
India Is Building the World's Largest Magnet to Hunt Neutrinos - jonbaer
http://www.popularmechanics.com/how-to/blog/india-worlds-largest-magnet-to-hunt-neutrinos-17640596
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diy123
Hello HN'ers, I am a long-timer lurker on HN, don't post anything, don't have
Karma. But I do want to respond to the comment by quonn below, which is an
example of a broader type of comment for these kinds of news: some
_developing_country_ invests in _scientific_project_. People say, why are you
wasting money on this when you should be feeding your people? To that I say,
countries should be feeding their people, as well as investing in science. As
an individual, you are constrained by money because you can't print it. To a
country, money does literally grow on trees, and a country can print as much
money as it wants. What should a country do to remove poverty? Invest in
projects that create jobs - massive infrastructure projects come to mind here.
But also invest in cutting edge science and build a scientific infrastructure.
A country should, to create new knowledge, attempt that which others have not
attempted. Kennedy's Man on the Moon speech is very much in this spirit.
Eventually scientific progress made anywhere benefits all humanity. So I cheer
India (or any other country) in such efforts.

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ta75757

        a country can print as much money as it wants
    

Printing money is essentially a tax, because it reduces the value of the
currency everyone else is holding through inflation.

Or another way: money is not physical resources, it is a measure of resources.
How could printing money increase the physical resources available to a
country?

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diy123
Yes, in the short run. Who holds most of that money? In developing countries
it is the elites. So if their holdings lose some value, they'll survive. But
government spending puts money in the hands of people who need to work for a
living. That will benefit the economy as these people will spend more and
create demand. In the long run everyone becomes better off if a country
undertakes a vigorous and well-thought out infrastructure program (including
scientific infrastructure). Yes, I am a Keynesian.

~~~
ta75757
I suspect most elites hold little of their portfolio in cash.

Sure, if the government taxes/borrows/prints to invest in things that help the
economy that can have a positive net effect. I don't think hunting for
neutrinos is a terribly great way to stimulate the economy.

The best argument, I suspect, is the same as for NASA in the US: the fraction
of the budget spent on it is tiny (assuming this is true in India's case).

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pavel_lishin
I wish they would explain how a magnet is going to help them detect neutrinos.

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im2w1l
Was thinking the same thing. INO's website[0] explains it. They will look at
the tracks of charged particles produced when the neutrinos interact with
atomic nuclei.

[0]
[http://www.ino.tifr.res.in/ino//about.php](http://www.ino.tifr.res.in/ino//about.php)

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ChuckMcM
Wow that is a lot of centrifuges, err I mean magnets!

I'm disappointed that Popular Mechanics didn't go into the theory, this is
better [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India-
based_Neutrino_Observator...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India-
based_Neutrino_Observatory) but still not great.

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forgotAgain
Isn't the earth's core the world's largest magnet?

[Edit: to the downvoters: it's the weekend, have a sense of humor.]

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HCIdivision17
Gosh, take the idea seriously for a second: think of the accomplishment of
putting a detector down there! We're a few generations out from even hoping to
have the material science needed for it, but maintaining a comm link with a
thing through the mantle is strangely uncommon science fiction. Like it's too
wild an idea to ever take seriously. Unlike, say, warp drives and indefinite
longevity.

