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Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises

backreaction.blogspot.com

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Re: Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises

#101

Post by tsimionescu »

Joker_vD wrote: post #80
gglon wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Isn’t it nice (...) advance our understanding of the fundamental forces of nature? The criticism is that the ROI = (the potential advance) / (invested money) is too small. As you pointed out it can be argued that the real goal is elsewhere: in the engineering / technology or science of complex systems. Creating a big machine that verifiably works brings many unexpected advances in many fields. And what is more impo…

> ROI = (the potential advance) / (invested money) is too small That's unknown in advance. To take example from maths, the conic sections, braid theory, number theory—they all used to be very abstract and un-applicable parts maths, until one day.

Professor Hossenfelder and others have written long books about why the probability of finding new physics based on not liking the aesthetics of the current maths (naturalness, supersimetry, grand unification) is extremely likely to fail, and has been constantly failing for ~50 years.

If our way of generating new theories has given bad predictions for 50 years, at what time should we stop and try out other ways of extending the confirmed theories?

It is unknown in advance if putting your hand through a fire will hurt you this time as well, but after 50 years of doing so, perhaps it's time to stop.

Re: Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises

#102

Post by jgalt212 »

orbifold wrote: post #29
tokai wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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?

Building a high energy collider is like building a larger telescope. The only things you can be sure of is that you will be able to understand whatever you have seen better than before. There is scientific consensus that we should be able to understand dark matter better by building one aswell. This is supported by technical arguments which are hard to communicate to the general public. Attacking this communication t…

> The only things you can be sure of is that you will be able to understand whatever you have seen better than before

I think it's more correct that you will be generating observations in largely the same way as in the past, but with higher resolution and fidelity.

Re: Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises

#103

Post by nmlnn »

simonh wrote: post #27
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.

Sabine gave specific examples of scientific areas the money could be better spent on. Your bile is irrelevant to the discussion and has no place here.

My point is that money is fungible. It's weird to me to see this complete disconnect between science funding and the trillions being created and pumped into the financial system. She/we are treating science funding as zero sum, yet completely ignoring the trillions being wasted (relative to spending on fundamental research) by central banks.

Re: Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises

#104

Post by SiempreViernes »

tsimionescu wrote: post #96
SiempreViernes wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Show we were she actually advocates for building any accelerator and you'd have a case. She violently opposes the FCC despite one of it's explicit goals being precisions measurements of the Higgs. In fact in the very post you link to she dismisses the idea of high precision measurements: "Yeah, except that I am the one saying we could do better things with $20 billion than measuring the next digits of some constants"

Accelerators aren't the be-all, end-all of particle physics. She explicitly advocates for investigating particle physics in new ways, such as astronomical interaction observations.

Those aren't new ways, it's already being done by astroparticle physicists. You can look at Ice Cube, HESS and Pierre Auger Observatory for examples. Dropping accelerators simply leaves a hole, and those experiments all rely on cross sections from CERN for their predictions by the way.

Re: Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises

#105

Post by pabs3 »

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 think it would be better for the EU to fund existing open source solutions than to create EU-controlled proprietary ones. Fund Firefox so Mozilla doesn't have to take funding from Google any more. Fund Linux kernel porting to mobile devices. Fund LineageOS, Replicant, postmarketOS and the myriad GNU/Linux mobile OSes. Fund yaCy and searx. Fund RISC-V implementations.

PS: it sounds like there is some sort of EU plan for this:

https://fsfe.org/news/2020/news-20201023-01.en.html

They probably also need to fund an alternative to TSMC.

Re: Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises

#106

Post by pabs3 »

pmontra wrote: post #36
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).

The interesting thing about electronics is that the Dutch ASML company is basically have monopoly on producing the machines that silicon fabs use to produce chips. So everyone indirectly depends on the EU for hardware production.

Re: Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises

#107

Post by SiempreViernes »

mikewarot wrote: post #83

Why can't they increase the energy levels inside the existing tunnels? It just requires stronger magnets, right? Someone will figure out how to make 1000 Tesla electromagnets at some point, and it's off to the races again. Without the need for more construction.

Basically: making charged particles change direction causes them to emit radiation, and the more they turn the more they radiate. This gets worse and worse at higher energies, so increasing the magnets but keeping the same angle means you waste more energy and your magnets get destroyed by the intense radiation.

Re: Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises

#109

Post by nabla9 »

orbifold wrote: post #97
nabla9 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are repeating the nonsense arguments Sabine has countered before http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/03/nonsense-arguments-... I agree with her. These are nonsense arguments. > Science shouldn’t be a zero sum game. (2. The “No Zero Sum” argument) > new accelerator leads to excellent technical advances at all levels of the stack 5. It is not a waste of money 11. It may lead to spin-offs. 12. A big particle colli…

BTW her examples of experiments that received insufficient funding is really curious: FAIR she just happens to work at a university that is pretty directly involved with it, the cost overruns were so bad that the original people lost management of the project . The James Webb Telescope was in part delayed because it shares the platform with the next gen of American spy sattelites. I happen to know someone that worked…

Her main point is that from physics perspective there are better ways to use money. Whatever success and failures in projects, we should keep throwing money into places that are more likely solve important physical questions.

Any argument that sidesteps that is nonsense. If goal of investing in fundamental physics is not R&D it's just a side effect as I assume.

If I read your argument correctly it's "We can't give argument that this is the best way spend money if you want to solve these problems, but it will generate other side benefits that may help indirectly". It's honest argument if put that way.

Re: Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises

#110

Post by mikewarot »

SiempreViernes wrote: post #107
mikewarot wrote: post #83

Why can't they increase the energy levels inside the existing tunnels? It just requires stronger magnets, right? Someone will figure out how to make 1000 Tesla electromagnets at some point, and it's off to the races again. Without the need for more construction.

Basically: making charged particles change direction causes them to emit radiation, and the more they turn the more they radiate. This gets worse and worse at higher energies, so increasing the magnets but keeping the same angle means you waste more energy and your magnets get destroyed by the intense radiation.

My understanding is that is true of Electrons, but not Protons, which is why SLAC is a straight line, the only way to get electrons up to high energies.

[Edit]Wrong! Turns out protons do emit energy as well... up to 6.7 KeV per turn. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchrotron_radiation

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