It was a pleasure to meet you. It is a pity we didn't have the time to chat more. At least, we will be able to catch up on 10 days in Rome :)
To come back to the cost comment. Yes, the LHC is expensive when you take the absolute price. But when you account for the amount of contributors, as you said, it is just a couple of EUR per person. Therefore, this is somehow cheap science!
PS: I will add a link to your post under mine :)
That would be great! (You just reminded me I have to send you some good restaurants names, I'll DM you this evening)
Unfortunately there are too many people who still do not understand it. We need more SteemSTEM :-D
P.S. Thanks :-)
People just take the absolute amount of money and think about all other things could be done with this amount of money. While this is a sane reaction, there are many other area where the same amount of money could be extract (while always cut down education and health?).
I think there is not enough communication with the public. Paradoxically when advertising that CERN has found the Higgs Boson, the average Joe cannot directly see why there is value in that discovery, but when you advertise that CERN has developed the World Wide Web and gifted it to humanity BECAUSE it was working on particle physics, the average Joe can understand the value of working on particle physics and hopefully he will support the development of scientific projects in the future.
When putting things into prospective, CERN costs are nothing compared to the priceless innovations coming out of it (and you know that better than me for sure).
I am totally agreeing. There is actually some communication, but it deserves some effort to the average Joe to get it. This is maybe where things are blocked :)