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CERN accepts $1B in private cash towards Future Circular Collider

physicsworld.com

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Re: CERN accepts $1B in private cash towards Future Circular Collider

#51

Post by crote »

chrystalkey wrote: post #31
arthurfirst wrote: post #30

it's already a black hole for funding

Said the grumpy grandpa, shaking his hand at the cloudy sky. I dont know what value that comment contributed, funding research is always a long shot. And often times it fails, but that is kinda its purpose, we dont know what we dont know.

You could use the same argument to justify spending $1B on searching for the Loch Ness Monster. The problem is, you can only spend money once. If you're spending $1B on the FCC you aren't spending that same $1B on all kinds of other research.

With the LHC there was a very clear goal: verify the Standard Model and prove (or disprove) the existence of the Higgs boson - and hopefully discover some unexpected stuff along the way. On the other hand, the FCC is mainly a shot in the dark: they aren't validating a widely-accepted theory, they are just hoping that if you spend enough money on a bigger collider something interesting will fall out.

Most research gives you at least some insight. With the FCC there is a very real possibility that the insight will be "our $20B collider found absolutely nothing, now give us $1T to build an even bigger one". Sure, funding research is a long shot, but at a certain point you're just setting money on fire.

Re: CERN accepts $1B in private cash towards Future Circular Collider

#52

Post by daveguy »

bryant wrote: post #45
mike-the-mikado wrote: post #24

As someone who supports pure science research, I would be interested to understand if any of the discoveries of CERN (and related projects) in the last 50 years (say) have proved to have practical application. (Specifically, "discoveries", not technology developed in support of the research)

Before your edit: The world wide web: https://home.cern/science/computing/birth-web certain medical imaging: https://home.cern/news/news/knowledge-sharing/medipix-partic... grid computing advances: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00104... PIMMS: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4724719/ Medicis: https://home.cern/news/news/accelerators/cern-accelerates-me... FLASH radiotherapy: https://…

I don't know why you were getting down voted for this. Discovery during technological development of scientific instrumentation is one of the greatest returns on investment of funding pure science research. And like your sibling comment says, the pure science helps direct applied science, eg cutting edge materials science. Long tail, if for no other reason, because its a whole other development process that happens after the pure science.

Re: CERN accepts $1B in private cash towards Future Circular Collider

#53

Post by crote »

niemandhier wrote: post #6
murkt wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can they alter humanity? What's the difference for humanity since CERN found Higgs particle? In what ways could the potential dark matter particle detection alter humanity?

It’s a place where extremely skilled people work highly motivated on humanities hardest problems at scale. CERN pushed distributed computing and storage before anyone else hat problems on that scale. CERN pushed edge computing for massive data analysis before anyone else even generated data at that rate. CERN is currently pushing the physical boundaries of device synchronisation ( Check „ White Rabbit“ ), same for da…

Sure, but if experimental physics don't matter, wouldn't it be a far better idea to develop all those kinds of technology without actually building the expensive collider itself?

Re: CERN accepts $1B in private cash towards Future Circular Collider

#55

Post by jocaal »

mrtksn wrote: post #47
mike-the-mikado wrote: post #24

As someone who supports pure science research, I would be interested to understand if any of the discoveries of CERN (and related projects) in the last 50 years (say) have proved to have practical application. (Specifically, "discoveries", not technology developed in support of the research)

With that kind of fundamental science I would expect no practical applications but guidance for researchers that work on practical applications. There are many ideas on how the universe works, right? Knowing which ideas are closer to the truth must be helpful to people who work on nano scale stuff, like chips so fine that quantum effect are considerable. It must be somewhere between knowing if there's alien life or n…

What actually happens is, smart people are isolated from the problems of the general population and work towards meaningless goals at the cost of the everyday tax payer doing unglamorous work to earn a living. Decoupling science from the state will also reduce the meaningless competition of academia that leads to the publish-or-perish and replication crises, because the people who will be doing it, will do it for the love of the game, regardless of social status and money.

If you want to live in this world, you have to trade your time and provide value to others. You shouldn't get a free pass because, just because you convinced yourself and the government that you're smarter than everyone else.

Re: CERN accepts $1B in private cash towards Future Circular Collider

#56

Post by somethingsome »

bonsai_spool wrote: post #44
somethingsome wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by 'any evidence that works better Than alternatives'? It can deliver radiations to the brain that will peak at the exact position of the cancer, and reduce irradiation in sane tissues. The 'better' is 'less irradiation to sane tissues' that in turn reduces the risk for new cancers. Note: I'm not expert on the matter, but I had technical visits to IBA and know several PhDs that work there

> What do you mean by 'any evidence that works better Than alternatives'? I mean exactly that, clinical trials demonstrating that proton therapy is superior to radiation therapy. This is not a question about the physics but about how patients respond (and whether the expense of delivering proton therapy outweighs the expected marginal benefits).

As a non expert, I can't pronounce myself on the subject, I found this recent study:

https://www.mdanderson.org/newsroom/research-newsroom/proton...

But on the subject of discoveries and practical uses, the IBA cyclotrons are also used for other purposes than proton therapy: cleaning exotic fruits from dangerous substances and personalized medicine.

Re: CERN accepts $1B in private cash towards Future Circular Collider

#58

Post by forgotpwd16 »

sandworm101 wrote: post #23
sampo wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> findings can alter humanity itself Higgs boson was predicted in theory in 1964, and found in LHC in CERN in 2012-2013. With this, all elementary particles in the standard model of particle physics have been found. From the 1970s to 2010s, physicists believed in a theory called supersymmetry, which predicted supersymmetric partner particles for the known elementary particles. But these should have been already found…

A collider produces far more than new particles or explanations. They produce papers and phds. In effect, thier primary goal is to produce stem careers. The new particles are just the public announcements. The collider doesnt even need to be functional. Much/most of the work occures before first light, before anyone turns it on. The design of the ring and its innumerable detectors and subsystems takes decades. So a g…

>The same discussion can happen re the ISS. Its primary purpose was not science.

But it's worth noting that many experiments took place on ISS covering few domains, examples being AMS (cosmology), CAL (quantum physics), SAFFIRE (combustion), and Veggie (botany/sustainability).

Re: CERN accepts $1B in private cash towards Future Circular Collider

#59

Post by T-A »

mrtksn wrote: post #47
mike-the-mikado wrote: post #24

As someone who supports pure science research, I would be interested to understand if any of the discoveries of CERN (and related projects) in the last 50 years (say) have proved to have practical application. (Specifically, "discoveries", not technology developed in support of the research)

With that kind of fundamental science I would expect no practical applications but guidance for researchers that work on practical applications. There are many ideas on how the universe works, right? Knowing which ideas are closer to the truth must be helpful to people who work on nano scale stuff, like chips so fine that quantum effect are considerable. It must be somewhere between knowing if there's alien life or n…

> Knowing which ideas are closer to the truth must be helpful to people who work on nano scale stuff, like chips so fine that quantum effect are considerable.

Sorry, no. That's solid state physics on inter-atomic scales: tenths of nanometers, a handful of electronvolts. The LHC probes physics at the electroweak scale: hundreds of billions of electronvolts, billionths of nanometers. It has zero relevance to anything of practical use.

Re: CERN accepts $1B in private cash towards Future Circular Collider

#60

Post by spongebobstoes »

crote wrote: post #53
niemandhier wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a place where extremely skilled people work highly motivated on humanities hardest problems at scale. CERN pushed distributed computing and storage before anyone else hat problems on that scale. CERN pushed edge computing for massive data analysis before anyone else even generated data at that rate. CERN is currently pushing the physical boundaries of device synchronisation ( Check „ White Rabbit“ ), same for da…

Sure, but if experimental physics don't matter, wouldn't it be a far better idea to develop all those kinds of technology without actually building the expensive collider itself?

that's like building an API with no customers -- rarely a good idea
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