis before anyone else even generated data at that rate.
CERN is currently pushing the physical boundaries of device synchronisation ( Check „ White Rabbit“ ), same for data transmission. CERNS accelerator cooling tech paves the way for industrial super cooling, magnet coils push super conduction…
Companies are always late in the game, they come once there is money to be had: No one founded a fusion startup until we were close enough to the relevant tripple product.