alt Hacker NewsAs someone who supports pure science research, I would be interested to understand if any of the discoveries of CERN (and related projects) in the last 50 years (say) have proved to have practical application.
(Specifically, "discoveries", not technology developed in support of the research)
Replies
Fundamental research is entwined with practical applications, you can’t have the later without the former. Europe is known for FR, while everyone else seems to be better at commercialising. It’s alright, progress for us is progress for everyone.
No. It is purely a model tester.
With that kind of fundamental science I would expect no practical applications but guidance for researchers that work on practical applications.
There are many ideas on how the universe works, right? Knowing which ideas are closer to the truth must be helpful to people who work on nano scale stuff, like chips so fine that quantum effect are considerable.
It must be somewhere between knowing if there's alien life or not AND knowing that atoms can be split at sub particles at will.
Before your edit:
The world wide web: https://home.cern/science/computing/birth-web
certain medical imaging: https://home.cern/news/news/knowledge-sharing/medipix-partic...
grid computing advances: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00104...
PIMMS: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4724719/
Medicis: https://home.cern/news/news/accelerators/cern-accelerates-me...
FLASH radiotherapy: https://home.cern/news/news/knowledge-sharing/cern-chuv-and-...
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After your edit:
No, not yet, but those are long tail efforts. The technologies are the short term yield.