Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Please, don't build another Large Hadron Collider

bigthink.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 467 posts

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

#311

Post by XorNot »

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 .

That $100 billion doesn't vanish into thin air. It principally goes into plant and equipment to build the machine, as well as research into high tech manufacturing for the same.

The world wide web which we are currently using was invented at CERN. You can literally go look at the proposal manuscript.

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

#312

Post by snowwrestler »

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…

Do we pursue knowledge to build a strong economy? Or do we build a strong economy so we can pursue knowledge?

Although I’ve spent a lot of my career working for a strong economy, I lean strongly toward the latter. The highest achievement of humanity is not cheap cell phone plans, it’s more like General Relativity, or the Moon landing.

What “use” is humanity? What is life for? Big questions for sure, and I won’t claim to have the answers. But I feel pretty confident that most folks believe there is more to life than squinting at everyday problems.

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

#313

Post by SiempreViernes »

rocqua wrote: post #282
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…

> "lets ignore the knowledge we've accumulated and start over afresh" The idea of getting young physicists to do lots of research is not at all about ignoring the old knowledge. These young people will have gotten a PhD in physics. They will have absorbed a lot of the relevant old knowledge. The idea is that, because they came to this knowledge quite quickly, they have a fresh view on it. You simply get a different v…

> But there is a "group of people who have been doing high energy physics that want to keep doing high energy physics".

Apparently it needs to be said because people act like they don't know it: those are the only people interested in answering questions about the fundamental particles! Diverging interests is the fundamental reason people separate into different fields.

> they might not even know about the other approaches

You can easily find the lists of seminars given at CERN and other places: they do know about other fields. In fact people from HEP move to other fields, and folks from other fields move into HEP.

> Try some of the 10 million dollar machines rather than only the 100 billion dollar machines.

They are being built though! In fact there are 2 billion experiments being built.

The argument here is something else: that High energy physics should just stop building big machines at all, and instead magically solve the problem that small machines were built and fully exploited many many decades ago.

The proposed FCC cost is 30 billion.

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

#314

Post by SiempreViernes »

dylan604 wrote: post #248
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…

>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. This is coming from a forum where it's normal to see "something that already exists, but written in $newLanguage/Framework" as a thing to celebrate. So why not just redo science but with newShiny so we haven't actually achiev…

Just do "import SUSY" I don't know why you think it's hard to find!

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

#315

Post by photoelectric »

mhh__ wrote: post #88
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…

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

At least for Hossenfelder, I think she's lost the message. She accused LIGO of fraud a while back. However, none of the points she made ended up being real. Even after being corrected, she kept pushing the narrative. I guess because it gets her more views.

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

#316

Post by fennecfoxen »

pyb wrote: post #237
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

> it doesn't mean the money will go to 1000 experiments. It's more likely that nothing will be funded

Perhaps it is reasonable to allow the money to remain unspent on topics related to physics! Spending has opportunity costs, after all; if these other experiments are not really the measure of the cost, then something else of value to society surely is.

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

#317

Post by LordDragonfang »

BaseballPhysics wrote: post #305
cookingmyserver wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It had utility to the US government in demonstrating to the Russians our ability to accurately move payloads on the planetary scale. Actually landing on the moon was just a conveniently goal-aligned PR win. Beyond that though, being able to put things at that scale in orbit has shown major dividends at in every sector.

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

#318

Post by marcosdumay »

levi_n wrote: post #168
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…

> ...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?

Did it change your life in any way?

(Most times, people don't know how to judge that, but high-energy physics really didn't impact anything.)

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

#319

Post by SiempreViernes »

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 .

Well, 30 billion EUR, so not 100 billion dollars unless the US has some really bad inflation.

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

#320

Post by dylan604 »

SiempreViernes wrote: post #314
dylan604 wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. This is coming from a forum where it's normal to see "something that already exists, but written in $newLanguage/Framework" as a thing to celebrate. So why not just redo science but with newShiny so we haven't actually achiev…

Just do "import SUSY" I don't know why you think it's hard to find!

I'm pretty sure this is wrapped in all sorts of dependancy hell
Post reply on HN