re: LIGO annoucement - HUGE

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Really. How in the hell does this benefit humanity at all?? Gives us a type of understanding?? How does that help society or health or you know....anything that is important. Waste of Fn money

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Physics experiments take 50 to 100 years to yield impacts to society, but those impacts are huge. The return on each dollar spent on research is enormous.

Maxwell's equations in the late 1800's led to radio, television and cell phones.

Quantum mechanics in the 1920's led to transistors, which led to computers.

QCD in the 1970's is on the verge of leading to fusion reactors.

LIGO... check back in 50 years.