🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Aug10.215957.2777@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> crb7q@kelvin.seas.Virginia.EDU (Cameron Randale Bass) writes:
>In article <1992Aug10.202413.10772@pollux.lu.se> magnus@thep.lu.se (Magnus Olsson) writes:

>    Of course, the boys around Maxwell also had a pretty good
>    idea what his equations were good for.  After all, telegraphy
>    was one of the more profitable threads that held the empire together.
>    (Of course that did not prevent them from misusing the equations
>    at times).  

They did have _some_ ideas about what his equations were good for, of
course - he wasn't working in a vacuum. What I was referring to was
the fact that Maxwell's equations have freely propagating waves as
solutions. If you had asked a telegraphic engineer of the mid-19th
century about that (provided he had *any* understanding of the maths
and theoretical physics behind Maxwell's theory, and the maths used by
Maxwell was much more formidable than the streamlined vector calculus
of modern textbooks), I doubt *very much* that he could have foreseen
radio communications, or for that case *any* application of those
wavelike solutions.

>     As far as the rest goes, it is a very weak justification of 
>     a $10 billion project to say 'I'm *sure* that there will be
>     some results that apply outside particle physics, I'm just
>     not sure what they are'.  Well, *I* am sure that there will
>     be 'some results'.  I am just not sure that they will be 
>     anywhere near commensurate with the cost (predictions of 
>     'hundreds of trillions' of dollars of spin-offs in the next
>     century notwithstanding).

Sorry, but I interpreted your earlier arguments as that you were
certain that there would be *no* applications outside particle
physics. 

Anyway, of course cost is the important factor. I suppose that if the
SSC had cost $10 000 instead of $10 G, nobody would have opposed it,
right? 

I really shouldn't argue too much about this, since I won't be paying
for the SSC (but for the LHC, which has been ignored almost totally in
this discussion), but IMHO the SSC isn't too expensive compared to
e.g. the defence budget, or the amounts spent on TV commercials, or
whatever. On the other hand, it *is* a lot of money and it would be
unfortunate if other science projects would have to suffer.

And I'm not all that sure about the wisdom of building the SSC and the
LHC simultaneously. Why can't people cooperate instead of compete?
(Yes, I'm aware of the arguments that without the competition, the
prooject to be built would be delayed. It's sad that national prestige
has such a large part to play in this.)

>     However, this is an evasion of my question.      If you wish to 
>     comment please tell me how you think the SSC will produce results
>     relevant to biological or biochemical systems (apart from contributing
>     to our national biological trip to the poor-house).  I am still
>     waiting my enlightenment.

I'm sorry, but I can't enlighten you. On the other hand, *I* never made
any claims that the SSC would have immediate effects on other areas of
science or technology (except the ones directly related to the
construction, of course) - any such effects would probably be in the
very long run. But who knows? 

An important question is of course _who_ should pay for the SSC.
Saying that biologists should pay, because there will be benefits to
biology in the long run, strikes me as typical political tactics, and
not very nice to the biologists.

Magnus Olsson                   | \e+      /_
Dept. of Theoretical Physics    |  \  Z   / q
University of Lund, Sweden      |   >----<           
Internet: magnus@thep.lu.se     |  /      \===== g
Bitnet: THEPMO@SELDC52          | /e-      \q