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.
India has massive problems to do with poverty and public health that are massively linked with infrastructure. India needs to inspire new engineers and scientists and also needs to keep the existing ones in the country. On that basis alone, stuff like this is massively more beneficial than the price tag.
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?
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.
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).
If you are sneaky and in a slump, and you give the printed money to the right folk, it can kickstart trade.
This was the idea behind giving all that money to the banks, but the banks went and sat on it and now have the largest cash reserves for pretty much ever, so they were able to dump some of their other liquid assets, namely oil, which is a lot of the current glut we are blaming on OPEC.
There is nothing wrong with investing in science per se. But there is a choice how to spend your money within science. If you are already a rich country, sure go ahead, burn money on CERN or whatever it is. It probably won't provide a tangible benefit for your people, but it is worth it for everyone in the long run. Nobody disputes that. But this depends on the economic reality in your country. Most people who responded to my comment basically ignored that reality. It's about priorities.
How rich does a country have to be, then, in order to be able to "burn money on CERN"? What is the "acceptable threshold" of poverty, healthcare coverage, civil liberties, and so forth at which a country can decide to divert money towards investing in science instead of solving these problems?
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.
The link im2w1 provided has some useful detail. Here's a former neutrino physicist's take:
1) They are looking at atmospheric (cosmic ray) neutrinos, not solar neutrinos like most of the other large underground detectors (SNO, Kamiokande, etc). When cosmic rays (mostly high energy protons) strike nuclei the upper atmosphere, they create a shower of high-energy particles, including neutrinos and anti-neutrinos.
Cosmic rays make an interesting laboratory for some important processes because they have energies that go far higher than anything achievable in accelerators. The LHC has collision energies up to 1.3E13 eV (about 13,000 times the mass of a proton). Cosmic rays have energies at detectable fluxes up to 10E20 eV or and likely useful flux for this kind of experiment at energies a factor of ten or more greater than the LHC is capable of, and they do it for free: all you have to do is build the detector.
2) When high-energy neutrinos or anti-neutrinos interact with the material of the detector, they produce particle and anti-particle showers. How much of each is dependent on the detail of the weak interaction coupling constants and other neutrino properties. So one wants to know in detail how much of each type of particle is created.
There are various ways of doing this, but it is an unfortunate geometric reality that most of the mass in any detector is close to the outside of the volume (this is a pain because most of the background in such detectors comes from the outside, and you typically have to put geometric cuts on that excludes the outer detector volume, losing up to 25% of your detector mass in the process). Because of this, many high-energy particles created by neutrinos in the detector will leave it before they stop, so there is no way to use annihilation radiation to identify the anti-matter (positrons, anti-muons, etc).
Therefore a uniform magnetic field is applied to make the particle tracks curve. By looking at the energy loss in the sensitive (scintillator) layers of the detector the mass and energy can be determined, and the curvature of the track gives the charge, whose sign depends on whether it is a particle or anti-particle.
3) This is a good way for India to approach this problem. I've worked with Indian physicists and they are as good as physicists anywhere. This mine has played a minor role in neutrino physics for many years, and it is the deepest of its kind in the world (SNO was at about 2 km depth, this is over 4). Cosmic ray neutrinos have not been as much studied as they might, and at high energy there is always a change of seeing something odd or unexpected. The technological challenges, while formidable, are likely surmountable and the odds of getting some good physics out of the system are high.
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.
How do you expect Indian Physicists to get employment by building toilets ? Or by going around with begging bowls to Germany and collect some food. Your argument is so much racist in multitude of ways, why the heck there is Royal Society of Science when there was poverty in London in 1800s. May be India has no right to build labs till all Indians are fed ? FYI, India produces more grain than it consumes the problem is logistical, economical and political. There is no wide spread hunger deaths, even though abject poverty is a reality. Having a mars program or science lab is not stopping India from resolving these issues. Please just go away, when you have no idea what you are talking about. There are 47 million people on food stamps in america and 1 in 3 children in US go hungry at night. So may be we should close NASA and Stanford and wait till this problem is resolved.
Correction: My 1 in 3 was based on ads of North Texas food bank, apparently it is incorrect. As others replied it is close to 1 in 5.
But the point still stands: implying "India has to get its house in order, but America's solved enough problems to be morally justified pursuing the deeper mysteries of the universe" is a pretty arbitrary drawing of a line in the sand.
20% in 37 states are food insecure, which apparently is some new term to do with nutritional requirements, I assume that means they are eating junk food. Pretending children are starving in the US makes India look better but is dishonest.
Let's say you have $10, you can feed yourself for $10 or you can go hungry today and invest that $10 for $20 back tomorrow... tomorrow, you can feed yourself and invest the rest for more back the next day.
Your vision lacks forethought. Tomorrow you can feed many times more people with the yield from today's investment than you could today if you didn't invest.
That's a sick comment, just like the top one in this thread. You would probably call investing anything in studying Einstein's General theory of Relativity as a waste of money for Indians as well right? That serves to make accurate GPSs, which is an industry in itself, generating employment. Should India wait until feeding the last hungry before making ANY technological progress? Which part of world you are living in?
Engineers often focus on problems they can see. If they were at CERN they would not see India's problems, they would be a world away. Cool things like this are doubly useful in places where there is great need, as they attract bright people like lightbulbs attract moths.
correct me if i'm wrong, but this is what you are saying
"poor countries should spend money on feeding the poor instead of funding fancy science projects"
well allow me to retort,
having science projects trying to answer some of the biggest un-answered scientific questions would help with the following:
1. Retention of Talent: would enable physists to stay in india rather than immigrate elsewhere.
2. Boosts Economy: Expenditure as salary stays within the country and can help boost economy.
3. Innovation : innovation in advanced fields of physicts/space exploration can help develop new consumer technologies.
3. would enable governments to get international fame/credibility and quite possibly a seat at the big boy table.
Now you might wonder is this worth it, well I believe its worth spending a fraction of the GDP to fund such projects. Its not like all the funding given to such projects can solve the various poverty related problems the country faces.
To address our points:
1) Maybe. But probably you can retain many good scientists when doing projects that will contribute the GDP eventually.
2) Sounds plausible.
3) It can, but India fails to develop even basic technology at scale in decent quality. I guess I will get downvoted again, but this is simply a fact. I have lived in India for a year. I know.
4) I guess that is the purpose. It might also get foreign governments to reconsider their foreign aid, perhaps rightly so.
If India would be where China is now, I would understand all this. But they aren't. Not even close. Not even in 20 years will they be close. And they are not, because they don't deal with the important issues _first_.
>Well, if you are still at the receiving end of much international support, if millions of your people are still dying of hunger ... Then, maybe, a mars mission and now this should not be one of your priorities.
man, your sentiment and logic is understandable. Yet, do you seriously think that by dropping Mars mission India would have changed anything in the plight of the poor people there? There still would be the same poor and no Mars mission.
The Mars mission serves enlightenment and progress and those are the most effective things which improve society and the lives of poor in particular (wrt. enlightenment for example - judging by the price tab, India's Mars mission didn't have any corruption or money mismanagement to speak of which on its own is a great achievement on par with developed Western countries and well ahead of countries like Russia or China)
> But if you're Indian, you can apply to many _German_ government programs to do come here any study for free. While _your_ government wastes your money on hunting neutrinos.
This has nothing to do with actions of the Indian Government. If you don't want the German Government to run programs for international students, feel free to appeal to them.
Your logic is simplistic: those people don't have money, so they shouldn't be spending it on things I consider frivolous (for someone in their situation).
You're failing to consider the following:
1. How does a poor country become rich? Why by developing its science and technology, of course (well technically, by becoming more productive, but you know what I'm saying). If we don't develop our own science and tech, we're going to be relegated to manufacturing textiles and outsourced software projects pretty much forever. Doing those things hasn't eliminated hunger so far, so why expect anything different in the future?
2. How much aid does India really receive? According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_foreign_ai...) it ranked 18th on the list in 2012. Sounds high, until you consider that the normally-considered-developed countries of Israel and Turkey are 4th and 5th on the list. On a per-capita basis, I'm willing to bet it is even lower
3. How much do you really know about how the Indian government spends its money? Did you know we spend about 38 times as much on our armed forces as our space agency? Like any other large government, we waste money on some areas and allocate and spend it wisely in others. Research that produces results is never a waste and many Indian government agencies (ISRO and DRDO) have a solid track record in this regard.
4. There are immediate benefits to science and tech spending to even poor Indians. For example Oceansat-2, a remote sensing satellite launched by ISRO (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oceansat-2). Per Wikipedia, it's used for coastal zone planning and identification of fishing areas, among other things. Other satellites provide weather information, which again is used by fishermen, many of whom are poor. Not to mention all the spin-off technology from defense and other research (handwaving, but I can't be bothered to look up citations right now). EDIT: ISRO also _makes_ money by taking on satellite launching contracts. Their commercial arm Antrix Corp made $33m profit in 2013-2014 (if I'm doing the conversion right: http://www.antrix.gov.in/pdf/ANNUAL_REPORT_2013_2014_English...)
5. Like another commenter has mentioned elsewhere, we produce surplus food. The reason it doesn't get to all the hungry people who need it is pretty much the same reason people go hungry in developed countries: market failures and government aid not reaching the right people at the right time. These aren't things that are solved by diverting money away from research (unless it's to hand out straight cash to poor people, I guess, which almost no country does).
There's always a rash of commenters saying "feed your hungry" whenever they read a story about India doing science. I hope I've reduced their numbers by one at least.
Well, let me try to convince you of the futility of trying to convince other people to change their views.... oh wait... :)
Anyways, the last point, handing cash out to people, will essentially not work for the exact same reason: logistics. Who will do the handing out? The same agencies that are supposed to give grains at subsidized rates? How well is that working?
> Anyways, the last point, handing cash out to people, will essentially not work for the exact same reason: logistics.
Not that I disagree with the broader point, but a number of countries have had electronic benefit transfers for years (possibly decades). Perhaps this wasn't feasible on the scale of India in the past - I don't know - but it is much more feasible now with the widespread use of mobile phones. There is probably already an Indian equivalent to the m-pesa mobile-based money transfer system in eastern Africa.
There is a growing body of evidence supporting the effectiveness of direct, "cash"-based transfers in reducing poverty, from Joia Mukherjee (MIT Poverty Lab) and others. EBT and mobile transfers have the added benefit of significantly reducing opportunities for graft.
Israel and Turkey are on that list, because the US spends most of their foreign aid on them (Not sure about Turkey, it used to be Egypt.). This is for political reasons, not because those countries are in a bad shape.
> Did you know we spend about 38 times as much on our armed forces as our space agency?
I know India spends a lot on defense, which is just as questionable.
Egypt is also ranked above India on the list but they can also be classed as "developing".
I would argue that even our defense spending is less questionable than many developed countries. We have two hostile neighbors with whom we've fought 5 wars (give or take) since 1947, none of which (from the history books I know) we initiated (well maybe 1). Not a justification, but the war-wariness (deliberately spelled that way) is understandable.
The point I wanted to make is "feed your hungry" is a lazy and uninformed position to take when you hear about India doing science. If you read about $1000 toilet seats, by all means, fire away.
But I never commented on India doing science. I commented on them spending on specific high-cost projects that are unlikely to have a positive economic impact.
So it's OK for India to do science as long as it's cheap? Define cheap. How much should it cost for you to be OK with it?
How high-cost is too high? How much impact is necessary in order to greenlight a project, according to you?
Your objections are particularly nonsensical because the article doesn't mention the cost of the project anywhere. You've reflexively decided that it's $BIG_NUMBER and it's wasteful. With practically no information. (It will cost in the region of $250m, FYI)
How do you even know it will be costly (relative to the magnitude of the project)? We did launch the Mars mission pretty cheap you know :-) (yes, I know it's easier to launch cheaper when you pay Indian salaries, so don't bring that up)
EDIT:
Big scientific discoveries haven't happened by the balance of probability. Many new advances come from unexpected places, by obscure scientists doing crazy-sounding things. No expert can declare with 100% certainty that something is "unlikely to yield a positive economic impact".
This is my last comment on the topic. It sounds like you've pretty much made up your mind and nothing can convince you to see the other side. Good luck.
I am Indian. Which German programs can I apply to, to come over there to study for free. All that welfare is creating a generation of utter retards. Germany is likely the only EU country which has upside left due to great work ethics. Pretty much everyone else is living on borrowed money and is in decadence.
May be EU should lift everyone out of state dependence instead of sending Europa probe? No it shouldn't. Someone has to be extremely ignorant to not see disconnect between these challenges.
My comment has actual content, addresses a real social issue and has a positive intent, unlike yours.
But to your point: You can remind me of Hitler as much as you want. Everyone does it. I'm ok with that. I was born 50 years after he was elected and I'm politically on the left-liberal side, which is exactly opposed to right-authoritarian. I sure don't feel responsible.
> Why are you mooching off american web/forums instead of developing your own german websites?
What's wrong with american websites? Please explain.
> when there are people going to bed hungry in your "Germany"
Here, as in most parts of Europe (maybe I should have written Europe in my first comment, to avoid people Godwining me), there is a working social system that prevents this. The government pays for whatever you need, currently I think about 1200 Euros per month, for free.
The moment Swiss bank changed their rate Euro crashed 25% to it. It has pretty much declined against INR by that much as well in past six months. Good for you that your government rather borrow money and spend it lavishly to buy votes instead of doing anything worthwhile with it like India.
Only a matter of time when Euro will have no real value if you continue down this path. Your whole continent is pretty much acting like Greece. Corrupt but pretending there's any substance.
