Comments on: Private Donation Saves RHIC!

By: Jan Theodore Galkowski

Jan Theodore Galkowski — Tue, 17 Jan 2006 00:31:52 +0000

the thing about private and government donations, or their lack, is that the parties don’t always pursue their stated principles in their choice to fund or not to fund.

by all rights, a private sponsor of the RHIC or any other comparable scientific endeavor, ought to be able to sway and move the results of such an investment towards consumers it chooses. IMO, RHIC would resist any suggestion such results be withheld from public fora, but an investor might request interested parties have, say, an early look. what’s interesting is if such an early revelation seemed to oppose the political interests of the United States government or whatever flash-in-the-pan administration occupied the chief office at the time.

does such a government, in the absence of its financial support, have any right to dictate the priority or totality of revelations of RHIC’s discoveries? does a partner have the right to dictate such merely because it provides a portion of its funding? might not a foreign government wish to make its own contribution to a facility like RHIC for its own reasons? if so, shouldn’t it have the right to sway priorities in revelation?

these are not matters which are pressing, but they are the principles which are affected by government choosing not to fund a major and important institution like RHIC, but private funds choosing to do so.

i, for one, would strongly argue that if a government does not choose to support an endeavor like RHIC and others do, that government cedes any right to specify how or when these results are publicized, revealed, and used. if they care, let them pay.

By: Mark

Mark — Sat, 14 Jan 2006 22:56:18 +0000

Hi Mag1KaL. What do you mean by “benefits”? I think most people yearn to understand what the world is made of and why it appears the way it does, from the smallest scales imaginable out to the furthest reaches of the Universe. In discovering the Standard Model (and many, many other wonderful facts about nature) we are pushing back the boundaries of human knowledge. When I go to parties, or talk to undergraduates, or get asked what I do by people who are fixing my car, or working on my house, staffing art galleries, midical professionals, working in stores I shop at … in fact when I’m asked what I do by pretty much anyone I meet (all of them non-physicists), they are fascinated by it and hungry to know more. The discovery of the Standard Model feeds this hunger. We are discovering how the world works.

If you’re talking about direct technological applications, then none spring to mind right now. But then again, General Relativity didn’t have any (that I’m aware of)until we started sending up space probes and built the GPS system, which was a long time after its discovery. Even if no such technological benefits exist, everything I wrote about in the preceding paragraph remains true.

By: Mag1KaL

Mag1KaL — Sat, 14 Jan 2006 22:10:06 +0000

Ok then, what has the standard model done for the world? Who benefits from it besides to other particle physicists?

By: Dissident

Dissident — Sat, 14 Jan 2006 21:17:39 +0000

Mag1KaL, ask Wikipedia when (and how) it was confirmed experimentally.

By: Mag1KaL

Mag1KaL — Sat, 14 Jan 2006 20:47:54 +0000

Well, Wikipedia states the standard model was developed between 1970 and 1973… 33 years ago, so it doesn’t count.

By: Not Even Wrong » Blog Archive » Hedge Fund Finances RHIC

Not Even Wrong » Blog Archive » Hedge Fund Finances RHIC — Sat, 14 Jan 2006 20:26:51 +0000

[...] Update: More comments about this are from Joanne Hewett at Cosmic Variance and Chad Orzel at Uncertain Principles. [...]

By: Plato

Plato — Sat, 14 Jan 2006 16:19:58 +0000

Just a ittle information to help see the history and developement on a set of criteria for operation. World class indeed.

Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics was officially launched on October 23, 2000 with a $100 million donation from Mike Lazaridis

By: Uncertain Principles

Uncertain Principles — Sat, 14 Jan 2006 15:07:28 +0000

Libertopia Approaches?

The big news in physics yesterday was the announcement that a private donation has been made to support experiments at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider on Long Island. This is the accelerator that’s slamming gold nuclei into each other to…

By: Science

Science — Sat, 14 Jan 2006 12:32:02 +0000

Yes the Standard Model is a foundation but it involves complex and speculative models to describe particle masses with the Higgs field. There are also well known issues over how this mechanism allows electroweak symmetry to break down as a function of energy. These issues are absolutely pertinent to building a unified field theory. In addition, the Standard Model doesn’t include gravity or general relativity. Some speculations (which Plato feels should not have the honour of being mentioned here) claim to deal with these problems, but after 20 years mainstream analysis have failed to make any testable predictions! Nature has no strings attached, Plato!

By: Dissident

Dissident — Sat, 14 Jan 2006 11:53:52 +0000

#8: If you had said “twenty years”, the case would be weaker, but with thirty you cover the nailing down of the Standard Model, which to this day remains The foundation for understanding the universe.