weemba@brahms (Matthew P Wiener) (10/26/86)
Summary: Expires: Sender: Followup-To: Distribution: Keywords: I was going to direct followups to sci.physics and omit talk.politics.misc completely, but I'm certain some extremely hebetudinous dextroalatophilic SDI myrmidon is not going to be able to recognize techno-sarcasm for what it is when it hits him flat in the face. There--that should draw him out. In article <7257@utzoo.UUCP> henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer) writes: >If van der Meere's Nobel was for stochastic cooling, as opposed to the W+ >etc., then clearly it should have been the Nobel Prize For Accelerator >Engineering, not the Nobel Prize For Physics (ignoring the nonexistence >of a Nobel Prize of the former type!). Not at all. Fundamental advances in experimental technique that en- able others to make great progress has been the basis for Nobel Prizes in Physics before. Recall, for example, A A Michelson in 1907 and his precision measurements in optics, E O Lawrence in 1939 and the invention of the cyclotron, and D A Glaser in 1960 and the invention of the bub- ble chamber. I don't think there was any doubt about the appropriateness of any of these. > Accelerator engineering is an >oddball case because it has virtually no applications right now except >among the physicists. But it is very definitely a branch of engineering, >not physics. It's physics alright. Experimental physics. Nobody knew how to make the beams bunch correctly, and he worked it out. If his work had been some crucial improvement in the magnets, I might agree with you, depending on just what the improvement was. >> I do not think it very wise to make negative predictions about the fu- >> ture utility of pure research. Such has a dismal track record. > >Personally, I agree, but the above is a very poor example. Accelerator >engineering is not pure research. Jordin Kare stated that particle physics is useless practically, with an undertext that particle physics == theoretical particle physics. I count accelerator "engineering"--at least as done at the level of van der Meere--as pure research since all its practitioners are concerned with the same pure research goals as the theoreticians. Similarly, I would count gravity-wave detector building as pure research. And if a gravity-wave detector "engineer" comes up with seven levels of magnitude gain in sensitivity by some brilliant idea, I think he or she would be deservedly awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics when the "pure researchers" exploit such idea successfully. > Practical applicability of modern >particle physics -- as opposed to the specialized engineering disciplines >driven and funded by particle-physics applications -- would seem minimal >for the immediate future. But don't tell anybody. How else would we get funding for a neutrino bomb, or a magnetic monopole bomb? They seem worth running up the SDI money pole. They have as likely a chance as working. ucbvax!brahms!weemba Matthew P Wiener/UCB Math Dept/Berkeley CA 94720