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Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises

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Re: Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises

#131

Post by pron »

orbifold wrote: post #77
pron wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whatever theorists predict is not the only reason for them to do it, higher energies are a technical challenge, a data processing challenge, something to focus your attention and creativity on. I don't understand this argument. We should prefer a particular experiment not because it is more likely to answer a research question but because it, itself, is more challenging?

There are few other ways of probing high energy physics systematically and a lot of them are funded and done aswell. This is not a zero sum game. We can bury detectors in the antarctic, in mines and have CERN. In fact technology developed at CERN helps those other experiments aswell.

Fine, but that's not the interesting part of Hossenfelder's claim. Suppose we couldn't do it all and could only do one thing first. What is wrong with her claim that a bigger collider shouldn't be that thing? Is she wrong that that is not the most promising investment for discovery or is she wrong that "most promising investment" should be the main criterion for choosing what to do first?

Re: Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises

#132

Post by orbifold »

pron wrote: post #131
orbifold wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are few other ways of probing high energy physics systematically and a lot of them are funded and done aswell. This is not a zero sum game. We can bury detectors in the antarctic, in mines and have CERN. In fact technology developed at CERN helps those other experiments aswell.

Fine, but that's not the interesting part of Hossenfelder's claim. Suppose we couldn't do it all and could only do one thing first . What is wrong with her claim that a bigger collider shouldn't be that thing? Is she wrong that that is not the most promising investment for discovery or is she wrong that "most promising investment" should be the main criterion for choosing what to do first?

But we can do it all. Moreover a large number of talented people really want to do it. Whatever money they are asking for is a fraction of the cumulative benefits these people have provided to humanity. When arguing about money you never argue about "science discoveries", no-one in their right mind cares about them when it comes to fundamental science, when you talk about this level of funding. If you manage to build a 100 TeV detector you need to figure out a mind boggling number of practical technical challenges along the way. All of those sum up to a value that is far larger than 10 billion. For other projects like the Human Genome project or the Brain projects the ROI seems more immediate. But in fact physics projects have routinely yielded higher ROIs. There is an extremely long tail of physics / technology research that is funded by a new detector.

As another example take the EU quantum initiative, they managed to get ~1 Billion and have promised to get ~5000 people working on it for ~10 years. That works out to ~20000 per person / per year. This only works because a lot of these people are so passionate about this project, that they are willing to self exploit themselves for years.

Re: Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises

#133

Post by tsimionescu »

SiempreViernes wrote: post #125
tsimionescu wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that there are known problems in the foundations of physics (the measurement problem, the reconciliation of general relativity and quantum mechanics to name the 2 best known ones) and that they should be by far the biggest focus for new research - not GUTs and solutions for un-naturalness. If we have a theory that could solve the measurement problem (or detect quantum gravity etc.), and a plausible exper…

To claim that the standard model has nothing to do with the quantization of gravity is very strange, part of the motivation for a GUT is that it would be a huge help towards making a theory of everything. And a TOE is precisely a unified treatment of the standard model forces and gravity. The measurement problem isn't a physics thing, just like naturalness that's more of a life-style choice. In fact, the only reason…

> part of the motivation for a GUT is that it would be a huge help towards making a theory of everything. And a TOE is precisely a unified treatment of the standard model forces and gravity.

A GUT is specifically the part of a TOE that has nothing to do with gravity... A TOE is a GUT + a theory of quantum gravity.

If we had the Standard Model + a theory of quantum gravity, this could be a complete theory of the universe (pending explanations for dark matter, dark energy etc.). These could very well be completely separate phenomena, there is no reason to believe they reduce to a single phenomenon - that there exists a TOE.

> The measurement problem isn't a physics thing, just like naturalness that's more of a life-style choice. In fact, the only reason to have problems with wave-function collapse is precisely a naturalness reasoning, technically it makes very accurate predictions just fine.

This isn't entirely accurate. There is a very clear quantitative question behind the measurement problem: what kind of system constitutes a measurement device, in the sense of invoking the need for the Born rule? There must be some precise size/kind of system that, when a particle interacts with it, you can no longer use Schrodinger's equation to predict its movement after that interaction - you must apply the Born rule. We know that this doesn't happen after a particle collision, but that it does happen after a collision with a "detector".

This is a clear empirical question (you don't need to call it a problem), well within the realm of physics. It may be extremely difficult to answer, but I see no reason to imagine it is a priori impossible to resolve.

Re: Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises

#134

Post by iainmerrick »

Here’s a question I have that maybe somebody in this thread can help me with: what is the positive case for a new particle collider at much higher energies than the LHC?

It seems to me that particle physics post-LHC is just the same as it was pre-LHC. We verified the existence of the Higgs, which is great, but that meant no revisions to the Standard Model were needed as it already assumed the Higgs. And no exotic or unexpected new particles have turned up.

You can definitely argue that the technology spin-offs from the LHC have been great; but is that really an argument for another collider specifically, or just Big Science in general?

To put it another way, what’s the argument for a collider that goes beyond “provide employment for hundreds of high-energy physicists, and throw some unprecedented engineering and logistical challenges at then”? Is there a pitch that’s based on the science rather than the technology?

Re: Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises

#135

Post by nxpnsv »

aaron695 wrote: post #116
nxpnsv wrote: post #45

I don't agree with her initial gripe. Discovery or serious exclusion - it is not weasel words, it is the truth. The correct question to ask is if the exclusion would be enough to warrant the cost. And of course this is far from the only result one would expect from such a machine. So these are not empty promises and while she clearly is not stupid, Hossenfelder sure loves telling people their research is useless... E…

> "Discovery or serious exclusion - it is not weasel words, it is the truth." This misrepresents what she says about weasel words. Also she specifically addresses the "Discovery or serious exclusion" I didn't downvote but I would guess you've only skimmed the written article, try watching the video.

No, I did read it, but I also responded emotionally as my research was attacked. That is, I consider Higgs a significant discovery.

Re: Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises

#136

Post by magicalhippo »

iainmerrick wrote: post #134

Here’s a question I have that maybe somebody in this thread can help me with: what is the positive case for a new particle collider at much higher energies than the LHC? It seems to me that particle physics post-LHC is just the same as it was pre-LHC. We verified the existence of the Higgs, which is great, but that meant no revisions to the Standard Model were needed as it already assumed the Higgs. And no exotic or…

The current standard model can't explain a number of observations. There was a rather detailed post over on PhysicsForums[1] detailing a number of issues.

The LHC hasn't really shown us where to look, the hope is that a larger collider can give a more clear indication.

That said, I have this feeling that we're approaching the limits of "going big". There was a very interesting talk[2] over at Perimeter Institute recently about larger colliders and their feasibility.

[1]: https://www.physicsforums.com/threads/what-are-the-most-impo...

[2]: http://pirsa.org/20100056/

Re: Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises

#137

Post by nabla9 »

SiempreViernes wrote: post #118
nabla9 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ar…

The particle community has enumerated why new accelerators are the best way to answer particle physics questions, Hossenfelders position is however that those arguments aren't worth engaging with because particle physicists are slaves to "group think". As for the argument that cosmology or astronomy are more promising ways of yielding new insights, that's not something she ever bothers to discuss in detail. There's n…

>The particle community has enumerated why new accelerators are the best way to answer particle physics questions

They have not given a good answer why particle accelerators they are asking for would give any answers at 100 TeV.

It's just biggest they can hope to get.

Re: Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises

#138

Post by pron »

orbifold wrote: post #132
pron wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fine, but that's not the interesting part of Hossenfelder's claim. Suppose we couldn't do it all and could only do one thing first . What is wrong with her claim that a bigger collider shouldn't be that thing? Is she wrong that that is not the most promising investment for discovery or is she wrong that "most promising investment" should be the main criterion for choosing what to do first?

But we can do it all. Moreover a large number of talented people really want to do it. Whatever money they are asking for is a fraction of the cumulative benefits these people have provided to humanity. When arguing about money you never argue about "science discoveries", no-one in their right mind cares about them when it comes to fundamental science, when you talk about this level of funding. If you manage to build…

Fine, but if we couldn't, does she have a point about the priorities, and if not, why not?

(And, BTW, the fact that some investment has a good ROI doesn't mean you should pick it over another with a higher ROI)

Re: Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises

#139

Post by mdorazio »

orbifold wrote: post #94
PopeDotNinja wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One could argue that spending a lot of money on a hyper advanced anything would lead to a bunch of cool technologies, even if the primary objective yielded no results. Why spend many billions of euros on something speculative when one could spend the money on something much more likely to produce both primary and secondary benefits?

Point me to something that has these characteristics and hasn’t received funding. Anderson made the case to fund many small scale experiments when it came to funding the SSC, but that doesn’t have the same secondary benefits.

Off the top of my head...

- Large-scale climate engineering

- Digitizing human consciousness

- Strong AI

- True life extension

- A replacement for the ISS

If you limit your characteristics to "involves high energy particle physics" it's pretty easy to put blinders on and pretend there aren't large challenges facing humanity that could potentially be solved by hard science progress and a lot of funding.

Re: Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises

#140

Post by foldr »

m0zg wrote: post #64
foldr wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree, but at some point you do have to make an economic risk/benefit calculation. Almost any person or organization can truly say that they might do something really amazing and important if given lots of money and resources.

You can't really make that calculation with truly open ended, fundamental research. Both the potential benefits, and the complexity/cost of obtaining these benefits (or finding out they can't be obtained) can be enormous. At best, you can improve the odds of getting something rather than nothing, by e.g. hiring the smartest people and letting them do their thing with ample funding, a-la the Space Race or Manhattan Pr…

Well, any time you spend less than all of your money on fundamental research you're implicitly making a calculation of that kind.
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