Why is CERN better known than ITER?

[alexgmcm]

I find it surprising that whilst the average person will know about CERN, due to its heavy coverage in the news and media, only very few people will have heard of ITER. This seems strange because ITER will probably have a much greater effect upon the average person's life than anything that may occur at the LHC at CERN.

I suppose the main reason is that the LHC turns on this year whereas ITER is still a decade away but I must admit I am still surprised by the general public's interest in the less applied areas of physics.

 

[tribdog]

It's because CERN is the first one listed in the phone book. If you want to have a well known particle accelerator you should name it AAA Particle Accelerator.

 

[Gokul43201]

... I must admit I am still surprised by the general public's interest in the less applied areas of physics.

The general public's interest in physics has always been in the less applied areas. How many pop-sci books can you name in Condensed Matter Physics?

 

[humanino]

This seems strange because ITER will probably have a much greater effect upon the average person's life than anything that may occur at the LHC at CERN.

How do you know that !? Why would people even notice that their electricity is no longer produced with fission, but with fusion ? CERN is not just LHC and has already brought many things to us, such as PF (that is, internet)

 

[vanesch]

CERN is old (started in 1954), has a great PR department (like claiming they invented the internet, while they only invented HTML and HTTP 0.9 or "recreate the big bang" etc...), and, well, did a lot of discoveries too

 

[humanino]

like claiming they invented the internet

Well at least without their contribution it's not clear when it would have happen. How it happened is quite an interesting story.

But it's true that they have a complete army of PR compared to most of the other labs.

 

[jtbell]

like claiming they invented the internet

Yeah, after all, Al Gore never worked for them! :rofl:

 

[ZapperZ]

I find it surprising that whilst the average person will know about CERN, due to its heavy coverage in the news and media, only very few people will have heard of ITER. This seems strange because ITER will probably have a much greater effect upon the average person's life than anything that may occur at the LHC at CERN.

I suppose the main reason is that the LHC turns on this year whereas ITER is still a decade away but I must admit I am still surprised by the general public's interest in the less applied areas of physics.

It's the same reason why Einstein is more well-known that Bardeen, even though Bardeen is the only person who has ever won the Nobel Prize in physics twice. It is certainly related to what Gokul is implying.

Zz.

 

[cristo]

It is certainly related to what Gokul is implying.

Yup.. theoretical physics is just more interesting than experimental physics.

*runs and hides under a particle collider*

 

[Kurdt]

Is that your theoretical particle collider cristo?

 

[cristo]

Is that your theoretical particle collider cristo?

Yup, that's right.. my collider of theoretical particles

 

[ZapperZ]

Yup.. theoretical physics is just more interesting than experimental physics.

*runs and hides under a particle collider*

Er.. I don't think that's what I or Gokul is implying. Besides, Bardeen is actually a theorist, even though he was involved in the development of the transistor. BCS theory is certainly a theory.

Zz.

 

[cristo]

Er.. I don't think that's what I or Gokul is implying.

I know.. I was joking.

 

[alexgmcm]

Yeah, I suppose looking at some of the crazier parts of theoretical physics (making claims about time-travel and multiple universes etc.) in a pop-sci manner is probably more interesting to the general public than condensed matter physics.

But that is only because it is in a pop-sci manner, otherwise the theoretical side is probably even less accessible to the layman than the more experimental, applied areas.

For example, it is reasonable to explain superconductance in a simple manner as the lack of interaction between the electrons and the lattice due to the pseudo-spin created by cooper pairs which mean it behaves like a boson. But trying to explain twistor theory to a layman or the whole host of theories known as M-theory is pretty much impossible.

And yes, I think people will care that their power is generated by fusion instead of fission if it means the cost is greatly decreased whereas I see little reason for the layman to care about the existence of the Higgs Boson.

Someone should try and write a popular account of the less glamourous areas of physics just to see if it is possible to do so in an exciting yet accurate manner.

 

[WarPhalange]

Yup.. theoretical physics is just more interesting than experimental physics.

Every year we get a stream of freshmen who want to major in physics and when I ask why, they always say they are interested in "quantum" and "string theory" and "relativity". The catch? They have no idea what those things are even about.

I admit I was the same way, except I hadn't heard about "string theory" until I was already majoring in physics.

It's kind of like how when people think of the military, they think of commandos, and not the engineers, the cooks, the janitors, etc.

 

[Topher925]

It's kind of like how when people think of the military

I think about the bullets and the bombs.

Its all about the PR which then eventually relates to money. Why do people buy Dell PCs when they are over priced pieces of @#$%? Its because they shove there name down everyones throat so when someone needs a new laptop, they immediately think Dell. So when governments get money to spend on science, they think CERN.

 

[cristo]

So when governments get money to spend on science, they think CERN.

Come on, that's just nonsense.

 

[Topher925]

Come on, that's just nonsense.

Which part? The government spending money on science or them giving it to CERN?

 

[mgb_phys]

So when governments get money to spend on science, they think CERN.

Come on, that's just nonsense.

True - they spend it on renaming PPARC again.

 

[cristo]

Which part? The government spending money or science or them giving it to CERN?

Your implication that there is some guy sat in a government office that suddenly thinks "hey, I need to spend some money, and this guy from CERN was on the news last night.. let's give it to them."

True - they spend it on renaming PPARC again.

Haha.. that was a lot of money spent!

 

[Topher925]

Your implication that there is some guy sat in a government office that suddenly thinks "hey, I need to spend some money, and this guy from CERN was on the news last night.. let's give it to them."

Don't be silly. Everyone knows that governments are ultimately controlled by large corporations and conglomerates. The guy doesn't sit in a government office he sits in his penthouse sweet on the top floor of a sky scraper. Guys like that give out money to evade paying higher taxes and other such reasons.

 

[tribdog]

can't argue with that

 

[cristo]

Unless you intend giving some references, I suggest you refrain from brandishing misinformation around the forums like that.

 

[minorwork]

What, the National Ignition Facility at Livermore is chopped liver? 1.8 million joules in ultra violet by 2009. 2.5 million in infrared already. They'll easily beat ITER at achieving controlled fusion. If inertial confinement works.

 

[humanino]

Guys like that give out money to evade paying higher taxes and other such reasons.

You really have no clue what you are talking about. This is irrelevant to CERN, it receives money only from Member State public taxes.

 

[Topher925]

You really have no clue what you are talking about. This is irrelevant to CERN, it receives money only from Member State public taxes.

Oh Really?

Physicists and their funding agencies from both Member and non-Member States are responsible for the financing,

http://public.web.cern.ch/public/en/About/Global-en.html

three-year project, led by CERN, gathers 21 partners from research organizations, computer science and industry

http://it-dep-tt.web.cern.ch/it-dep-tt/Documentation/TT_Documents/FC_paper_on_IT_and_GRID.doc

Yes I know, the majority of funding comes from state members but I think my original point still stands. If you keep something a hot topic, its going to get the most attention. After all who decided that these states were going to have a public tax for CERN? Did each citizen of the state vote on it or was it state representatives (connected peoples) that made the decision?

 

[humanino]

Oh Really?

Yes, sure. I also contributed once to CERN, I dropped a penny there once.

 

[tribdog]

Yes, sure. I also contributed once to CERN, I dropped a penny there once.

wouldn't that be a cernt?

 

[vanesch]

What, the National Ignition Facility at Livermore is chopped liver? 1.8 million joules in ultra violet by 2009. 2.5 million in infrared already. They'll easily beat ITER at achieving controlled fusion. If inertial confinement works.

I hope they won't create a black hole ! (runs and hides :rofl: )

 

[minorwork]

I hope they won't create a black hole ! (runs and hides :rofl: )

And I thought Chicken Little was just a fairy tale. The woo woos are having a field day with timely black holes created at CERN going back and causing the Tunguska explosion. Well, OK, that was me poking fun at their wild imaginations at another site. I'm waiting to see if one of them starts running with the idea.:rofl:

 

[vanesch]

Well at least without their contribution it's not clear when it would have happen. How it happened is quite an interesting story.

Sure, but we're not talking about *the internet* (which is TCP/IP and the entire non-central networking idea behind it). They invented ONE (successful, true) protocol on top of it, which was a networked hypercard system, and they USED the internet to do so. usenet already existed (on the internet), email already existed, FTP already existed. They just added one more protocol, for the hypercard thing, which was HTTP (and the markup language HTML). BTW, the HTTP from CERN was HTTP 0.9, which was nothing else but a cooked-down version of FTP.
I'm pretty sure that if CERN wouldn't have invented it, somebody else would have done so quite quickly. I don't want to do away with CERN's merit in inventing the WWW, but claiming that they invented *the internet* is to me, quite shocking, as it already existed for about 20 years when they claimed to do so.

 

[humanino]

I'm pretty sure that if CERN wouldn't have invented it, somebody else would have done so quite quickly.

This is a belief. Was the invention of optical fiber as important ?

Besides, if one really wants to go into this, one must still recognize the importance of public research (this time not CERN) on ARPANET.

 

[vanesch]

This is a belief.

Of course, given that it is about a counterfactual situation, it can not be anything else but a belief. However, the reason why I think it was an inevitable invention was that it was beginning of the 90-ies, when graphical user interfaces started to become wide-spread (first macintoshes, first versions of windows,...). As such, all the pure ascii-based internet protocols would have gotten sooner or later something that gets a bit more "clickable", and hypercard was already a locally existing graphical user interface document access system. You only needed to do it over a network.

first mac: 1984
first windows: 1985
Notecards: 1984 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NoteCards
Hypercard: 1987 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercard)
Tim Berners Lee (at CERN) invents HTTP and HTML in 1989-1990.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Berners_Lee

but IMO everything was "ready and set" for this move.

 

[D H]

first mac: 1984
first windows: 1985
Notecards: 1984 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NoteCards
Hypercard: 1987 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercard)
Tim Berners Lee (at CERN) invents HTTP and HTML in 1989-1990.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Berners_Lee

but IMO everything was "ready and set" for this move.

Digging even further back in time,
Memex: 1945, Vannevar Bush http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/194507/bush
Project Xanadu: 1980s, Ted Nelson http://wired-vig.wired.com/wired/archive/3.06/xanadu.html

 

[chaoseverlasting]

Every year we get a stream of freshmen who want to major in physics and when I ask why, they always say they are interested in "quantum" and "string theory" and "relativity". The catch? They have no idea what those things are even about.

Its kind of why women look better at closing time, you're just too drunk to really notice them properly by then.