“The new device, based on the traditional black-and-white X-ray, incorporates particle-tracking technology developed for CERN's Large Hadron Collider.”
Now i have an easy to understand example to make my skeptical friends understand how CERN’s research benefits us in myriad ways.
There is a distinction to be made on the results of the fundamental research itself, and then the sideproducts of the engineering that enables that research. From the sounds of it, this Xray thingy belongs more in the latter category.
Your problem will be, that it is very easy to argue for somebody knowledgeable in the field, that this can be done completely without CERN’s research. Actually, similar stuff has already been done.
Are you referring to the stripped down SGML, RPC or hyperlinks? Or the combination? Because all three have been around much before. In many flavours and mixes. The WWW variant’s adoption had more to do with politics than scientific/technical merit.
Now i have an easy to understand example to make my skeptical friends understand how CERN’s research benefits us in myriad ways.