HST Versus LHC

Expensive mathematical errors: I suggest a mighty contender.

The Treaty of Tordesillas defined whether land would belong to Spain or to Portugal:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Tordesillas
and the separation line was apparently defined to give all Americas to Spain.

Though a piece of Brazil was at the East of the line, which seemingly nobody knew at that time (or at most a few Portuguese...) allowing Portugal to establish a colony which widened to become Brazil.

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LHC: you can't compare a past project with a coming one!

And if the LHC proves that Higg's boson doesn't exist (not just fails to find it) it'll be just as useful as finding it.

Or if it finds decisive clues about dark matter, or similar amazing things...

And even better, if it finds particles that hadn't been expected at all.

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The HST would have been even more fantastic, had it been launched on time. Being a decade late, it provided observation capabilities just in pair with coming ground-based observatories which were then cheaper, as adaptive optics went of age. Nasa does a fantastic job of public communications, but astronomers don't necessarily dream of the HST for their observations, since the Keck or the VLT are available.

That's why its an opinion poll.

No mathematical rigor needed


And the question remains: If Hubble was mediocre, why did NASA bother to fix and upgrade it?

This post has been edited by Beer w/Straw on Nov 15 2009, 02:39 AM