"Tom Ring" wrote in message
. ..
snip
Tom,

These experiments are time consuming, tricky (very sensitive to external
influences) and expensive to conduct, yielding results close to the
limits
of what is measurable. Unfortunately this isn't the sort of research
that
can be conducted by an amateur in a shed in the back yard. Unless
commercial
applications for experimental findings are found, funds are rapidly
switched
to other areas of research looking for a new discovery that might make a
profit.

It's just the way that capitalism works.

Mike G0ULI



And yet they are done all the time by Universities and commercial labs.
Sorry, I don't buy your excuse. If you were a slashdot.org regular,
you would have noticed that reports on exactly this subject come through
every 2 weeks to a month. And many other science news sources report
the same events.

Again, I don't buy your excuse.

tom
K0TAR

Tom,

University research is largely financed by commercial interests. A
university project uncovers some new phenomena or result. The financiers ask
what use can be made of the result in producing something that can be sold
at a profit. If the discovery has no immediate application, the funding
dries up. There are many areas of research that are currently languishing
for lack of funds even though they are important for the advancement of
scientific knowledge.

Discoveries with military or national security implications are moved to
secure research establishments and the results are withheld from general
circulation. This is just common sense, you don't need every tin pot
dictator with an oil well setting up their own starwars type missle defence
program. I am NOT talking about the conspiracy theorist ideas of flying
saucers actually existing, and similar fictions.

If some research team announce that the have detected/measured/discovered
some phenomena and the explanation is credible. Once the results have been
independently confirmed by a second source, is there really any need to keep
reinventing the wheel. If there's no profit in it, that's where the research
stops.

Perhaps I am becoming just too jaded and cynical as I get older...

Mike G0ULI