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Please, don't build another Large Hadron Collider

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

#301

Post by Alenycus »

esarbe wrote: post #247
Veen wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 conv…

> but it is no less polemical and ideological than the comment you are responding to. I beg to differ. I don't think that using dictionary definitions to make ones arguments can be counted as polemic (as in; to use contentious rhetoric). I might be wrong though. > I'm assuming the previous comment meant human and not child No, I actually meant 'child'. An human embryo is - obviously - human. No discussion about that.…

Loads of people disagree with you and believe it is murder and can quote science to back up their argument.

You also don't have any definition with a clear line when this switch from non human to human happens.

It almost always boils down to "when it's convenient for me"

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

#302

Post by srveale »

BrandoElFollito wrote: post #265

As someone who did their PhD at CERN - I agree. The place is fantastic, you get to meet great people and life is cool. But what you are working on is completely useless for humanity. Knowing that there is a quantum foam is knowledge that brings us nowhere. If someone could answer to this "and so what?" in a meaningful way I would be glad to change my mind. For the time being, the energy scale we are making these disc…

Does anyone know anything like a percentage of scientific advancements that ended up being hugely beneficial to society, but were originally derided as being pointless wastes of resources? Might be hard to find out, for example, how many Victorians scoffed at Maxwell wasting his time wondering about imaginary waves flying through the air.

At least, in 50-100 years, we'll probably still have records of comments and articles like these, which will make it easier to say just how wrong people were about the importance of pure research. (If anyone is reading this in 2100, and it turns out the ROI on these research projects wasn't worth it, feel free to whisper "I told you so" to my ghost.)

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

#303

Post by morbia »

glenstein wrote: post #244
morbia wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(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…

>Of course it was a significant discovery, but honestly it would have been a far more interesting if we detected literally nothing. Well you would have needed the LHC to confirm that, too, right? As a totally uneducated person just remembering media and online discussion about it at the time, I think the most interesting possibility was the detection of entirely new particles, which didn't happen. And in the run-up t…

Well that's sort of my point. In the media there was a lot of excitement about detecting supersymmetry with a whole array of new particles. When talking to the general public, it's easy to drum up the excitement by saying we're going to find lots of stuff. On the other hand, wheeling out a Physicist in front of the public and say "Finding nothing would be the most exciting outcome!" is a much harder sell, even though it is arguably true.

Which is the most exciting outcome between SUSY and absolutely nothing is very much debatable. However, I really can't stress how big an outcome it would have been if we didn't detect the Higgs. Generating a mass term for the W and Z bosons which is gauge invariant is hard. Without the Higgs mechanism, all the gauge bosons should be massless and yet the W and Z are very heavy. It wouldn't just be the case of the model doesn't work in some cases (massive neutrinos, dark matter candidate etc), you might as well throw the whole thing in the bin.

Edit: Typo

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

#304

Post by XorNot »

pfortuny wrote: post #300
yccs27 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Einstein and the quantum pioneers added abstractions to build physical theories with prediction power, whereas current high-energy physics theory seems to be mostly a mathematical exercise. 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 pre…

Sorry but several of the most prominent string theorists have gone from “LHC will find this to be a fact” to “We need a bigger LHC” as time passed. Not very trustworthy.

Gonna have to ask you to show your work here: who specifically made an LHC prediction and is now asking for as bigger LHC?

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

#305

Post by BaseballPhysics »

cookingmyserver wrote: post #279
BaseballPhysics wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> yes it is, but where does this fundamental science helps in everyday problems? PhD or not, this is an oddly utilitarian view of science. I suspect there would be countless discoveries that never would have been made had we only ever weighed an experiment based purely on its ability to "help in everyday problems". I mean, why, say, develop the theory of evolution? At the time that was irrelevant to "everyday problem…

I think it is important to remember the context of the discussion. I think I it is completely reasonable, and not odd at all, to have a utilitarian view of science, when you are talking about spending $100 Billion .

Alright. I agree, that's certainly a very valid point.

So would you have cancelled the moon landing program? In 2020 dollars that program cost over $257B (over $400B if you count related programs and costs)[1], and that goal--landing humans on the moon--has demonstrated very little utility.

[1]: https://www.planetary.org/space-policy/cost-of-apollo

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

#306

Post by somenameforme »

BrandoElFollito wrote: post #265

As someone who did their PhD at CERN - I agree. The place is fantastic, you get to meet great people and life is cool. But what you are working on is completely useless for humanity. Knowing that there is a quantum foam is knowledge that brings us nowhere. If someone could answer to this "and so what?" in a meaningful way I would be glad to change my mind. For the time being, the energy scale we are making these disc…

"The more important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all been discovered, and these are now so firmly established that the possibility of their ever being supplanted in consequence of new discoveries is exceedingly remote. .. Our future discoveries must be looked for in the sixth place of decimals." - Albert Michelson, 1894

What makes that quote especially remarkable, and ironic, is that was the same Michelson of the famous Michelson - Morley experiment which [1] was an extremely important clue on the path to discovery that would lead rapidly to relativity, and then general explosion of discovery in physics to follow. Not only could he not even imagine the relevance of his very own 'discovery', but largely doubted his own results as the experiment was not intended to 'fail'!

The point I make is that so much of major advances in science have come about not through directed efforts but through some sort of serendipity. And it seems to me that observing what happens with ever higher energy collisions is one area where what may be important is not what is expected, but what is unexpected. It's also an area where there is no direct profit motive as contrasted with things like energy or what I assume you are implying with biology. Those fields will naturally advance because there's money to be made. Atom banging is generally not quite as lucrative an industry and, as such, various sorts of public funding tends to be much more important.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelson%E2%80%93Morley_exper...

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

#307

Post by mikebenfield »

qiskit wrote: post #262
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…

> Einstein and the quantum pioneers Einstein wasn't a 'quantum pioneer'. Einstein was a proponent of classical physics and against quantum physics.

I didn’t read that as intending to include Einstein in that group.

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

#308

Post by marcosdumay »

yccs27 wrote: post #160
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…

> Einstein and the quantum pioneers added abstractions to build physical theories with prediction power, whereas current high-energy physics theory seems to be mostly a mathematical exercise. 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 pre…

> Einstein's and Schrödinger's theories etc. predicted effects that were later experimentally proven to exist.

Nope. It's the other way around. The most important theories from Einstein an Schrödinger were created to explain effects there were experimentally known. The ones where they predicted the effects first and found them later were much less impactful.

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

#309

Post by XorNot »

tsimionescu wrote: post #259
SiempreViernes wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I find it much more likely that we would learn new physics by giving 10-year grants to 1000 young physicist of revolutionary spirit Not entirely sure how this "lets ignore the knowledge we've accumulated and start over afresh" idea is supposed to mesh with the notion that science is a product that builds on earlier results. Or are you seriously imagining that there is a cabbal of old researchers that have found a m…

It's also often said that science advances one funeral at a time. It's entirely possible for an entire field to be stuck in a local maximum and refuse to admit that they are not advancing, especially when huge money depends on it. A recent example is the amyloid hypothesis for Alzheimers, which has failed every single time it was tested in clinical trials, but is still being pushed again and again, mostly by a cabal…

Yes it's said a lot by non-scientist commentators on internet forums, frequently about 5 seconds before they push whatever bizzare conspiracy theory they've made their pet cause.

And there it is right in this post.

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

#310

Post by LordDragonfang »

marcosdumay wrote: post #308
yccs27 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Einstein and the quantum pioneers added abstractions to build physical theories with prediction power, whereas current high-energy physics theory seems to be mostly a mathematical exercise. 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 pre…

> Einstein's and Schrödinger's theories etc. predicted effects that were later experimentally proven to exist. Nope. It's the other way around. The most important theories from Einstein an Schrödinger were created to explain effects there were experimentally known. The ones where they predicted the effects first and found them later were much less impactful.

Right, but a theory's inferred veracity is only as good as its testable, falsifiable predictions.
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