In Reply to: re: matter v antimatter posted by Real ist on January 14, 2010 at 19:33:11:

Same here.

The Internet was around long before the web. If you read back you will find that I only attribute the web or html to CERN and TBL - the internet architecture is a military product. CERN needed the web to handle large volumes of data and scientific information. A prof of computer science would not have had the same need and as necessity is the mother of invention it's even more unlikely that a prof of computer science would have come up with it outside of an institution like cern with a need for speed.

Whether they find Higg's boson (which is seen as an answer to why matter has mass) is still an open question. I'd put my money on neutralinos as I indicate above).

If they don't find Higgs they will find something else to chew on - something that we could not discover without the big collider.

The peaceful aspects of the project are already paying dividends - a lot more than the billions we are throwing at banks for bonuses on almost a weekly basis. And already we have the Grid to look forward to in addition to the trillion euro industry that is the web.

Whether it's an accident or not is a moot point. You could argue that also about a myriad of scientific discoveries such as antibiotics, x-rays, electricity, radioactivity, photography, v1agra, saccharin, plastics, pacemakers - and many other 'accidental' scientific discoveries. The more they work at science the luckier they get it seems. Of course lots of people would have seen the effect of penicillin on bacteria before a scientist copped on to what was happening and put it to good use.

Science can disprove things and it can undertake experiments to support a particular view of how the world works but it can never prove a theory as one thing is certain somebody will come along and improve your understanding of how you thought it works. This is the fundamental strength of science and it is why you have such reliable technologies at your daily command including this wonderful worldwide web.

The art of science is in understanding that a particular unusual phenomenon is something worth studying and developing further.

You do not have to use the products of this kind of accidental or deliberate genius - tv, radio, mobile phones, internet, web, internal combustion engines, antibiotics, satnavs, vaccinations, headache pills, contraceptives, rust-resistant wheat varieties, fungicides to prevent potato blight and so on. You don't have to use them but most people choose to.

The ultimate blasphemy is to believe in a stupid god who has to interfere after the fact, planting fossils trying to make people think that the world is only 6000 years old. If you believe in a god then why not just believe that he made us intelligent enough to explore and understand how matter is stuck together without the wizard of oz stuff?