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Ten years after the Higgs, physicists face the nightmare of finding nothing else

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Re: Ten years after the Higgs, physicists face the nightmare of finding nothing else

#41

Post by highwaylights »

dlsa wrote: post #27

At least they are finding nothing and confirming they are finding nothing. Less scrupulous operators might be always finding something even if its not there. So that's a sign of good science. Maybe there's something they haven't found because there's so much data? Mix things up and look again? Change assumptions? Or as someone I know likes to say to various smaller humans: have you looked around the couch? Really? Ar…

They haven't found nothing. They've found something, which is nothing.

They've looked, been able to rule out some hypotheses of what they might find, and have established some evidence against others. Progress achieved, and the search continues.

Re: Ten years after the Higgs, physicists face the nightmare of finding nothing else

#42

Post by dlsa »

redler wrote: post #33
dlsa wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paperclips are important! We need to optimise paperclip production! some time later The entire universe is one giant paperclip constructor.

You may find the Universal Paperclips game amusing. https://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/index2.html

I already did.

Re: Ten years after the Higgs, physicists face the nightmare of finding nothing else

#44

Post by denton-scratch »

sdfhdhjdw3 wrote: post #28

Oh jesus christ, the constant whining! This is science. This is how it works. Maybe there's nothing else to discover, maybe it will take us 100 years, we don't know, that's why it's called research.

> Maybe there's nothing else to discover

AFAICS that is not one of the options; there are mysteries and contradictions whose explanations remain to be discovered. But maybe we can't discover more using the LHC (which I doubt).

Re: Ten years after the Higgs, physicists face the nightmare of finding nothing else

#45

Post by lmm »

bamboozled wrote: post #19

Why would this be a nightmare, isn't this good? They know they're going down the wrong path and can probably correct?

The prospect of actually "finishing" physics could be a nightmare for those working in it.

I had a friend who was a brilliant pure mathematician, his teachers and friends agreed he fully deserved to do a PhD in complex analysis - but complex analysis was essentially done in the 19th century, there's just not a lot of research opportunities there.

Re: Ten years after the Higgs, physicists face the nightmare of finding nothing else

#46

Post by Barrera »

Stagnation of scientific fields is normal and can last many years. In that time, little anomalies pile up, are swept under the rug, and largely forgotten. To admit anomalies can ruin careers, after all.

Eventually someone (often very young/inexperienced) comes along and upends the field by proposing a different model or doing the experiment whose weight breaks the camels back.

What's new here is the scale of the work. It's not clear how you upend a field where the price of entry is measured in billions of dollars.

Re: Ten years after the Higgs, physicists face the nightmare of finding nothing else

#47

Post by highwaylights »

Grimburger wrote: post #39
highwaylights wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Less than it cost to research, develop and manufacture all of the components in the device you typed this on.

I'd put that amortised cost at about $1000 upfront in 2022 dollars for my high quality internet comment and many others like it. If you need high energy, pure vacuums and ultra low temps, surely space is where such experiments should be conducted on bigger scales in future to push it further?

I can't speak to whether it would cost less to do these experiments in space, I'm no expert on the colliding of particles and the implications thereof.

In any case - how much of that $1000 is attributed to the research and development of the wheel in Ancient Mesopotamia?

How much is attributed to the discovery of electricity, and to General Relativity?

If we weren't attempting to get answers to fundamental questions we'd still be living in caves.

Re: Ten years after the Higgs, physicists face the nightmare of finding nothing else

#49

Post by piokoch »

This is bollocks. Typical clickbait title. There is still a lot of unsolved problems in physics, both experimental and theoretical. Particle physics is just one branch of science (and rather boring, if you ask me), popularized by CERN marketing, so people think new physics equals finding some new particle.

There is a lot of interesting problems waiting for exploration. I will not even try to list them "unsolved physics problems" googling shows enough.

Re: Ten years after the Higgs, physicists face the nightmare of finding nothing else

#50

Post by ramraj07 »

dlsa wrote: post #27

At least they are finding nothing and confirming they are finding nothing. Less scrupulous operators might be always finding something even if its not there. So that's a sign of good science. Maybe there's something they haven't found because there's so much data? Mix things up and look again? Change assumptions? Or as someone I know likes to say to various smaller humans: have you looked around the couch? Really? Ar…

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