151–160 of 467 posts
I think breakthroughs are often perpendicular to the energy, so the best investment in understanding the universe is probably to explore it.
Unfortunately that also requires alot of energy.
Rate of change is going to slow down with the price of energy going up.
As a low-energy quantum physicist, I completely agree: Experimental high-energy physics has become primarily an industrial subsidy scheme[1], and if we want the highest chance of reaching a grand unified theory, it seems the money would be much better spent elsewhere (cosmology, space-based observatories, research positions for young physicists without publish-or-perish incentives to run for the latest fad). The shor…
Aren't Hossenfelder and Smolin basically paying their bills by being contrarians though?
These people are not some obscenely rich opportunists in power. They are working scientists, who draw public interest because they say interesting things and they are part of a larger discourse.
Now Hossenfelder isn’t known for her fingerspitzengefühl when it comes to criticizing others, but I have yet to find an instance where she doesn’t treat the subject matter with the utomst respect it deserves.
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Allocating resources worth billions on one avenue is not keeping every avenue open, it is forgoing thousands of avenues that don't force you to decide like this.
Is it just one avenue? While I'm not a particle physicist, my layman understanding of LHC is that it can be used to test many theories that would otherwise go unsolved. Should we only research things that are cheap to test and eventually mass producible?
Strings are right out. Nobody has offered any clue as to how to make a prediction that could be tested with possible equipment.
That does not mean none ever will, but it does not seem to be their focus. Physics departments like string theorists because they come with no equipment budget.
The "best" thing to come out of CERN is HTTP. I think breakthroughs are often perpendicular to the energy, so the best investment in understanding the universe is probably to explore it. Unfortunately that also requires alot of energy. Rate of change is going to slow down with the price of energy going up.
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 u…
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I see the same argument (secondary innovations) being made for war-time/military research. But I don't buy it there, and I don't buy it here. Investing the same money in something that has a known and positive primary effect will produce the same amount of secondary benefits. So if you can think of something more fruitful to do with these 100B, do that; the secondary benefits will keep coming anyhow.
Except that you don't know what the secondary benefits are until you find them so you should keep every avenue open A short story about the discovery of microscopes from https://lettersofnote.com/2012/08/06/why-explore-space/ Had the rich noble simply invested his money in doctors instead of the person with a hobby of playing with glass, they might have instead discovered more uses for leeches
Each avenue you keep open costs money and takes up people's time. You can't keep every avenue open. You have to decide -- with imperfect information -- which avenues are worth keeping open. And the entire thesis here is that the LHC++ is probably not worth it. You can disagree with that, but if you're going to do so because of possible secondary benefits, you have to take a crack at showing that those secondary benefits -- whatever they may be -- are numerous enough and worth enough to justify the money and time.
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Except that you don't know what the secondary benefits are until you find them so you should keep every avenue open A short story about the discovery of microscopes from https://lettersofnote.com/2012/08/06/why-explore-space/ Had the rich noble simply invested his money in doctors instead of the person with a hobby of playing with glass, they might have instead discovered more uses for leeches
Well I agree that big projects make sense in many cases, and I don't want to be misunderstood as arguing against basic research. Frankly, given the amounts we spend on things I fundamentally disagree with, I'd even say "sure let them have at it and let's find another 100B somewhere in the military budgets of the world, divert them to more research." But even if you want to focus on "big, milestone" projects like the…
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Spending $100B on one big project is very much the opposite of keeping every avenue open.
And skipping on a big project/infrastructure because it costs a lot is also not keeping every avenue open
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…
Because the only reason you have $100 billion to spend is that it's a large scale infrastructure project. And that money is trickling down to member states through contracts to a mix of businesses who hire white and blue collar workers.
It is equal part economic stimulus, political marketing and scientific research.
You can't just ask for the last part and ignore the first two.
As a low-energy quantum physicist, I completely agree: Experimental high-energy physics has become primarily an industrial subsidy scheme[1], and if we want the highest chance of reaching a grand unified theory, it seems the money would be much better spent elsewhere (cosmology, space-based observatories, research positions for young physicists without publish-or-perish incentives to run for the latest fad). The shor…
I'm not sure there is a fundamental distinction here. The only difference is success: Einstein's and Schrödinger's theories etc. predicted effects that were later experimentally proven to exist. When new high-energy theories predict something, the hypothetical effects are either not testable in the foreseeable future, or eventually disproven by experiment.
It feels like nature itself is against physicists here.