Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises • Hacker News Board

Re: Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises

#31

Post by iainmerrick » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 10:50 AM UTC

onhn wrote: post #19

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.

I think you’re setting up a bit of a straw man there. I agree that people coming up with creative ideas and making bold predictions is good in general. But surely we’re allowed to point out when a) predictions have not in fact worked out, and b) nothing particularly useful was learned from the failure. That’s not the same as trying to discourage new ideas.

For the LHC specifically, it was widely expected that it would find evidence of supersymmetry, and that pinning down the details would help identify which extensions to the Standard Model are worth pursuing. But in fact a) no evidence of supersymmetry has been found, and b) no new lines of inquiry have been suggested. Most theorists have simply adjusted their existing models, moving the goalposts to account for the lack of experimental support.

This is exactly what Hossenfelder is complaining about. Why double and triple down on the same strategy that hasn’t worked yet? Why not at least spread your bets across some different strategies?

Re: Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises

#32

Post by rjmunro » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 10:51 AM UTC

I think more should be spent on fusion research - I think it is just as likely to produce interesting random spin off technologies, but could also produce huge direct benefits to the earth if it can be made into a safe way to produce energy cheaply.

JET has proved it is possible: https://ccfe.ukaea.uk/research/joint-european-torus/

ITER is taking JET's work to the next level https://www.iter.org/

Maybe it can't ever be made cheap or practical but worst case scenario it produces interesting results and spin offs like CERN does now.

Re: Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises

#33

Post by pmontra » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 10:55 AM UTC

aroberge wrote: post #5

Dr. Sabine Hossenfelder is an opiniated physicist who gets a lot of flak for constantly commenting on this issue. Yet, I believe she does society a service in doing so. I have yet to see anyone contradict her basic premise with factual information. I wish she were wrong, as I would love to see a breakthrough towards an experimentally verified Grand Unified Theory, including an explanation for what we currently identi…

It's hard to be loved when one wants to take money away from other people and their projects. A more promising line of action would be building another community of particle physicists with different goals than building a bigger collider, possibly aligned with Hossenfelder's suggestions. In this way they'll have something to gain and will fight for the budget that otherwise would go into the collider.

Re: Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises

#34

Post by bnlpa » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 10:56 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 think it is wrong to cherry pick the HTML example. It would have been invented outside (wasn't SGML already a thing?).

Compared to open source in general the CERN stacks are horrible, typical sloppy academic software of no use to the general public. Tons of stuff like the cling C++ interpreter that look interesting but are never polished to be generally useful.

Re: Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises

#35

Post by sampo » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 10:58 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.

Theory of Relativity was invented at the Swiss Patent Office.

Re: Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises

#36

Post by pmontra » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 10:58 AM UTC

krspykrm wrote: post #24

I somewhat agree with the premise, but the real kicker is the opportunity cost: there is so much Europe could be doing with this money that would have actual, real-world impact. There is a critical need for independent European software infrastructure - for this kind of money, they could fund their own web browser or OS or social media platform, which would exist independently of US-controlled tech. Would I trade a E…

I'd start from independence in basic electronics. Software is easier IMHO. But, as always, which Europe? It's Germany, France, Italy, Spain, etc. each one with different and competing goals (the UK will be on its own soon).

Re: Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises

#37

Post by SiempreViernes » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 11:00 AM UTC

sega_sai wrote: post #3

First here is the original letter to Nature about new colliders: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-020-01054-6 I am certainly a supporter of new colliders, although there are other avenues of constraining particle physics models such as astrophysics, cosmic rays, direct detection experiments that need to be funded. But the authors of that letter to Nature and physicists in general need to be careful about promis…

Sure, if you really think that the next bit where they specify what sort of Dark matter they will provide results on is irrelevant context.

I find it a bit rich that Hossenfelder can criticise particle physics for only ruling out some dark matter with words such as "a type nobody has seen". There are no direct detection of dark matter at all, so why does she insist that the models particle physics speak of are any worse than the others?

At the core of the controversy around Hossenfelder is that from the fact there's not been any really _unexpected_ experimental results for four decades concludes that there's no point in doing particle physics. There is not really much more to the argument than that, the rest is just quoting the optimistic physicists over the pessimistic ones and pretend they don't agree on the need for more experiments.

Re: Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises

#38

Post by cjfd » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 11:07 AM UTC

If you sum up all the negative aspects of something you can make it look bad. If you sum up all the positive aspects of something you can make it look good. So you can make something look either good or bad by not saying anything that is untrue. It is really the onlookers who have to decide how to weigh both stories.

Re: Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises

#39

Post by SiempreViernes » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 11:15 AM UTC

emailrhoads wrote: post #21

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 addresses many of your rebuttals quite well here http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/03/nonsense-arguments-...

Well, going on to see what should be done instead, we find she advocates for different experiments with the same type of argument she's so gleefully savaging here

> You already know we haven’t found anything yet—otherwise you’d have heard of it. But even null results are valuable guides for theory development. They teach us that some ideas—for example, that spacetime might be a regular lattice—are simply incompatible with observations.[1]

So this is really mostly about a "you had your chance with the toy, now it's time to let others play" argument, though she's very adamant that it's not. This is really the large problem with her criticisms: the case that exists is for particle physics getting less priority, but her argument is that it should stop completely, the collaborations disbanded, and everyone goes to find a new job because they can't be trusted to think clearly.

[1]: http://nautil.us/issue/45/power/what-quantum-gravity-needs-i...

Re: Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises

#40

Post by Invictus0 » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 11:22 AM UTC

sega_sai wrote: post #28

aroberge wrote: post #5

Dr. Sabine Hossenfelder is an opiniated physicist who gets a lot of flak for constantly commenting on this issue. Yet, I believe she does society a service in doing so. I have yet to see anyone contradict her basic premise with factual information. I wish she were wrong, as I would love to see a breakthrough towards an experimentally verified Grand Unified Theory, including an explanation for what we currently identi…

In my opinion the problem with her messaging is that while she says that we should not fund the next collider, I think the argument should be, what's the best allocation of money in physics? And there are legitimate reasons to have the next collider even if we have no guarantee that it will deliver GUT or whatever. We have to venture into the unknown. We just should not lie that it will prove supersymmetry or is guar…

Let's not pretend that we can't find some other way to allocate billions of collider dollars. I don't see it as a problem with her argument that she doesn't promote an alternative, because I'm sure then the critics would say that the alternative isn't promising enough. Yes we need to go into the unknown, but the point is that at some point, it's not cost effective to do that, and we live in a world with constrained resources where we can do more good by investing elsewhere.