Quantum Physicists Eager To Hear What Frank At The Pub Reckons They Should StudyQuantum Physicists Eager To Hear What Frank At The Pub Reckons They Should Study
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23 Aug 2016 - 11:07 AM UPDATED 6 HOURS AGO
Quantum physicists studying the edges of our understanding of the universe are reportedly very eager to hear what Frank down at the local reckons they should study next, following Treasurer Scott Morrison’s warning that research should pass the ‘pub test’.
Morrison warned against esoteric, pointless research that costs an abundance of public money and has only lead to major, world-changing breakthroughs in unexpected areas a few times. Instead, the Treasurer has advised that before engaging in any boring and elitist research that only people specifically studying the field would care about, scientists should head down to the pub and check in with Frank to see what he thinks.
“We’ve very excited about this prospect,” said one researcher. “I’m curious to see if Frank will want to push us towards completing the standard model of matter, you know, the search for the graviton - will he prefer it if we go in depth on dark matter and really try and crack that code - who knows, really! It’s all up to Frank.
“It’s a positive change. We look around on our industry and realise that we can no longer be pissing our time and money away on increasing the sum total of human knowledge. It’s time to reign this shyt in.
“Truly, it was refreshing to listen to opinions over how we should do our job broadcast over the radio and also streamed digitally, instantly online which we could tune in to via Wi-Fi - we’re lucky we live in an age where research was allowed to progress for long enough unfettered that we were able to discover incredible ways to access people telling us to restrict our research to what people outside the field consider essential.
“At first we were worried because it seems as if putting an emphasis on practicality and immediate results would deter very important scientific research, particularly as we can’t predict the outcome of what will prove to be significant in the future - but now we’re eager for the opportunity. I mean, that’s one of the points we’re trying to make, that there’s interesting research that can be done anywhere so whatever Frank cares about - how to pour a beer faster or make his seat more comfortable or what happens at the event horizon of a black hole - we can do interesting research anywhere.
“Heck, we also get to study the effects of putting this kind of value judgement on an industry not built for it which will be a wonderful insight into what is about to happen to arts funding, sports funding and anything else that the Government doesn’t feel is worthy of investment.”
@88m3
