Comment by astrobe_
Sometimes you get huge value from things you didn't expect ;-)
Sometimes you get huge value from things you didn't expect ;-)
Do you have evidence that "1000 smaller experiments" would give payoffs?
And how do you measure payoffs? With how much money you get in return? Should scientific research expect this?
Then the mystery is how the CERN "raised" those $1B. Maybe they have an amazing PR department? Or maybe the project is going to be such a huge success that they are acting from the future [1]?
1. That's not an argument unless the evidence for these payoffs is so huge as to dwarf the payoffs of 1000 smaller experiments. There is no evidence of this.
2. There is no world in which this applies to particle physics at this point, especially using radio frequency particle collider tech. This is known physics and there are no mysteries in the regime the FCC would reach.