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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

#101

Post by Chathamization »

DC-3 wrote: post #43
noobermin wrote: post #38

Made 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. [1] https://xkcd.com/1232/

Well, that's a bit of a strawman. There are very few people who think we shouldn't spend any money on blue sky research. It's more of a question of how much we should spend, which blue sky research we should fund, and how those projects are set up. There are neuroscientists who are critical of the Human Brain Project, not because they're against funding of neuroscience in general, but because they don't think this particular project isn't well designed. There are people that are supportive of a lot of the work NASA does, but don't think human space flight specifically is a good use of their budget.

Re: CERN approves plans for a $23B, 62-mile long super-collider

#102

Post by phkahler »

nix23 wrote: post #94
kashyapc wrote: post #77

I'd guess Prof. Sabine Hossenfelder (herself a physicist, and a Research Fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies) must be pretty annoyed, to put it politely. She posits that a lot of current physicists are working with outdated notions of "beauty": (quote) But if it’s clear that putting forward new hypotheses just because they are beautiful doesn’t mean they’re likely to be right, then why do theorists…

I know her book, and i think quantum theory is NOT beautiful nor is the string/M-Theory beautiful, she's for sure is partially right because everyone want's to find a Einstein equation, but she also has a big blind spot for the dirty stuff that is the quantum-theory.

>> everyone want's to find a Einstein equation

Yeah, I've been thinking that for a while. Ever since relativity physicists have been looking for weird or counterintuitive explanations for things.

This is why they like Dark mater, dark energy, many worlds. Spooky action at a distance, string theory.

Re: CERN approves plans for a $23B, 62-mile long super-collider

#103

Post by take_a_breath »

Torok wrote: post #90
take_a_breath wrote: post #71

HN: Governments don’t fund enough scientific research projects. Also HN: Governments shouldn’t be funding this scientific research project. Can’t win with this crowd.

I mean it's obviously all about funding the right projects isn't it? Going to an obviously hyperbolic extreme for the sake of the argument, say that the EU invested billions in determining if the moon is really made of cheese then that's obviously a waste of money even if it is a scientific investment. There's a non negligible amount of people, even those who have worked at CERN previously, saying that it just doesn'…

==I mean it's obviously all about funding the right projects isn't it?==

So is everything in life, but that doesn't help us actually determine which are the "right projects".

==Going to an obviously hyperbolic extreme for the sake of the argument, say that the EU invested billions in determining if the moon is really made of cheese then that's obviously a waste of money even if it is a scientific investment.==

That you have to go to such a ridiculous argument seems to say something about your stance. What would we learn if we discovered the moon was made of cheese? Why would it matter? What is the scientific impact of a cheese moon? Without those answers it isn't really a scientific investment.

==There's a non negligible amount of people, even those who have worked at CERN previously, saying that it just doesn't make sense to put more investment into a new supercollider which might just show that there's an energy desert of particles in the regime it's testing.==

And a non-negligible amount of people, even those who currently work at CERN, think it is worthwhile. We could play this game all day (which is my entire point). If the test fails, we still get to learn something new. A foundation of the scientific method.

==You're also falling prey to the fallacy that HN acts as a single entity, in reality everyone here has different opinions and can't just be all lumped in one bucket saying HN thinks this or that. It's obviously going to seem contradictory if you view it as if it's a single person==

You seem to be falling prey to the fallacy that all people who worked at CERN act as a single entity. In reality, people who have worked at CERN have different opinions. Similarly, I've seen many posts about how HN is a hive mind. I guess that is just when it suits the narrative.

Re: CERN approves plans for a $23B, 62-mile long super-collider

#104

Post by brnt »

pfdietz wrote: post #53
brnt wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Protontherapy alone is enough justification in my opinion. Add the many kinds of detector offshoots that find their way to industry. The web itself, if you wanna go back a bit further. Aren't those worth it you think?

How is proton therapy a justification? The protons in PT have energies six orders of magnitude below that of this proposed FCC. Are you saying that the historical precedent of PT means FCC will also have that sort of spinoff? That's not a legitimate argument.

Accelerator physics would have been unlikely to have progressed as far as it has without HEP. Beam line components for cyclo-/synchrotrons up to proton therapeutic energies are not seen in non HEP facilities (material physics).

FCC of course will not produce spinoffs that have already spun off, but what exactly will spin off we obviously can't predict very precisely.

Re: CERN approves plans for a $23B, 62-mile long super-collider

#105

Post by noobermin »

T-A wrote: post #59
noobermin wrote: post #38

Made 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…

You are contradicting yourself here: "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" The proposed collider is an experiment. It might incidentally find support for SUSY (unlikely) but its purpose would be to produce precision data about h…

Not quite. The experiment has already been done, it was called the LHC. It found no evidence for SUSY, but instead of re-evaluating SUSY since it's needed for all modern particle phenomology as well as many unification theories, the argument is to "keep looking." Fine, keep looking, if you want, but it certainly won't be with a larger collider, especially since the last search failed. That failure demands a re-assessment of resource allocation.

Finally, another comment said the LHC was to study the higgs. I'm not sure about that since the higgs was already found before, it just wasn't at the significance level particle physicists like. Most of the people I talked who worked on the LHC told me the main thing behind the LHC was to see SUSY or general new physics beyond the SM.

Re: CERN approves plans for a $23B, 62-mile long super-collider

#106

Post by [deleted] »

sandworm101 wrote: post #73
nix23 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What did the previous collider discover? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_boson >why do we think that building a bigger microscope will be any different? Why do we think building a bigger telescope then Hubble will be any different: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope

(1) higgs was confirmed, proven rather than discovered. It wasnt new physics. (2) Hubble is dieing. It will not last forever but still makes new discoveries, new science, regularly. A replacement is needed. And the JWST is a totally different device, not just bigger. We probably need both the JWST and a new Hubble.

[deleted]

Re: CERN approves plans for a $23B, 62-mile long super-collider

#107

Post by rowanG077 »

sandworm101 wrote: post #76
ben_w wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Science is a low-odds, high-reward process; any given piece of work probably does nothing, but the overall impact is literally everything that happened since the agrarian era 2. Even successful research leads to papers with impenetrable names like “An MgB-Superconducting Shield Prototype for the Future Circular Collider Septum Magnet”, whose value I am not even qualified to comprehend unless someone explained it t…

Supercolliders are low-odds science. Other instruments are pretty much certain to generate new science. A hubble replacement would not be low-odds given that hubble itself is still making discoveries. A 23 billion-dollar push for new antibiotics would not be low-odds either. Dollars should be spent where they are most likely to generate the most science. That isn't new supercolliders.

Dollars shouldn't be spend where they are most likely to generate most new science. That is a quick way to find yourself in a dead-end. Imagine we would have ONLY invested in supercolliders after high-energy physics was very fruitful. Many other fields would have been completely starved and we would now be in the (possibly) super collider dead-end while other physics is woefully behind.

Re: CERN approves plans for a $23B, 62-mile long super-collider

#108

Post by cygx »

BurnGpuBurn wrote: post #99
cygx wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The big one was the discovery of the Higgs boson, a missing piece of the so-called 'standard model' of particle physics, plus a bunch of other stuff (lack of evidence for super-symmetry so far, discovery of some tetra- and pentaquarks states, potentially some hints of physics beyond the standard model from B-meson decays, ...). In large part, it 'merely' confirmed our current theories, disappointing people hoping for…

I must say, that is a pretty weak result given the humongous amount of money sunk into it. And all those new understandings have no real world implications except for how some smart people think reality works. I'd say, let's not repeat this massively expensive debacle and fund some more promising fields that may actually solve some of the worlds problems. I know this is not a popular opinion and I'm quite sure they'l…

Compared to all the others things humanity chooses to waste money on, fundamental science is a steal, in particular considering that our ability to understand nature is what sets us apart from all other animals competing in the rat race that is existence.

Re: CERN approves plans for a $23B, 62-mile long super-collider

#110

Post by vidarh »

sandworm101 wrote: post #49
yiyus wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 experimen…

> If there is new physics to study let us keep the experiment going as is to study that for a generation or two.

They are doing that, are are doing upgrades to get more use of out of the LHC. The new planned collider is for about a generation from now.

If this goes ahead, it will be starting construction in nearly 20 years from now.

> If there is no new physics from the last experiment, why do we think that building a bigger microscope will be any different?

CERN has a specific remit. They're planning for that remit. If their funding sources do not think the odds justifies the expense, they'll cut funding, but it's not CERNs job to sit back and not come up with plans for what to do next. It's CERNs job to look at what they can do to enable further science within their remit.

They've come up with this as one option and decided to move forward with planning. That does not mean it will happen - if they don't get funding in place it won't, or will be delayed.

In the meantime the shorter term upgrades to the LHC may or may not end up supporting their case for the new collider depending on the results they get.

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