On a separate note, over the years what discoveries have been made at CERN that have had practical social and economic benefits to humanity as a whole?
A lot of the benefit has come from learning expertise in applications.
Tons of the data science tools have roots in CERN. Tons of interesting statistical methods, tons of experience R&D with superconductors and all manners of sensors.
Tons of math/ computation techniques / modeling, etc would not be here without for CERN.
It would be sort of silly to expect that any of their actual discoveries or tests of the SM would have any actual application, but the ancillary benefits are there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CERN#Scientific_achievements
Here's a couple, in case you don't want to read the page:
- CERN pioneered the introduction of TCP/IP for its intranet, beginning in 1984
- CERN has developed a number of policies and official documents that enable and promote open science
- The CERN Science Gateway, opened in October 2023,[179] is CERN's latest facility for science outreach and education
I purposefully picked items that weren't directly particle physics related.
i mean, they also have one of the largest ceph deployments. anything is scalable with no budget.