How Much Was the Tevatron Worth?

[beamjockey]

How much was the Tevatron worth? That is, what value did society obtain from the 28 years of operating this particle accelerator?

Professor John Womersley, a UK big-science official, recently (and perhaps rashly) attempted to provide a back-of-the-envelope answer.

The Symmetry Breaking blog summarizes his talk-- which I attended-- and gives a link to a video of it.

The Tevatron was completed in March 1983 and ran until September 2011. Womersley considered the cost of constructing and operating the accelerator and its experiments – about $4 billion in today’s currency – and found that, over its lifetime, the Tevatron had returned its investment roughly tenfold. [...]

According to the balance sheet at the end of Womersley’s exercise, $4 billion went into the Tevatron and roughly $50 billion came out.

The calculation is imprecise, but, Womersley said, “it confirms at least my gut feeling that there is a plausible case that it has been a very, very important economic driver over the last few decades.

“And it would be interesting if somebody could pay somebody to do this properly, as I make no claim that I’ve done this properly.”

Comments

[derekl1963.livejournal.com]

"According to the balance sheet at the end of Womersley’s exercise, $4 billion went into the Tevatron and roughly $50 billion came out."

Handwave a little less vigorously, and you come up with $40 billion out. A little more and you get $60 billion out. But, it's still handwaving.

Don't get me wrong, I heart pure science and all that - but this kind of "assume a spherical cow is worth $100" kind of 'accounting' is just silly.

[fivemack.livejournal.com]

Yes, the big part of the figure is that Tevatron was in and of itself sufficient to push the development of the whole computing industry forward by three months, and I would really want evidence from the computer suppliers to the Tevatron that that was in the slightest true (particularly since the sensitivity on that figure amounts to one cost-of-Tevatron per week's differential!)

Whilst I think it's indisputable that the large-scale deployment of superconducting magnets in particle physics led to progress in the industrialisation of magnet-building, and so to cheaper MRI machines, I don't think you can reasonably claim two years times the revenue of the medical issuing industry for that.

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

Given that nobody has done any honest physics since February 1987, I'd have to say that every penny since then has to be deemed not only a loss but a scam.

--You remember the supernova that year? The one where the neutrinos were detected well before the light, thereby proving them to be massless? Which was ignored because it falsified the three-neutrino hypothesis, solicited and paid for by the burgeoning Global Warming cult?

No honest physics will be done until that is scrapped and real data used.

[neowolf2.livejournal.com]

I hope that was satire. :)

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

I hope so too, but since I don't know harvey_rrit very well, I am not one hundred percent sure.

[harvey-rrit.livejournal.com]

I have been mourning the death of the concept of truth being more important than continued funding for twenty-five years.
I am not the only one who noticed it happen.
I tend to regard it as a symptom of the attitude that allows chiropractors to charge for "treating" diabetes and fibromyalgia.