Perhaps you've never heard of the DUNE project, or, maybe you just haven't seen its current acronym. DUNE stands for the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment.
A facility in Batavia, IL, also the US headquarters of international grocer Aldi, Fermilab will accelerate protons through a converter that will then send neutrinos 800 miles underground to the Sanford Underground Research Facility in the depths of the now-closed Homestake Mine in Lead, South Dakota. The research conducted through this process is intended to provide evidence in regard to the actual birth of the universe. This is scientific reductionsim at its most intense level.
The project's ballooning price tag, now over $3 billion, and its construction problems and delays have led to reconsideration and modifications of the research. Some programs have been added.
The biggest issue is the practical value of the research results. Of what importance is it to gain possible knowledge of the mechanics of the development of the cosmos when other, more important things plague mankind? The scientists themselves welcome the financing that pays their salaries and others connected to the programs are its only real beneficiaries.
This entire project could be seen as an extreme example of academic financial indulgence, where research institutions leverage their sterling reputations to expand their economics. It's questionable if its a luxury that society can really afford.
"In a democracy scientific institutions, research
programmes, and suggestions must therefore be subjected to public
control, there must be a separation of state and science just as there
is a separation between state and religious institutions, and science
should be taught as one view among many and not as the one and only road
to truth and reality.”
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