Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises • Hacker News Board

Re: Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises

#141

Post by jfengel » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 4:27 PM UTC

deepstack wrote: post #44

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…

yeah more funding and focus should start to focus on stuff like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Exceptionally_Simple_Theory... Time to spend some money else well.

Lisi's work is generally considered extremely unlikely by physicists. The eye-catching title and colorfulness of its author attracts a lot of attention with the public, but it doesn't match experiment. It has basically been abandoned.

I agree that we could probably spend billions of dollars better than on another enormous collider, even within high-energy physics, but it probably wouldn't be best spent on E8 Theory. Figuring out how it would be best spent, however, would be contentious to say the least.

Re: Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises

#142

Post by orbifold » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 4:37 PM UTC

mdorazio wrote: post #139

orbifold wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well what I meant show me plans with 1000s of pages of itemized highly realistic goals that have a chance of succeeding and yield real technological advances over a period of 30 years with 100s of professors putting their professional careers on the line for a common goal. The overlooked value of the HEP community is that they have moved to the industrial age of scientific endeavour, while almost everyone else is stuck in the Middle Ages.

It would be great if people managed to organized around any of the goals you mentioned, so far it hasn’t happened at a comparative scale for various reasons.

Re: Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises

#143

Post by magv » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 4:47 PM UTC

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…

> verified the existence of the Higgs

As a related tangent: we have verified the existence of the Higgs, but only partially.

What was so far measured was the interaction strength between Higgs and W bosons, Z bosons, and the top quarks: these are the main channels of Higgs production at the LHC, and they fit the theory prediction within 20%. Yes, 20%. Not precise at all. What about interaction between Higgs and the other 5 kinds of quarks? Electrons? Muons? Tau? Itself? The data ranges from +-100% to none at all.

In particular the measurement of Higgs-Higgs interaction is an important one: the assumption Standard Model makes about the strength of this interaction is not unique, and others are possible. We don't know yet: not enough data. Moreover models with multiple Higgs particles are possible. Again, we don't know yet, not enough data.

This is why some cautious researchers claim that we have discovered "a scalar particle", "believed to be Higgs", but further measurement is needed to determine all of its properties.

This is one of the main activities at LHC and among the theoreticians at the moment: measuring Higgs interactions with other particles. There is still way to improve precision with more data from LHC, but ultimately there is only so much it can do without increasing the energy.

Re: Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises

#144

Post by mcall » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 4:50 PM UTC

orbifold wrote: post #126

aaron695 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Science shouldn’t be a zero sum game. Poor people "shouldn’t" die from simple diseases. Is this the game, we are wishing away things we don't like? Science 100% is zero sum. Especially talking the figures we are here. How about we start with creating free science text books (that are not garbage) for the world then we'll let you blow multi-billions on your religion?

Pretty simple neither Hossfelder, nor politicians, nor you get to tell people what they would like to do. At this point it becomes a power struggle and so far mainstream physics has won that power struggle, because we have good arguments on our side. Investment in particle physics has had large net positive effects on society at large. Why kill the golden goose just because you aren't interested in whatever these peo…

Good arguments? It was won in the same manner that the first motorway built in GB happened to be between Oxford and London (in that order).

Re: Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises

#145

Post by orbifold » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 4:51 PM UTC

pron wrote: post #138

orbifold wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

I honestly don’t think she is qualified to speak on the priorities of a discipline she has never been involved in. They will do and prioritise what they think is reasonable based on fierce internal discussions and consensus building. I personally was never taken by the prospect of working on a huge project like the various experiments at LHC or any of the successors. If you defund HEP these people won’t magically go work on something else together. A large pool of people will simply stop doing physics and dissipate. Let them do what they want, it has worked out pretty well so far. There is plenty of other research that is well funded and competing for talent and attention. Why give up on something where Europe has clear worldwide leadership.

Re: Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises

#146

Post by thrwyoilarticle » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 4:57 PM UTC

>The most likely outcome will be that particle physicists will swap their current theories for new theories according to which the supposed particles are heavier than expected.

i.e. exactly what happened for the top quark, without proof of which we wouldn't have a working standard model. Why wasn't that the example?

Re: Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises

#147

Post by zamalek » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 4:59 PM UTC

thrwyoilarticle wrote: post #146

>The most likely outcome will be that particle physicists will swap their current theories for new theories according to which the supposed particles are heavier than expected. i.e. exactly what happened for the top quark, without proof of which we wouldn't have a working standard model. Why wasn't that the example?

Theory fitting also happened with epicycles. We got nothing from that. Everything looked progressively more correct until all of it was suddenly incorrect.

Re: Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises

#148

Post by criddell » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 5:04 PM UTC

orbifold wrote: post #128

tsimionescu wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She has specific proposals - climate science (the most pressing concern of our times, if organized human society is to survive the next century or so), and astronomical research. I would also mention that things like the Voyager missions are still providing novel data ~50 years after their launch. Will the same be true of the LHC, or any other particle collider?

I have bad news for you: Most high energy physicists I know go on to finance or "data science" before they would work on climate science. It is just not that interesting and doesn't pay well. HEP carriers prestige and is actually something aspiring physicists want to do.

That's not really bad news, is it? It doesn't seem unreasonable to redirect all the money being spent on HEP projects into climate science. That high energy physicists have great employment options is a good thing. It makes it much easier to close down those projects.

The HEP problems aren't going anywhere. Lets deal with more pressing concerns now and come back to HEP problems later.

Re: Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises

#149

Post by thrwyoilarticle » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 5:06 PM UTC

zamalek wrote: post #147

thrwyoilarticle wrote: post #146

>The most likely outcome will be that particle physicists will swap their current theories for new theories according to which the supposed particles are heavier than expected. i.e. exactly what happened for the top quark, without proof of which we wouldn't have a working standard model. Why wasn't that the example?

Theory fitting also happened with epicycles. We got nothing from that. Everything looked progressively more correct until all of it was suddenly incorrect.

Well our most up-to-date understanding of the solar system's orbits is based on general relativity. That's how we explain Mercury's precession. Is that your failure case?

Re: Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises

#150

Post by orbifold » Fri, Oct 23, 2020, 5:06 PM UTC

mcall wrote: post #144

orbifold wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty simple neither Hossfelder, nor politicians, nor you get to tell people what they would like to do. At this point it becomes a power struggle and so far mainstream physics has won that power struggle, because we have good arguments on our side. Investment in particle physics has had large net positive effects on society at large. Why kill the golden goose just because you aren't interested in whatever these peo…

Good arguments? It was won in the same manner that the first motorway built in GB happened to be between Oxford and London (in that order).

Right good arguments in the political sense. A highly organized, well connected, motivated group of people that write excellent funding proposals, with a track record of Nobel price worthy results and the ability to execute on >10 billion dollar projects on the time scale of decades. There aren’t that many people like that around and they happen to like to smash atoms.