what is more expensive biological research or physics research?

Question

In terms of making advancements in the respective fields of biology and physics what would require more funding, biological or physics research? Such as would it take more money to find a cure for cancer or make great headways in particle physics or string theory such as using particle accelerators?

Answer 1

The answer is dependent on what you are trying to do. If you are trying to gene map every human being in the world that would be expensive right now at a $1 million per genome. If, on the other hand you are working with particle accelerators, they are too expensive for an individual to build unless they are VERY wealthy - probably a billionaire - and most billionaires didn't become that wealthy by building particle accelerators. Again - it depends on what you are doing.

Answer 2

Well, you've chosen two of the most expensive areas of research of either field, but I would have to say physics. Researchers in biology labs all over the world learn new things every day, some of which may lead to a cure for cancer and many of which will be useful in other ways. Physics has gotten to a point where advancing our knowledge almost always requires vastly expensive new equipment and hundreds or thousands of people.

Answer 3

The Large Hadron Collider, a single physics experiment looking for the elusive "Higgs Boson" has cost around $2,000M so far.

Biological/biochemical research CAN be expensive, but it's usually in much smaller chunks than that!

Answer 4

Fusion

Answer 5

uh...i guess so.