Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises • Hacker News Board

Re: Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises

#11

Post by JesseMReeves » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 10:06 AM UTC

orbifold wrote: post #9

Science shouldn’t be a zero sum game. As a physicist I love that we get a huge chunk of science funding for all kinds of stuff. Generally speaking developing a new accelerator leads to excellent technical advances at all levels of the stack. Web browsers and HTML were invented at CERN. Super conducting magnets at scale were pioneered for LHC. The detectors with custom radiation hard ASICs for particle detection and t…

> She didn’t cut it and now is in a non-tenured position at a second rate institution.

What an awful reply to legitimate criticism. I infer that some of your friends at CERN talk about her (quite successful) book this way?

Re: Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises

#12

Post by rusticpenn » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 10:12 AM UTC

orbifold wrote: post #9

Science shouldn’t be a zero sum game. As a physicist I love that we get a huge chunk of science funding for all kinds of stuff. Generally speaking developing a new accelerator leads to excellent technical advances at all levels of the stack. Web browsers and HTML were invented at CERN. Super conducting magnets at scale were pioneered for LHC. The detectors with custom radiation hard ASICs for particle detection and t…

I agree with you. I would still love to work in academia, but when the work required to get proper funding is tied to the extension of your contract it can lead to some sleepless nights.

In the book God Particle, the author describes how the funding for colliders in USA stopped after the cold war and it was extremely demoralizing even as a reader.

Re: Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises

#13

Post by rusticpenn » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 10:14 AM UTC

JesseMReeves wrote: post #11

orbifold wrote: post #9

Science shouldn’t be a zero sum game. As a physicist I love that we get a huge chunk of science funding for all kinds of stuff. Generally speaking developing a new accelerator leads to excellent technical advances at all levels of the stack. Web browsers and HTML were invented at CERN. Super conducting magnets at scale were pioneered for LHC. The detectors with custom radiation hard ASICs for particle detection and t…

> She didn’t cut it and now is in a non-tenured position at a second rate institution. What an awful reply to legitimate criticism. I infer that some of your friends at CERN talk about her (quite successful) book this way?

I don't see that line in the original comment, was it edited?

Re: Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises

#14

Post by anonytrary » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 10:16 AM UTC

nmlnn wrote: post #6

What a fucking waste of money, imagine if these resources for a new collider could instead be used to bolster the ECB/SNB/BOE programs for purchasing corporate debt and equity. My understanding is they've only had ~few hundred billion to a couple of trillion for that so far. THE MONEY SHOULD GO TO BAIL OUT BANKS AND THE CREDITORS OF LARGE CORPORATIONS, WHAT'S THE POINT OF TRYING TO UNDERSTAND THE UNIVERSE ANYWAY.

There's no way this isn't a troll.

Re: Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises

#15

Post by amelius » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 10:16 AM UTC

orbifold wrote: post #9

Science shouldn’t be a zero sum game. As a physicist I love that we get a huge chunk of science funding for all kinds of stuff. Generally speaking developing a new accelerator leads to excellent technical advances at all levels of the stack. Web browsers and HTML were invented at CERN. Super conducting magnets at scale were pioneered for LHC. The detectors with custom radiation hard ASICs for particle detection and t…

> Web browsers and HTML were invented at CERN.

More structural funding for open source software would also be welcome. Software that deals with communication (browsers, protocols, email, filesystems, codecs, etc.) should be fully open and developed by universities and government institutions, imho.

Re: Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises

#16

Post by chuckleMuscle » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 10:17 AM UTC

czzr wrote: post #2

I’m sympathetic to both sides here. Obviously we cannot indefinitely build larger accelerators, and if it turns out that there is no support to go at least one size bigger, then perhaps our best hope is to find more effective ways to use the existing ones we have. As a random example to illustrate what I mean: https://www.google.nl/amp/s/phys.org/news/2018-07-plasma-siz... Maybe stopping here will force more thinking…

If you assume that accelerator technology remains the same then you do of course have to keep making your accelerators bigger. There are a fairly large number of people working on plasma accelerators which are more compact because they support a greater accelerating potential. The AWAKE experiment [1] is an example of such a project.

As an aside, I think this is a great example of a role which fundamental science plays in society: It can facilitate step changes in technological progress.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AWAKE

Re: Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises

#17

Post by sampo » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 10:22 AM UTC

JesseMReeves wrote: post #11

orbifold wrote: post #9

Science shouldn’t be a zero sum game. As a physicist I love that we get a huge chunk of science funding for all kinds of stuff. Generally speaking developing a new accelerator leads to excellent technical advances at all levels of the stack. Web browsers and HTML were invented at CERN. Super conducting magnets at scale were pioneered for LHC. The detectors with custom radiation hard ASICs for particle detection and t…

> She didn’t cut it and now is in a non-tenured position at a second rate institution. What an awful reply to legitimate criticism. I infer that some of your friends at CERN talk about her (quite successful) book this way?

> > She didn’t cut it and now is in a non-tenured position at a second rate institution.

Lee Smolin, who did "cut it" and who worked in several first rate institutions, wrote about the same thing in his 2006 book The Trouble With Physics. So Sabine Hossenfelder is not alone with these opinions.

Re: Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises

#18

Post by JesseMReeves » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 10:23 AM UTC

rusticpenn wrote: post #13

JesseMReeves wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> She didn’t cut it and now is in a non-tenured position at a second rate institution. What an awful reply to legitimate criticism. I infer that some of your friends at CERN talk about her (quite successful) book this way?

I don't see that line in the original comment, was it edited?

It was edited, but the comment is still ad hominem and avoids talking about the specific criticism.

Re: Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises

#19

Post by onhn » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 10:23 AM UTC

I think we need more clever people making more predictions (and especially from people quoted in the article like Gross, Witten, Rattazzi etc), and fewer blog articles like this designed to discourage them.

The last time a huge, costly, dedicated collider was built, it was in service of the Higgs prediction, and that worked out quite nicely.

Re: Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises

#20

Post by tokai » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 10:23 AM UTC

orbifold wrote: post #9

Science shouldn’t be a zero sum game. As a physicist I love that we get a huge chunk of science funding for all kinds of stuff. Generally speaking developing a new accelerator leads to excellent technical advances at all levels of the stack. Web browsers and HTML were invented at CERN. Super conducting magnets at scale were pioneered for LHC. The detectors with custom radiation hard ASICs for particle detection and t…

>This is personal to me, some of my friends work at CERN

That is very clear. You didn't engage her argument at all.

Is is really too much to ask for scientific mega project to generate all that value, while at the same time same pursuing a central object that is scientifically viable?