Who cares about Fermilab? (Part II)

In an earlier post I pointed out that the entire computer industry owes its success to high energy physics (HEP); that medical imaging would not be where it is today without physics research done a few generations ago. In this second installment of "Who cares about Fermilab?" I raise awareness of research in retinal implants and track their development back to, you guessed it high energy physics.

In a 2007 article, written by Emily Singer, that appeared in the MIT Technology Review, she interviews Alan Litke, a physicist at University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) who's applying his particle detector expertise to neurobiology in what is titled the Retinal Readout Project.

Litke and his collaborators modeled their [artificial retinal] chip after the silicon microchip detectors that line supercolliders to capture signs of elusive, high-energy, subatomic particles, such as the Higgs boson.

So once again I ask "Who cares about Fermilab?" The answer might just be we all do, or should, because we just never know what good may come from deep under the ground where particles collide at near light speed.