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But isn't that also exactly why the whole effort is a bit futile? If it takes this much effort to detect that an event is even happening, you end up describing something that only really happens in a lab situation and has not much relevance for the real world.

That said, LHC cost $4.75 billion that's pretty much nothing compared to the amount of money that gets thrown around in the tech world. So might still be worth it just for the fun of it, even if the discoveries don't have any direct application.



From a purely isolated Experimental (Physics) point of view this might be true. But of course both theory and experiments are highly intertwined. For instance if you would like to observe Neutrinoless Double beta decay in nature, even if it exists, you might never get a chance to actually measure it because it would occur so seldomly. With setups like the LHC there is actually a realistic chance (if such phenomena exist) to measure them and thus applying that knowledge to various theories existing or in the making.

That said, of course particle physics results have direct applications. For instance in speculative commercial applications of Nuclear fusion and also Quantum Computing is connected to particle physics. I mean even GPS systems are based on 4D space time. Not entirely sure if any of that can be directly attributed to research happening in colliders but this is just one part of the field, mainly the experimental part - which can verify/falsify theories or result in new ones.


We need to figure out what we are missing, namely what is dark-matter, how does it interact with the currently visible matter, are there extra dimensions and so on. Once that it is figured out it might well be that we could engineer systems beyond our wildest dreams, we just don’t know yet.




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