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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

#191

Post by m0zg »

foldr wrote: post #140
m0zg wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Gambling is not "calculation".

Re: Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises

#192

Post by tsimionescu »

johncolanduoni wrote: post #176
tsimionescu wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you make the experiments to confirm the theory The scientific method has usually worked by either coming up with theories and testing them; or by measuring things we thought we knew and finding new explanations when those turn out to be false. What has not really worked too often has been coming up with mathematical models out of thin air, fitting them to all of the current data, extrapolating them to things we hav…

> What has not really worked too often has been coming up with mathematical models out of thin air, fitting them to all of the current data, extrapolating them to things we haven't been able to observe yet, and then building those things to check if they also worked. But this is the story of early to mid 20th century physics! General relativity, the initial quantum mechanical theories, Dirac’s equation and anti-parti…

I don't think general relativity at least fits into this model: general relativity explained phenomena that special relativity just couldn't, and that were already well known to exist (gravity, objects of equal mass falling at equal speeds, time dilation in relation to acceleration).

I'm less well versed about the other subjects you mention, but there were several unsolved problems in physics at that time that absolutely required new theories (the photoelectric effect VS the wave behavior of light, black body radiation, the need to reconcile quantum mechanics with special relativity). In all of these cases, we had unexplained data or inconsistencies between theories.

By contrast, most of the theories that could be tested with a new collider are not solving anything - they are just theories about things that might exist, but could very well not exist at all. There is no hope of gaining insights into the measurement problem or quantum gravity at the next collider.

Even the theories of dark matter that could be tested are still too early to be worth a 20b bet. There are too many equally plausible theories of dark matter to say any one of them is promising enough to be worth that amount of money. And even ruling one of them out will not have a major effect on the field. It's not like it would rule out string theory, for example.

Re: Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises

#193

Post by fallingfrog »

I think it’s unlikely that we’re ever going to find another particle as useful as, say, the electron. You need a particle collider to get free Higgs bosons; you can obtain free electrons by rubbing a balloon on your head. And electrons are the Swiss Army knife of technology, they are important in every chemical reaction and every electric device. Higgs bosons will likely never have a practical use.

But-

I still think we should keep doing particle physics, for a while longer. We have built up a huge global community of physicists and engineers who do particle physics, and without a way for them to conduct experiments there won’t be any jobs for those people to do, and in 2 generations all that expertise will be gone. The praxis will be gone. After all, that’s what technology really is; it isn’t a set of books on a shelf, it’s networks of people, with skills and connections to each other, who can get things done. Let’s make sure we don’t pull the plug early.

Re: Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises

#194

Post by pabs3 »

stooart wrote: post #187
pabs3 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

CERN isn't an EU organisation - it is funded by its 23 member states, and collaborates very closely with its other observers.

I need to mentally s/EU/Europe/ more often, sorry about that.

Re: Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises

#195

Post by feoren »

pif wrote: post #50

I am a particle physicist and when I worked at CERN I helped building the data acquisition software of the ATLAS experiment. The empty promises she is talking about are the equivalent of the promises by politicians during a campaign: they are for the larger public, for the people who (rightfully!) don't want to get more informed than that. In the background, both in science and in politics, technical folks know what…

If the argument is that widespread technological improvements always come from heavy investment in something so technologically challenging, then why Yet Another Particle Collider instead of the myriad other technologically challenging physics experiments we could be investing in? What's specific to a particle collider that produces these serendipitous side-effect advances compared to, say, a space telescope or other ambitious experiments?

Re: Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises

#196

Post by feoren »

SiempreViernes wrote: post #67
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…

Well, it does have actual real world impact: it trains a lot of people in data analysis and drives a lot of R&D in very technical fields among other things. In fact, the economic benefit[1] of CERN due to all these other things has been estimated as a net positive while excluding the value of science , which is either good or bad news depending on how you view it. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yf82KOPvTOk

And what's unique about that to Yet Another Particle Collider compared with the myriad other challenging, data-heavy experiments we could be investing in?

Re: Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises

#197

Post by mb7733 »

SiempreViernes wrote: post #74
judofyr wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Huh? Where is she saying this? Everything I've read from her suggests that she's against building bigger accelerators , not stop i…

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"

>Show we were she actually advocates for building any accelerator and you'd have a case.

In point 18 of this article: http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/03/nonsense-arguments-..., her first suggestion for an alternative avenue of research is

> (a) Astrophysical and cosmological observations attributed to dark matter. These are discrepancies between theory and data which should be studied closer, until we have pinned down the theory. Some people have mistakenly claimed I am advocating more direct detection experiments for certain types of dark matter particles. This is not so. I am saying we need better observations of the already known discrepancies. Better sky coverage, better resolution, better stats. If we have a good idea what dark matter is, we can think of building a collider to test it, if that turns out to be useful

Re: Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises

#198

Post by andi999 »

criddell wrote: post #175
orbifold wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is really hard to organise 6000+ people to do anything . HEP won’t come back if you do. There isn’t much to figure out on climate change on a fundamental level anyways. It is a political and technological problem, not something you need a ton of scientists working on.

> It is really hard to organise 6000+ people to do anything. For sure, but we know we can do it because we've already done it.

No, you cannot reestablish HEP. HEP was extremely attractive to the theoretical inclined physicist because it contained a lot of unexplained data. There is no unexplained data now, HEP currenty lives on on the momentum it has. If you reduce this momentum to zero it will be gone (it will also be gone in 20 years if nothing is found)

Re: Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises

#199

Post by andi999 »

tsimionescu wrote: post #122
sega_sai wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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?

Yes, climate is a pressing concern, but you are aware that climate science is descriptive an not a solution at all (more climate science will not change carbon emission). More funding on ITER might though (but I wouldnt call that climate science).

Re: Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises

#200

Post by andi999 »

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…

" Super conducting magnets at scale were pioneered for LHC" ... wait... no love for HERA (DESY) here?
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