Science!

[freyar]

I'd say relatively little of your taxes went to this if you're in the US. I'm not sure of the international participation on this experiment, but I'd expect there's some contribution from other countries as well. Most big experiments like this have international participation and at least some international funding. Of course, there are other big experiments drawing other taxes from a variety of nations. But it's pretty small compared to other things, and particle physics, besides being very cool on its own, has plenty of ancillary benefits (like the web).

If you haven't seen anything about how the big magnet in this experiment moved from Long Island to the Chicago suburbs, it was something else. Here's some on it: Fermilab | Muon g-2 | The Big Move | Photo Gallery

 

[Umbran]

I'd say relatively little of your taxes went to this if you're in the US.

Yeah. As a point of scale: The entire Fermilab budget for 2019 was $547 million dollars. Which sounds like a lot. But, US income tax revenue for 2019 was about $3.5 trillion dollars.

So, for every $10K you paid in income taxes, about one and a half cents went to Fermilab...

 

[Henry]

it’s muons in rotation
they act a little wobble-y
could be polarization
Explains the whole darn thing, you see
mmm, explained the quirk with science
EXPLAINED THE QUIRK, WITH SCIENCE!
and failed the click-bait test, you see...

 

[shawnhcorey]

I'd say relatively little of your taxes went to this if you're in the US.

Don't forget the US isn't the only country running these experiments. It is just the first to publish results. Confirmation from other labs is an important part of science.

 

[freyar]

Don't forget the US isn't the only country running these experiments. It is just the first to publish results. Confirmation from other labs is an important part of science.

If you noticed the rest of my post, I did mention that there is international participation in this experiment (looks like participating institutions from at least 6 countries, which is actually a little low compared to the really big experiments) and that there are other big (in some cases much bigger) international experiments.

There aren't actually any other muon g-2 experiments running yet, though there will be one starting in 2024 in Japan if it stays on schedule. To be honest, I think most of the people involved in these experiments want to improve on, not just confirm results. At least that's how my experimental colleagues talk about it.

 

[dragoner]

Click bait, mostly, interesting, though our fundamental understanding is unlikely to change from it