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Please, don't build another Large Hadron Collider

bigthink.com

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

#231

Post by nradov »

musha68k wrote: post #67
moonchrome wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your analogy is fundamentally flawed. More realistically : we can only build one car in the entire world, where a tiny minority of people can even understand the potential benefit, and anything they see will be completely useless for everyone else in day to day life because we need a civilisation level effort to even detect the implications of their theory. If their theory had some real world implications - you would…

Europe is so rich it can easily afford all of the great project ideas outlined in the article in addition to a new LHC (and then some). Let's think big indeed, the author unfortunately has a very reductive vision for the future. Instead how about: A renaissance of funding - BIG SCIENCE - education, jobs. That was basically the promise of the EU - peace through wealth - let's create some more. Let's bring back the exc…

Much of Europe is now cranking up defense spending in order to deter future Russian aggression, and comply with NATO treaties. That will take precedence over big science projects for the next few years.

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

#232

Post by SiempreViernes »

Jweb_Guru wrote: post #155
yccs27 wrote: post #149

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…

I mean... dark matter exists (or MOND if you are into that). So there's no real question that there's physics beyond the standard model. Why not try our luck in the accessible regions to see whether that's where it lives?

The high energy frontier the FCC targets is one of the more accessible regions: it's not like there's any viable way to travel the interstellar distances needed to really look for dark matter outside the solar systems.

We're stuck on earth for the foreseeable future, and building 2 more of the instruments we're already building won't do anything to resolve the problems high energy physics struggle with.

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

#233

Post by Veen »

esarbe wrote: post #226
Georgelemental wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Embryo selection"—is that a euphemism for "murdering any unborn child that doesn't have all the "right" genes? Because if so I think your definition of "people's lives" must be very different from mine.

No, it's just that; embryo selection. It's not an euphemism for what you wrote because an embryo is not a child and you cannot murder an embryo. From Wikipedia: "A child (plural children) is a human being between the stages of birth and puberty [...]" You are also conflating the abortion of an embryo with murder; only human persons can be murdered, embryos are not persons, therefore no murder. I sincerely ask you to…

I agree with your position, but it is no less polemical and ideological than the comment you are responding to.

> an embryo is not a child and you cannot murder an embryo

It is not obviously and axiomatically true that embryos are not human (I'm assuming the previous comment meant human and not child). Many people think that they are, which is the source of the disagreement. It probably is fruitless to have this conversation on HN, but you shouldn't just assert the opposing position as if it were settled when it is anything but.

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

#234

Post by concordDance »

Georgelemental wrote: post #211
concordDance wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's it currently doing with that money? I guess we could get rid of funding healthcare and trying to help people out of poverty so that a small number of people get to use a very expensive toy... You know what would be an awesome big science project that would immeasurably improve future people's lives? Sequencing all genes and using that data provide free embryo selection services to everyone who wants to be a pa…

"Embryo selection"—is that a euphemism for "murdering any unborn child that doesn't have all the "right" genes? Because if so I think your definition of "people's lives" must be very different from mine.

Well yes, but anti-abortionists are a rapidly shrinking minority that I assumed were pretty much extinct on hacker news.

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

#235

Post by linksnapzz »

dgb23 wrote: post #152
mhh__ wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't Hossenfelder and Smolin basically paying their bills by being contrarians though?

That’s a passive aggressive ad hominem without any substance whatsoever. 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…

Also, Lee Smolin's been public about his opinions for...at least 25 years now, that my memory serves, so it's certainly not opportunism on his part.

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

#236

Post by pvaldes »

orbifold wrote: post #170
musha68k wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Europe is so rich it can easily afford all of the great project ideas outlined in the article in addition to a new LHC (and then some). Let's think big indeed, the author unfortunately has a very reductive vision for the future. Instead how about: A renaissance of funding - BIG SCIENCE - education, jobs. That was basically the promise of the EU - peace through wealth - let's create some more. Let's bring back the exc…

Europe has an aging population, which is obese, smokes and has heart problems. It is a dying continent whose boomer generation has decided to transfer large amounts of IP to China for a short term profit, while refusing to have children, protesting against the establishment and being generally useless in their youth. The millennials and gen-z is royally screwed, the writing has been on the walls for years.

Fortunately we have a cure for this, an endless supply of young blood as immigrants. Europe has been a blender of races since the origin.

And about "obese population", Europe is not so bad in fact. Obese people die younger and most elders in Europe are slim.

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

#237

Post by pyb »

japanuspus wrote: post #73

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…

True, but sadly, if you defund Big Physics, it doesn't mean the money will go to 1000 experiments. It's more likely that nothing will be funded.

Same reason why nobody was able to effectively compete with YC: it's a lot less work for VCs to fund a few "big bets" than find 100 good early-stage startups. The VC strategy is a lot less effective, but they still earn their fees no matter what

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

#238

Post by SiempreViernes »

magicalhippo wrote: post #144
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…

First of all, the proposed design is estimated to cost 21 billion EUR.

Secondly condensed matter and quantum information already get plenty of money: superconductivity alone is a market worth around 5 billion dollars, google is spending billions of its own money into quantum computers.

But sure, lets give these starving fields that produce commercial products a some tax-payer dollars at the slight cost of completely de funding high energy physics, I'm sure that will get the scientist there to care about the proton despite them very consciously choosing to do something else.

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

#239

Post by matthewdgreen »

morbia wrote: post #174
levi_n wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...than by handing that money to the old guard which has produced nothing of significance for the last two generations. Genuine question from an ignorant layperson: was confirming the existence of the Higgs boson not significant?

(Former PhD student in Particle Physics Pheno here, far from an expert) Of course it was a significant discovery, but honestly it would have been a far more interesting if we detected literally nothing. It's kind of weird because it was marketted as a success story to the public (and don't get me wrong, it was) but theorists were very confident that it was there by 2012. Thus far, it behaves exactly as expected accor…

Not a particle physicist, but I think the entire history of human scientific discovery is set again that proposition. Namely: (1) that we have a fundamental theory that describes the Universe; (2) that it is within our technical capability to experimentally verify the reality of that theory; and (3) we choose not to do so.

It's easy to monday-morning quarterback a result that was successful and unexciting, but imagine how intolerable the world would be if we'd chosen not to verify it.

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

#240

Post by billoday »

discreteevent wrote: post #33
mehrdada wrote: post #11

Cannot disagree more. "Making a car is expensive, so let's not do that to explore 1000 miles out. Let's just have 1000 people walk one mile and explore." Simply ridiculous comparison. But sure, let's find a way to build/experiment LHC++ less expensively. What's concerning to me, however, is the attitude towards curiosity that this article exhibits. They should rename their domain to smallthink.com.

I read it as: "Instead of building one really expensive car to continue to explore in one direction let's build lots of cars and explore in all directions". To me that shows an attitude full of curiosity.

I think that's crazy reductive though. It's not an either/or, and it's a gross oversimplification that big projects only show benefit within their major focus. LHC has produced benefit in particle physics, yes, but I am 100% sure it also introduced new methods of construction, semiconductors, material science, and other fields in the construction of the facility. I see this argument with space exploration as well, "why not feed the world instead of exploring space?"

Why is it zero sum to begin with? And more importantly, how less effective would be able to feed the world had we had no space race to begin with? If we were still at a 1950s technical level, our farming capacity would be exponentially lower, and most of the big leaps came as a direct result technologies originally developed for space.

It's naive to assume we can see all the benefits of daring to attempt hard things, but attempting hard things is what moves society forward. If all we did was lots of little cars in all directions when we have already figured out the challenges with little cars, mean the ONLY benefit is the direct one. If we've never built a car to explore REALLY far, well, there's a bunch of other problems we need to solve to get there. And honestly, it's those results that will likely move the needle.

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