Can anyone comment on the claim that making large numbers of Higgs' bosons will explain dark matter?
CERN approves plans for a $23B, 62-mile long super-collider
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Re: CERN approves plans for a $23B, 62-mile long super-collider
#42Made this comment below but spending billions on another collider in an attempt to essentially validate SUSY is irresponsible. A few years ago, a bunch of physical philosophers tried to justify this turn of particle physics in general away from experiment, particularly suggesting the search of symmetries and mathematical beauty (I guess) was enough of a justification for the work even though it essentially is contrar…
The LHC has not been a failure.
First you complain about the lack of experimentation, then you complain when they perform experiments. It is normal in science to formulate a theory, design an experiment, and then having to discard the theory in view of the experimental results. That's the scientific method, and that's what has happened with SUSY (kind of).
You also claim the goal of new collider is to validate SUSY, but they say is to study the Higgs boson, the one that was discovered using the LHC.
It is also normal that scientists worry about their niche and try to find funding for research in that niche. Else, the only research we would do would be cancer treatments, but that would not be effective in the long run. Huge amounts of money like this one always call people attention, but it is not so much. If you compare the cost of the LHC with the amount spent in defense by the countries involved during the same period, these are peanuts. You will find all kind of reasons to spend this money somewhere else, and some of them may be valid, but fundamental research is still necessary.
Re: CERN approves plans for a $23B, 62-mile long super-collider
#43Made this comment below but spending billions on another collider in an attempt to essentially validate SUSY is irresponsible. A few years ago, a bunch of physical philosophers tried to justify this turn of particle physics in general away from experiment, particularly suggesting the search of symmetries and mathematical beauty (I guess) was enough of a justification for the work even though it essentially is contrar…
I tend to think of this xkcd [1] comic when people talk about 'solving the big problems we face' instead of doing blue-sky research.
Re: CERN approves plans for a $23B, 62-mile long super-collider
#44Honest question, what are some engineering spin-offs that could come out of this? I'm asking because I'm reminded of a Peter Thiel interview where it's mentioned that, despite changing our view of the universe, no "real world" applications came out of the quark model discovered in the 1960s. This is different from a project like ITER, which is also hugely expensive but could be a game changer.
Here's a concrete example. Some of CERN detector technology has been spun-off as Quantum Detectors [https://quantumdetectors.com/], which makes detectors for electron microscopy, x-ray scattering , and neutron detection I think.
I've personally beta-tested their MerlinEM and it's pretty damn cool. It's very different from other technologies that already exist (e.g. Gatan detectors). You can read out images at extremely fast rates (compared to traditional electron microscopy detectors anyway). I'm guessing that this comes from the need for CERN to read-out detectors fully for every collision. Who would have known that this would have been useful for unrelated ultrafast electron scattering experiments?
Re: CERN approves plans for a $23B, 62-mile long super-collider
#45Has anyone considered a collider in space? It seems like you could have huge distances. And just let the particles fly in the vacuum between acceleration points?
Re: CERN approves plans for a $23B, 62-mile long super-collider
#46[deleted]
Re: CERN approves plans for a $23B, 62-mile long super-collider
#47I'm surprised it got through. $23B is a lot of money, and it will cost A LOT more when you start adding up the operational costs. In comparison, the space shuttle was $1.5B per launch "amortized" over 135 launches. One of the effects of the Space Shuttle is that it hogged the budget of NASA (around 30%). Really worthwhile exploration and other space science programs got less funding because the Shuttle program was so…
It didn't get through yet though, the CERN council approved of a feasibility study for this particular idea after considering and rejecting several other ideas. I don't really get what the FCC has to do with this?
FCC is the acronym for Future Circular Collider, the name of the proposed new accelerator.
Re: CERN approves plans for a $23B, 62-mile long super-collider
#48Made this comment below but spending billions on another collider in an attempt to essentially validate SUSY is irresponsible. A few years ago, a bunch of physical philosophers tried to justify this turn of particle physics in general away from experiment, particularly suggesting the search of symmetries and mathematical beauty (I guess) was enough of a justification for the work even though it essentially is contrar…
> Again, seeing the failure of the LHC and then deciding you're going to double down is just straight irresponsible.
Not to take away from your larger point, but describing the LHC as a failure may be wording it a little bit too strongly. The fact that it confirmed the Higgs Boson seems like a reasonably important experimental result.
Re: CERN approves plans for a $23B, 62-mile long super-collider
#49Made this comment below but spending billions on another collider in an attempt to essentially validate SUSY is irresponsible. A few years ago, a bunch of physical philosophers tried to justify this turn of particle physics in general away from experiment, particularly suggesting the search of symmetries and mathematical beauty (I guess) was enough of a justification for the work even though it essentially is contrar…
The LHC has not been a failure. First you complain about the lack of experimentation, then you complain when they perform experiments. It is normal in science to formulate a theory, design an experiment, and then having to discard the theory in view of the experimental results. That's the scientific method, and that's what has happened with SUSY (kind of). You also claim the goal of new collider is to validate SUSY,…
The goal of every top-tier collider is new physics, that greater understanding that progresses mankind. What did the previous collider discover? It certainly validated current theories, but did it create anything new? If it did, why do we yet need a new one? If there is new physics to study let us keep the experiment going as is to study that for a generation or two. If there is no new physics from the last experiment, why do we think that building a bigger microscope will be any different?
Re: CERN approves plans for a $23B, 62-mile long super-collider
#50Has anyone considered a collider in space? It seems like you could have huge distances. And just let the particles fly in the vacuum between acceleration points?
If you want to store the beam, you need a ring. And the size of the ring is given by the minimum bending radius, which is given by maximum field strength you can achieve, and energy loss from bremsstrahlung in the bends, which you have to put back.
So space doesn't really help: You'll still need a circle of magnets. Approximating the circle with a polygon means you split up a smaller circle with straight segments. But these straight segments are not really useful.