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

401–410 of 467 posts

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

#401

Post by Animats »

But build medium-sized synchrotrons for IC fabs.[1]

That paper describes a design for a 160 meter ring synchrotron to produce "extreme ultraviolet" for IC fabs in the 7nm and below range. Some large research accelerators have been used for that experimentally, including SLAC at Stanford. So the concept is known to work. It just needs to come down in price and size.

ASML's tin-vaporization light source, which is a mechanical and optical nightmare made to work by throwing a few billion dollars at it, is the current technology.

This may be how China leapfrogs the West in IC technology.

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-07323-z

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

#402

Post by mrtweetyhack »

dekhn wrote: post #354
eastbound wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Noob here, can we discuss about what are the practical effects of understanding high-energy theories? ie have we invented anything practical based on those colliders?

There are some side-effects of running a place like CERN that benefit scientists (for example, CERN makes and stores antimatter for experiments, and they sometimes develop new tech to solve their problems that can be applied in the real world, but by-and-large, high energy physics doesn't contribute directly to applied science or products. Countries run projects like this for prestige, not applications.

No post body was provided.

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

#403

Post by dylan604 »

notriddle wrote: post #392
dylan604 wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get where you're coming from, but at the same time, we have to KNOW things before we can continue to theorize about new things. If you keep theorizing on things that turn out to not be true, then it's just a waste of everyone's time. Find things that are true, theorize on the next step, test, prove/disprove, lather, rinse, repeat. Just coming up with stuff and disproving it isn't always "learning a lot", it's just…

If "information is a measure of surprise", then you don't want every prediction to be wrong. You want every prediction to have a 50% chance of being wrong. Half of your experiments should be failures.

I don't understand this logic at all. At those odds, you're just guessing like flipping a coin. An inferred prediction should have a higher success rate. We look at the data we do know, we see what holes are there, and then make predictions based on all of our previous knowledge. The fact that the previous knowledge allows us to make more accurate predictions shows we have a better understanding of the subject than just random coin flips.

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

#404

Post by gralx »

delusional wrote: post #396
gralx wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Knock-on effects can just as well be ascribed to alternative targets for those Apollo funds. Those don't take much imagination to come up with, e.g. reducing the student-teacher ratios in schools.

Often politics is not a question of "funding this good thing or funding this great thing", but rather "funding this good thing that we can agree on, or funding nothing".

Politicians sometimes do the wrong thing is a truism, no?

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

#405

Post by willis936 »

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…

Digitizer and controller platforms suitable for many other industries (such as uTCA.4) were developed for LHC.

White Rabbit alone adds a lot of value to humanity. Proper coherency of data flying around an Ethernet network is super handy when making a big complicated controller for a big complicated machine.

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

#406

Post by qiskit »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #278
qiskit wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Solving the photoelectric effect gave birth to the field. He just didn't like the monster he had created.

No. He was working on the photoelectric effect because "the field" already existed. And he was working on it from a classical physics standpoint. What makes quantum physics revolutionary is it's non-classical nature. That's what einstein was against - quantum physics as we know it today. Einstein was a life long classic physicist. His relativity was grounded on classical physics. It's why many are working towards a quantum theory of gravity.

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

#407

Post by mateo1 »

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 biggest contribution of CERN to humanity is not theoretical physics, it's the engineering progress made possible by the truly exceptional requirements of the machinery of the accelerator and all the supporting infrastructure. Ultra high vacuum, specialty detectors, electromagnetic components, control systems, cryonics, new alloys etc.

All the know-how and human capital generated by these megaprojects along with a better understanding of fundamental physics is transferred into practical applications a few years later. I can understand how a physics phd might not be exposed so much to this aspect of the project, but the societal benefits are very real despite being hard to quantify and track.

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

#408

Post by BaseballPhysics »

hypertele-Xii wrote: post #380
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 mean, why, say, develop the theory of evolution? At the time that was irrelevant to "everyday problems". "Charles Darwin discussed how selective breeding had been successful in producing change over time in his 1859 book, On the Origin of Species. Its first chapter discusses selective breeding and domestication of such animals as pigeons, cats, cattle, and dogs." (Wikipedia) Darwin's theory of evolution was liter…

> Darwin's theory of evolution was literally developed to explain the most significant food growing technique since irrigation.

Correct. The theory of evolution explained selective breeding.

But it wasn't needed to practice selective breeding, given it had been going on for literally millenia prior.

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

#409

Post by Nagyman »

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 pursuit of knowledge is insanely underrated.

> But what you are working on is completely useless for humanity.

You simply can't know that. We don't know what we don't know and we are but babies when it comes to understanding and harnessing the universe. One cannot possibly predict how _fundamental science_ might impact our future.

> We have so many problems where physics is needed (energy production to start with, and then exploring biology), the money should go there instead. Even if it means having less particle physicists the same way we have less philosophes.

This is a false dichotomy; we have the resources for both and more. Perhaps a lack of willpower/grit/political incentives in some arenas, but none of that is insurmountable.

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

#410

Post by maerF0x0 »

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.

> can basically invent as much money as it needs to

This is only true of the world's reserve currency (which is currently the USD). In all other cases they basically guarantee the issues stated elsewhere like inflation.

Post reply on HN