>>13765740>it's not repeatableRemember, if you want to look at actual practical applications, it doesn't even matter whether it's repeatable. Not only that, but until you have to calculate position of fast-moving bodies to micrometer scale (satellites) or building really small machines (the smallest of microcomputers), the entire theory itself is irrelevant. Most engineers never use particle physics, or any tech that requires it, in their whole lives.
The problem is that the cases we just described are very important (e.g. GPS, computation) and very expensive (launching rockets, designing mass production processes), so the techs that rely on these theories are nonetheless highly relevant. And if the fate of your entire field of study relies on a theory, wouldn't you at least like to run a few sanity checks?
Because that's what particle colliders and all these other apparati are for. We know a lot of these experiments won't be reproduced in the near future. But in order to help out engineers, and practically limit the scope of their investigations, you have to give them faith that half of what they know isn't a lie. Ideally we'd want something more easily reproducible, but the point is that "reproducible only in principle" is still much better than nothing.
To say otherwise would be analogous to telling an engineer,
>we're going to mass produce this object, and reproduce the process several times>and only THEN can you decide what engineering issues are worth tackling!>what? prototypes?>pfft, don't be silly, anon!and so, ironically, these experiments, nominally "theoretical" in nature, are actually an engineering decision.
