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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

#71

Post by bonsai_spool »

somethingsome wrote: post #56
bonsai_spool wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

This may be one of the good cases, then. I'm not an expert in cancer but I am a biologist and physician. The head and neck cancer (here) and various pediatric indications get the most attention but it has felt that proton therapy has been seeking an indication for almost 40 years now.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

The study was designed to show non-inferiority, which doesn't preclude their ability to show an improvement. It would be helpful to see other studies before determining that proton therapy is better (or even non-inferior) to radiation therapy. It's certainly much more expensive, which shows up in the study as many subjects being denied insurance coverage.

Edit: This is now in the weeds, but the per-protocol participants didn't fare better than the intention-to-treat participants, which one might expect since insurance approval lead to dozens of subjects changing treatment arms.

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

#72

Post by astrobe_ »

naasking wrote: post #63

What a waste. So many more science experiments with better expected ROI could be funded for the money needed for the FCC, and we're not even expecting any significant new insights from it.

Sometimes you get huge value from things you didn't expect ;-)

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

#74

Post by killerstorm »

naasking wrote: post #62
port11 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fundamental research is entwined with practical applications, you can’t have the later without the former. Europe is known for FR, while everyone else seems to be better at commercialising. It’s alright, progress for us is progress for everyone.

That's not an answer to the specific question asked. Not all types of fundamental research have the same potential for material benefits, or the same cost.

[dead]

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

#75

Post by colechristensen »

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)

This is such a weasel question because you can keep saying whatever was new was "just technology" not pure discoveries.

No, there hasn't been any big "new physics" since the standard model in the 70s, everything has been refinement and specifics. You can't go to Walmart and buy something that couldn't exist unless we knew the precise mass of the top quark or the Higgs boson.

There have been a tremendous amount of developments and technologies that have come out of CERN with varying degrees of closeness to particle physics, but depending on who you're talking to, most of them don't count.

>(Specifically, "discoveries", not technology developed in support of the research)

Ok, but Tim Berners-Lee was working at CERN when he created HTTP, HTML, etc.

The Internet through web browsers as you know it was created at CERN in order to enable scientific communication and collaboration.

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

#76

Post by whatshisface »

crote wrote: post #51
chrystalkey wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That's not true. There are a huge number of theories that would be falsified by a more precise measurement of the Higgs mass.

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

#77

Post by naasking »

astrobe_ wrote: post #72
naasking wrote: post #63

What a waste. So many more science experiments with better expected ROI could be funded for the money needed for the FCC, and we're not even expecting any significant new insights from it.

Sometimes you get huge value from things you didn't expect ;-)

1. That's not an argument unless the evidence for these payoffs is so huge as to dwarf the payoffs of 1000 smaller experiments. There is no evidence of this.

2. There is no world in which this applies to particle physics at this point, especially using radio frequency particle collider tech. This is known physics and there are no mysteries in the regime the FCC would reach.

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

#78

Post by dwaltrip »

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)

Why do you not count the technology developments needed to do the research?

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

#79

Post by hammock »

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://…

It’s an interesting question. After all we were using electricity, batteries, electric motors, radios and telegraphs long before we ever discovered electrons and photons.

But discovering the electron was necessary for us to develop vacuum tubes. And developing quantum mechanics was necessary for developing transistors.

Think about the relative impact of the telegraph vs the vacuum tube.

When we do eventually find something to do with the W and Z bosons, it’s likely to look more like a transistor-level tech than an immediately practical tool like a lightbulb. But the second-order effects from whatever that new tech turns out to be, have the potential to be world-shattering.

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

#80

Post by pjmlp »

SoftTalker wrote: post #64
pjmlp wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cancer treatment goes back to particle physics research at CERN, the Web was born there, cloud was previously known as Grid Computing at CERN, Three examples of how humanity would not be as we know it today without CERN. As Alumni, there are many other changes that trace back to CERN. We don't sit only on the H1 beer garden and go skiing.

> the Web was born there The internet existed, hypertext existed, it was just happenstance that it was put together there. It would have happened somewhere, maybe not exactly the same protocol but the same end result.

Indeed and we are all still waiting for Xanadu.
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