Please, don't build another Large Hadron Collider • Hacker News Board

Re: Please, don't build another Large Hadron Collider

#141

Post by inglor_cz » Tue, Jun 07, 2022, 10:07 AM UTC

rvieira wrote: post #9

Driven by this post, out of curiosity I started looking at the price tag of some mega-projects around the world. Interestingly, the most expensive ones are almost always highway systems. Can someone briefly explain why? I'm my naive view it's mostly asphalt and terrain work.

From what I know about highways, they would have been a lot cheaper if they only carried personal cars. What really damages them are the heavy trucks.

Having to carry trucks for decades means a lot more steel and concrete. Especially when constructing bridges and overpasses.

Re: Please, don't build another Large Hadron Collider

#142

Post by concordDance » Tue, Jun 07, 2022, 10:08 AM UTC

wasmitnetzen wrote: post #107

Government finances don't work the same way as other finances. A normally functioning democracy can basically invent as much money as it needs to (see Covid relief packages). If there's political will to do an LHC++, three ITERs and two ISS's, the money will appear. If there's opposition to the LHC++ and it gets scrapped, that doesn't mean that the funds will be re-allocated. They will just disappear.

I think there's a certain disconnect from the underlying reality here. If you didn't have those things then the people who design, build and operate the thing would be doing something else. Are you sure the other things they'd be doing are less valuable?

Also, I'll note that inflation in the UK is at 9%. Printing money is essentially a tax on those with cash holdings, who are mostly poorer. Not to mention the wastage on repricing...

Re: Please, don't build another Large Hadron Collider

#143

Post by oefrha » Tue, Jun 07, 2022, 10:13 AM UTC

gonzo41 wrote: post #8

Havoc wrote: post #5

> What it could discover is entirely speculative. Thats the point of discovery and arguably a point in favour of doing this

For the cost though, you should probably fund a lot of other science. Climate change mitigation perhaps?

That 100B hasn’t been poured into climate change mitigation has absolutely nothing to do with a plan to build a 100B hadron collider. Plus this is 100B over decades.

Re: Please, don't build another Large Hadron Collider

#144

Post by magicalhippo » Tue, Jun 07, 2022, 10:16 AM UTC

captainmuon wrote: post #92

As a former experimental particle physicist, I don't think string theory or supersymmetry is going to be a description of nature. I say that despite spending a couple of years searching for SUSY. But I still think the cost of building a LHC++ (that is, the FCC or the SPPC) is justified. The current theoretical "dead end" or maybe swamp fundamental physics is in is precisely due to a lack of data. Of course, there are…

But if you have say 100 billion, why put it into "yet another collider" rather than say condensed matter physics and quantum information research? To me, a non-physicist, it seems those areas have a lot more potential to deliver science that will benefits us.

Alternatively, if one really wants to pursue beyond the standard model physics, it seems to me multi-messenger astronomy has a much better chance of delivering decisive data, so shouldn't we put that money into better observatories?

Re: Please, don't build another Large Hadron Collider

#145

Post by inglor_cz » Tue, Jun 07, 2022, 10:16 AM UTC

tragomaskhalos wrote: post #87

dmpk2k wrote: post #47

I have started calculating things in LHCs. The LHC is a massive machine with advanced technologies, took a decade to design and build, involving 10k scientists and the international community, and cost $9B. - Squadron of F-35 aircraft: ~0.2 LHCs - JWT: 1.1 LHCs - ITER: >2 LHCs - Elon Musk's wealth: 24 LHCs - Microsoft's market cap: 30 LHCs - US annual military budget: 90 LHCs - US national debt: 3389 LHCs Given the b…

Tongue slightly in cheek, these data point to the answer - get Musk to pay for this thing. It'd consume a big chunk of his wealth but it's probably at least pitchable given his interest set.

The development of Raptor 2 was orders of magnitude cheaper and its likely impact on human technology is pretty huge.

Re: Please, don't build another Large Hadron Collider

#146

Post by rocqua » Tue, Jun 07, 2022, 10:18 AM UTC

DeathArrow wrote: post #16

Science costs. Big science costs more. So let's not do big sciences, let's do some small science. :D

Doing this one thing but 10x bigger, has always given some extra science. So let's do the same thing but 10x bigger once again.

It's not like we have many other great ideas for science experiments. Apparently.

Re: Please, don't build another Large Hadron Collider

#147

Post by practice9 » Tue, Jun 07, 2022, 10:20 AM UTC

Also, please no more Mars rovers. Sometimes it's good to do something radically different, instead of scaling up the same stuff

Re: Please, don't build another Large Hadron Collider

#148

Post by im3w1l » Tue, Jun 07, 2022, 10:21 AM UTC

wasmitnetzen wrote: post #107

Government finances don't work the same way as other finances. A normally functioning democracy can basically invent as much money as it needs to (see Covid relief packages). If there's political will to do an LHC++, three ITERs and two ISS's, the money will appear. If there's opposition to the LHC++ and it gets scrapped, that doesn't mean that the funds will be re-allocated. They will just disappear.

A country can print money, but there are other things that are in shorter supply. Namely natural resources and labor.

Re: Please, don't build another Large Hadron Collider

#149

Post by yccs27 » Tue, Jun 07, 2022, 10:26 AM UTC

I feel like this article does not discuss the real reasons why LHC++ would or would not be a success. It absolutely depends on whether you expect it to provide tangible evidence of new physics; that is, physics beyond the standard model. It's easy to say "high-energy physics has become highly academic and mathematical", but if it provided results there wouldn't be a problem with that. Mathematical beauty has proven unreasonably effective at driving innovation in physics [1], and cutting-edge research being academic is nothing new.

The fundamental problem for high-energy physics seems to be the "tyranny of the standard model", as one of my professors called it. We know that our current model of fundamental particles must be incomplete towards extremely high energies (trillions of TeV), because it conflicts with general relativity. However, almost all experimental results are consistent with the standard model. There are some barely-significant [2] results from muon spin and W-boson experiments, but the effect sizes are minuscule and and two data-points are in no way enough to guide new theory development.

This leaves theorists with almost no experimental input, so they pursue purely mathematical ideas that are in some way elegant, able to describe the standard model as a low-energy limit, and in some cases include a description of gravity as well. But the more advanced and theoretical the ideas get, the more difficult it gets to make experimental predictions. The ones which predict non-standard-model measurements with current equipment are already ruled out anyway, because we did the measurements and the standard model just keeps getting validated.

So what should we do? We can hope that a larger collider will find new evidence of beyond-standard-model physics, but (as I understand it) there is no concrete reason why there has to be anything interesting in the newly-accessible energy region.

[1] As just one example from particle physics: Gell-Mann's "Eightfold Way", which uses advanced representation theory to describe hadrons and was successful at predicting new particles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eightfold_way_(physics) [2] Note that high-energy physics has an extremely high standard of significance at 5 sigma, so it's not comparable to "barely significant" in the social sciences.

Re: Please, don't build another Large Hadron Collider

#150

Post by throw457 » Tue, Jun 07, 2022, 10:29 AM UTC

brazzy wrote: post #131

throw457 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why bother doing science at all if it's not practical applicable right? Such a nonsense argument I wonder how you think any scientific progress is made.

That was a small part of my argument. That you have to concentrate on that in this way shows that you don't really have any arguments yourself.

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