As 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)
I prompted with
> Have any of the discoveries of CERN (and related projects) in the last 50 years been proven to have practical applications? With citations.
And got:
> Yes—though the practical payoffs are mostly from technology built to do the physics, not from “new particles” themselves.
> * The World Wide Web Consortium / the Web (invented at CERN) → the core platform for modern internet information sharing and commerce.
> * Worldwide LHC Computing Grid → production-scale distributed computing methods/infrastructure for moving and analyzing massive datasets across global sites (a model reused across data-intensive science/engineering).
> * Medipix / Timepix detector chips → deployed beyond particle physics in medical imaging and radiation measurement/QA (including radiography/CT use cases and radiation-therapy QA literature).
> * Proton-Ion Medical Machine Study (PIMMS) and hadron-therapy accelerator design → CERN-hosted design work that directly targeted clinical cancer therapy synchrotrons and fed the broader hadron-therapy ecosystem.
> * MEDICIS (radioisotopes) → production of medical radionuclides aimed at precision medicine/theranostics, with output and clinical-trial supply plans described by CERN.
> * Accelerator R&D used in medicine (e.g., ultra-high dose-rate “FLASH” electron-beam radiotherapy studies at CLEAR) → explicit medical-treatment R&D program with hospital collaborations.
> If you mean particle discoveries specifically (e.g., Higgs, W/Z, heavy-flavor states): those have been hugely important scientifically, but they haven’t translated into direct everyday applications in the way the Web, detector tech, isotope production, and accelerator spin-outs have.
https://chatgpt.com/share/697e18f7-90c0-800f-a531-18e5e51048...
“Eric Schmidt, who founded Google” no he didn’t
I can understand the confusion since he was CEO for the companies most critical years.
That kind of reporting is awful.
How is it they can’t either go to Wikipedia or one of the LLMs (despite hallucinations, tend to get simple things right) and get some corroborating evidence before making such basic mistakes on an article?
Man I can’t even trust simple things these days from LLM’s. Hardly scientific but I just decided to do my own little test one time when I was on discord talking to some friends about The Game Awards back in December or so. ChatGPT would simply omit winners and/or categories - got it wrong (twice the same way, one unique way) 3 times. We tried Gemini, it gave 1 wrong answer and omitted 2 categories. It was impressive how much worse than a basic search they were at a simple “what were the results of the 2025 Game Awards?”
Eric is a notorious Epstein island guy, so I'm sure he's looking to spread his name as philanthropically as he can.
Do you have a source on that?
I can't find anything besides he went to a Gala where he was in a photo with Maxwell and made an investment in a company her brother ran.
As a non physicist I like the idea of a moun collider more - more compact (thus should be cheaper) as well as something which haven't done in similar energy scales and therefore more likely to need new technology in building it and finding something new.
Maybe this one will finally make a black hole that ends it all
https://hasthelargehadroncollidercreatedablackholeyet.com/ (Yep, of money)
it's already a black hole for funding
Said the grumpy grandpa, shaking his hand at the cloudy sky. I dont know what value that comment contributed, funding research is always a long shot. And often times it fails, but that is kinda its purpose, we dont know what we dont know.
There’s an abandoned one around Dallas, the SSC. Lots of sunken cost in that one.
This should have a $1T budget not a B. We waste so much money on low efficiency computing infrastructure and energy that should be going to this.
I have low expectations that physics can dig itself out of the hole it dug by building an even larger collider. It's not worth €1T to find out.
Maybe we can just have the AI hardware make the discoveries for us!
A thousand gpus running a thousand LLMs will one day soon give us the next shakespeare. It will all be worth it in the end. Maybe we can try putting in on a blockchain.
> Maybe we can try putting in on a blockchain.
Anything less would be a wasted opportunity!
These projects are extremely expensive and the findings can alter humanity itself. That's why private donors sounds a bit sketchy
> findings can alter humanity itself
Higgs boson was predicted in theory in 1964, and found in LHC in CERN in 2012-2013. With this, all elementary particles in the standard model of particle physics have been found.
From the 1970s to 2010s, physicists believed in a theory called supersymmetry, which predicted supersymmetric partner particles for the known elementary particles. But these should have been already found in the energies used in LHC.
For the first time, there is no mainstream theory that would predict any new findings. Maybe the next bigger particle collider will find no new particles at all?
A collider produces far more than new particles or explanations. They produce papers and phds. In effect, thier primary goal is to produce stem careers. The new particles are just the public announcements. The collider doesnt even need to be functional. Much/most of the work occures before first light, before anyone turns it on. The design of the ring and its innumerable detectors and subsystems takes decades. So a great many people want the next collider to be funded regardless of its potential for scientific discovery.
The same discussion can happen re the ISS. Its primary purpose was not science. It existed to give shuttle a parking spot, to keep the US manned space program ticking along and to keep a thousand russian rocket people from going to work for rando countries. The ISS will soon end. Are we going to put up a new one? A place to park starliner and dragon? Or are we going to shut down low earth orbit spaceflight? The decision will not turn on the potential for new science, rather it will be about supporting and maintaining a flagship industry.
> thousand russian rocket people from going to work for bad people.
Just like for the Germans before!
I agree with you that it is an educational tool, but if that's all it is, there are cheaper ways to educate that might also have a higher likelihood for scientific discoveries. To build a new collider, we should have some things we're trying to do/find.
How can they alter humanity? What's the difference for humanity since CERN found Higgs particle? In what ways could the potential dark matter particle detection alter humanity?
It’s a place where extremely skilled people work highly motivated on humanities hardest problems at scale.
CERN pushed distributed computing and storage before anyone else hat problems on that scale.
CERN pushed edge computing for massive data analysis before anyone else even generated data at that rate.
CERN is currently pushing the physical boundaries of device synchronisation ( Check „ White Rabbit“ ), same for data transmission. CERNS accelerator cooling tech paves the way for industrial super cooling, magnet coils push super conduction…
Companies are always late in the game, they come once there is money to be had: No one founded a fusion startup until we were close enough to the relevant tripple product.
Seems these are all positive things and it’s good that private donors are adding some money.
You are perfectly right, this has been similar to the "space industry" (which includes 'ballistic nukes' knowhow maintainance). The thing with a bigger collider is it seems there are, not that honnest, scientists retro-fitting models in order to reach 'appropriate for this new collider' energy ranges where 'new physics' could be found.
What does that even mean? The FCC is essentially the next plausible energy range we can probe with a collider.
Going larger would cost more, and add risk.
So like, yes? The obvious thing to do is to analyze our models and come up with experiments to do within energy ranges which are plausibly accessible with near future technology.
This is where there is a questionable issue: some network of dishonest scientists may have retro-fitted the models in order to get realitic energy ranges for this new collider.
I misread the first bit as the hardest problem in the Humanities.
I’m not sure I have any idea what the hardest problem in the humanities is.
Cancer treatment goes back to particle physics research at CERN, the Web was born there, cloud was previously known as Grid Computing at CERN,
Three examples of how humanity would not be as we know it today without CERN.
As Alumni, there are many other changes that trace back to CERN.
We don't sit only on the H1 beer garden and go skiing.
I understand how linacs and even small compact syncrotrons can have practical medical and industrial applications, and I understand that in the past CERN has developed technology and produced research which is relevant to hardon therapy.
What I don't understand, and maybe you can clarify, is how the very largest gargantuan accelerators can ever have practical relevance. How can effects and products which can only be studied with accelerators that are many miles large ever have application in hospitals unless those hospitals are also many miles large? Not going to lie, I get "NASA invented Tang" vibes whenever this subject comes up; like the medical applications of small accelerators are obvious and parsable to the public, so they are used to sell the public on accelerators the size of small countries.
Because of the engineering effort required to build such systems, that no one has built before, means there is a gigantic amount of R&D discoveries that can be eventually applied in other fields outside particle physics.
Mechanical, electronic, informatics, chemistry, physics,...
Hence why CERN eventually created an industry collaboration office, responsible for finding business partners that would like to make a business out of such discoveries.
https://knowledgetransfer.web.cern.ch/activities-services/co...
> Cancer treatment goes back to particle physics
Are you speaking about proton therapy? I don’t think there’s any evidence that works better than alternatives
What do you mean by 'any evidence that works better Than alternatives'?
It can deliver radiations to the brain that will peak at the exact position of the cancer, and reduce irradiation in sane tissues. The 'better' is 'less irradiation to sane tissues' that in turn reduces the risk for new cancers.
Note: I'm not expert on the matter, but I had technical visits to IBA and know several PhDs that work there
> What do you mean by 'any evidence that works better Than alternatives'?
I mean exactly that, clinical trials demonstrating that proton therapy is superior to radiation therapy. This is not a question about the physics but about how patients respond (and whether the expense of delivering proton therapy outweighs the expected marginal benefits).
What matters is that exists, and is another possibility for treatments.
In what way would studying black body radiation alter humanity? Oh just the basis for quantum mechanics and thus transistors, lasers, MRIs, photovoltaics, and more.
The point is, you don't know in advance. I admit it's a bit more far fetched with these experiments that are so far removed from everyday life, but they're still worthwhile.
Less that and more "we built a really complex machine and we can apply those skills elsewhere".
> can alter humanity
or at least keep some of it warm:
https://home.cern/news/news/cern/heating-homes-worlds-larges...
So complain to your government about their spending. Probably at least 30% of government spend is used on completely worthless or fraudulent things.
It's good that someone is funding this stuff.