[URL="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphy.2020.00207/full"]A possible experimental test for quantum gravity.[/URL]

@Paul: "...the feasibility study by Bose et al. suggests that current technology could allow to probe differences of such proper-time intervals of the order of 10[sup]−38[/sup] seconds, about twenty orders of magnitude beyond the current resolution of the best atomic clocks..."

If true, that assurely merits a l33tspeaky 'w00t'.

I am reminded of a long-ago (December 30, 1980) episode of the PBS science program NOVA, [i]It's About Time[/i]. As the program begins, actor Dudley Moore (d. 2002) is a hapless quiz-show contestant, with a monk asking questions about time to which Moore can only say, "Pass." Finally the monk asks a question about what happened before time began, and Moore protests that the question is meaningless, whereupon he is credited for a correct answer. Moore begins spluttering, whereupon the monk says, "I am sorry..."

[QUOTE=ewmayer;550240]@Paul: "...the feasibility study by Bose et al. suggests that current technology could allow to probe differences of such proper-time intervals of the order of 10[sup]−38[/sup] seconds, about twenty orders of magnitude beyond the current resolution of the best atomic clocks..."

If true, that assuredly merits a l33tspeaky 'w00t'.[/QUOTE]
Even at the speed of light, that corresponds to a very small position increment, around 10[SUP]15[/SUP]times smaller than a proton.
Of what practical use would be such extreme resolution, other than padding someone's resume?

[QUOTE=kriesel;550343]Even at the speed of light, that corresponds to a very small position increment, around 10[SUP]15[/SUP]times smaller than a proton.
Of what practical use would be such extreme resolution, other than padding someone's resume?[/QUOTE]Of waht practical use was electricity 300 years ago?

Attract crowds with electricity demo, then sell snake oil. Or upscale it to a parlour and do the same thing to mesmerize society ladies (then bilk them out of fortunes or do other unsavory things.

[QUOTE=xilman;550344]Of waht practical use was electricity 300 years ago?[/QUOTE]Electricity had potential.

I've had similar discussions with people claiming neutrinos are going to be really useful so high energy physicists should get whatever funding they want and can advocate for with a straight face.
Electrons have usefully high charge/mass ratio and are easy to generate, detect, and control.
Neutrinos are exceptionally difficult to detect or influence. Sources are commonly the sun, other stars, fission reactors, or particle accelerator targets.

The Ice Cube detector is a cubic kilometer in size for a reason. It detects the really unlucky neutrinos, that have passed through the planet almost completely, but then are unlucky enough to collide with nuclei and kick muons out, from the last 1.5 kilometers of Antarctic ice before returning to space. Neutrinos are so slippery that they are the first particles out of new nova's core, twenty minutes before xrays, since the star is basically transparent to neutrinos. [URL="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrino_detector"]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrino_detector [/URL]
[url]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SuperNova_Early_Warning_System[/url]

DUNE, a >$billion project, will use neutrinos produced at Fermilab, Batavia Illinois, and many kilotons of liquid Argon and hundreds of large anode plane arrays in its far detectors 1.5km underground in a former gold mine in Lead South Dakota. [URL]https://lbnf-dune.fnal.gov/[/URL]

Now as a thought experiment, consider what such expenditures of talent and funding might have provided in the way of faster progress in virology.

[QUOTE=kriesel;550360]Now as a thought experiment, consider what such expenditures of talent and funding might have provided in the way of faster progress in virology.[/QUOTE]Yeah, we could have been able to make much better viruses than the wimpy SARS-CoV-2 thing we presently have. So I agree, we need more viruses, damnit. :mad:

Imagine if measles 2.0 showed up and there was no vax. That would be wiping C19 off the map.

Guys, it's not an either-or question! There is plenty of money available to fund both basic scientific research into the nature and structure of the universe and our place in it, and medical technologies which improve humanity's lot. The problem is the spending priorities of the bought-and-paid-for-by-Big-Capital lawmakers who set government spending priorities.

"We" in the US spend over $1Tln per year on blowing sh*t up and killing people all over the globe in the name of Empire. The out-of-control US Federal Reserve just conjured up [b]3 times[/b] that amount in a matter of weeks, out of nothing by electrons, for the sole purpose of enriching a bunch of Wall Street degenerate-gambling crooks and to keep the artificially inflated stock-market indices which are their only metric of "the economy" at or near their all-time highs, at the same time as over 30 million Americans got thrown out of work due to the pandemic. And despite lying-liar MSM headlines, the number of people out of work [url=https://wolfstreet.com/2020/07/09/unemployment-claims-hit-new-record-32-9-million-state-federal-week-16-of-u-s-labor-market-collapse/]is not shrinking[/url].

$3 Tln would be enough money to fund a New Deal-style federal jobs program for every one of those unemployed people who wants one, doing actual useful things like rebuilding our entire national decaying infrastructure - roads, bridges, schools, parks, i.e. *public* resources, for *years* to come. So stop it with the how-can-we-pay-for-this for mere-pittance $billions amounts - it's absurd. God, I repeat this stuff over and over and over and over for years and years in the MET and related threads, and some dedicated agnotologists absolutely *refuse* to get it. It absolutely infuriates me, because the same kind of agnotology has been so effectively weaponized by the Looter Elite class to keep us divided and prevent the aforementioned [i]pro bono publico[/i] kind of programs from happening, because it would get in the way of the Looter Elite parasites ongoing killing-of-the-host.

[QUOTE=retina;550388]Yeah, we could have been able to make much better viruses than the wimpy SARS-CoV-2 thing we presently have. So I agree, we need more viruses, damnit. :mad:[/QUOTE]
There is a perfectly good virus going to waste right now. Smallpox (Variola). The US and Russia both have samples.

Yes, there's a vax. In fact, the inoculant has traditionally been cowpox, AKA Vaccinia, from which the term [i]vaccine[/i] was derived. When smallpox was declared "eradicated," they stopped inoculating people. In theory, they could begin again, but if smallpox were released widely enough, it would take some time, and a lot of cases, before vaccination brought it to heel.