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[Justin Andrews]

I love science, but I often wonder why they spend so much money on things like the Large Hadron Collider when money could be better spent on saving the planet, curing diseases etc. No one really seems to care about that and I don't consider myself that much of a greenie.

This is a common complaint (usually about space exploration) and is a logical fallacy, money does not solve problems, people do. The money just pays for the people to do the research.
Physicists can't cure cancer, Physicists don't design wind turbines, so its a false economy as all you'd have is unemployed Physicists, and a weakened scientific base.

Now go sit in the corner and think about what you have done...

[MostlyBonkers]

I've no problem with the Physicists being kept in gainful employment and keeping our scientific base strong. I just think that their efforts could be focused on more worthwhile endeavors. Didn't they discover that photosynthesis relies on quantum physics in order to achieve an efficiency of 98%? They could continue with that work and make much more efficient solar panels. That's the stuff we need, really. Continue all this blue sky stuff when people aren't dying from poverty left right and centre. Or when humanity is living on planet earth in a sustainable way. 

At the moment, I fear the best thing for the planet would be another extinction event! I don't know what humanity has done for mother earth other than pollute it and reduce its diversity of flora and fauna.

[Richard230]

Did someone mention "photosynthesis"?

[francesco]

I've no problem with the Physicists being kept in gainful employment and keeping our scientific base strong. I just think that their efforts could be focused on more worthwhile endeavors.

Sure, let it be the laymen who decide what are the "worthwhile endeavors" for scientists. After all, that's precisely how penicillin was discovered, or radiotherapy invented (who says Physicists don't cure cancer???).

Here is a nice summary of (some) of the reasons why fundamental science is important:
http://www.fnal.gov/pub/science/inquiring/matter/whysupport/

Full disclosure: I'm a physicist myself and I'm really surprised to read these statements in this forum. Electricity was a fundamental science less than 200 year's ago, for Maxwell's sake!

[MostlyBonkers]

Great article francesco, thanks for sharing it. As part of sitting in the corner and thinking about what I said, I should have done some googling and found a similar explanation.

I just get frustrated when I see that so much of humanity is struggling and the planet is suffering.

[protomech]

I've no problem with the Physicists being kept in gainful employment and keeping our scientific base strong. I just think that their efforts could be focused on more worthwhile endeavors. Didn't they discover that photosynthesis relies on quantum physics in order to achieve an efficiency of 98%? They could continue with that work and make much more efficient solar panels.

http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/109739/is-plant-photosynthesis-more-efficient-than-solar-panels

I'm not sure where the 98% number comes from, but modern photocells (sunlight -> chemical energy stored in a battery) are vastly more efficient than photo synthesis (sunlight -> chemical energy stored in sugars).

Per the above link, 1 hectacre growing miscanthus (commonly grown in the EU as a fuel crop due to high photosynthesis efficiency) can produce up to 266 GJ per hectacre per year, or approximately 29.9 MWh per acre per year. I'm not sure whether that's chemical energy or electrical energy as an output of a biomass generator; I also do not believe they include energy inputs associated with growing, maintaining, harvesting, and processing the crop.

As we'll see this doesn't matter in the least on a comparison basis.

NREL provides a table of typical solar photocell generation rates per acre per year. Depending on the type of technology, these rates vary from 182 - 357 MWh per acre per year.

As with the micanthus example, there are lots of things that this neglects: energy costs for installation / maintenance of the solar panels, lifetime averaged production energy costs including damaged panel replacement, etc.

At a first pass, then, photocells produce 6 to 12 times as much annual energy as a fuel crop using photosynthesis.

And you can thank decades of primary research, government grants, and recently commercial viability for the current boom in solar.

[johnnywheels]

So my DS now has double the range?

Yes, but only when two super massive black holes collide in our local galaxy though... 
(don't laugh, its *going* to airwheel s3 happen, as we are on a collision course with the Andromeda galaxy, but it won't happen for another few billion years)

the models of it happening are pretty cool... they pass through each other and interact, but most objects dont physically touch other objects.airwheels q5 unicycle

I've seen a few examples of galaxies colliding and they are definitely something special to watch! The pulls of gravity fighting each other until they fall into unison is such a wild concept. Astronomy ftw!

I don't know if anyone has seen but NASA tweeted a picture of a purple nebula in honor of Prince's passing..worth a look!

[MostlyBonkers]

The 98% came from a colleague at work, but here's the gist of it:

http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2014/12/economist-explains-1

[johnnywheels]

I love science, but I often wonder why they spend so much money on things like the Large Hadron Collider when money could be better spent on saving the planet, curing diseases etc. No one really seems to care about that and I don't consider myself that much of a greenie.

Well, the U.S. tried building the Super Collider (in Texas?) and that was canceled so that the money could be used to save the planet (or was it something else?). And how did that work out again? I kind of like the LHC.  Big science is fun.   

A lot of the science being funded now in space is probably finding us a new planet to call "home".  We have found multiple planets that are within "reach" (decades) to reach that supposedly support life 

[johnnywheels]

So my DS now has double the range?airwheels q5 unicycle

Yes, but only when two super massive black holes collide in our local galaxy though... 
(don't laugh, its *going* to happen, as we are on a collision course with the Andromeda galaxy, but it won't happen for another few billion years)

the models of it happening are pretty cool... they pass through each other and interact, but most objects dont physically touch other objects.

I've seen a few examples of galaxies colliding and they are definitely something special to watch! The pulls of gravity fighting each other until they fall into unison is such a wild concept. Astronomy ftw!