Question: How does your job help the public?

Kristian Harder answered on 8 Nov 2013:

Oh, in soooooo many ways! I guess you mean the job of a particle physicist in general, and not the specific thing that I happen to be doing in particle physics right now? So, feel free to ask again if you wanted a more specific answer, but for now I’ll just brag a little about how particle physics helps the public.

The main thing that benefits the public is of course the knowledge that we gain about how the universe works. That is our actual service to society. It’s part of human culture, to acquire knowledge and to make use of it. Of course, “making use of it” is usually not a short term thing with the kind of knowledge particle physics comes up with. Knowing about the Higgs boson has no practical consequences right now, and probably won’t have for decades to come while we figure out the details of this new particle and how to work with it. But look at the enormous dramatic huge magnificent consequences it had to discover the electron and learn how to manipulate it. Where would mankind be without this direct result from particle physics?

If you want short-term benefits for the public, I’ve got something for you anyway. In order to do our experiments, we need to push technology to (and beyond) its limits. Computing, electronics, vacuum technology, cryogenics (very low temperature cooling systems), large scale applications of superconductors are pushed forward by particle physics. A few famous particle physics spinoffs are the world wide web (invented at CERN), medical imaging (MRI scanners use superconducting magnets, and most types use similar detector technology as ours), large scale data processing (now taken over by Google and Amazon 🙂 ), and even old style TV sets (cathode ray tubes are simple particle accelerators of the type that was used to discover the electron about 100 years ago).
Actually a large part of the public funding that we get does not end up with us. We give this money to high tech companies all over Europe to develop and build high tech equipment for us. In that sense, doing particle physics leads to very targeted support for high tech industry, creating lots of jobs and keeping the economy going.

And I am not done yet! Surveys have shown that the research we do in particle physics, plus astrophysics, is one of the top reasons why young people go to university to study physics or engineering. Some of those people end up in research like I did, but the majority moves on to industry, builds up companies a the cutting edge of technology, creating jobs, tax money, and thus pushing the economy overall. Someone has calculated that just due to this effect, we pay you back a lot more than you pay us.

Oh, and finally, I’d like to mention world peace. No joke. In particle physics, we all work together peacefully. Even during the cold war, the USA and Russia were working together on particle physics experiments. Also nowadays, we have people working together on our experiments from countries that tend to have problems with each other in political life: the US and Iran, India and Pakistan, Bosnia and Serbia, China and Taiwan, the US and China, and the list goes on and on. Even the UK and France! 🙂 We are all humans, not everyone likes everyone else, and I’ve heard comments from people of one nationality about people of other nationalities that I would have preferred not to hear, but at least we don’t kill each other. That’s a good start, isn’t it?

Ok, sorry, that was a lot to read, but this is a very important question that you asked, and as you see there are many aspects involved in answering it!