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

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

physicsworld.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 126 posts

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

#91

Post by somethingsome »

bonsai_spool wrote: post #71
somethingsome wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

In Europe at least, many insurances cover it if you have the right criterias.

From my visits, they mostly focus on children that have some very nasty cancers, the IBA hospitals are all designed with children in mind (to avoid stressing them), and from my memory, a unique hospital is often enough to treat a whole country for the kind of cancer they target.

Now, if it is on par with classical radiotherapy BUT it gives less subsequent problems, it might be worth the cost as subsequent problems can be as expensive or even more than the original treatment. It becomes an actuarial issue to know where is the tradeoff.

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

#92

Post by pjmlp »

bonsai_spool wrote: post #84
pjmlp wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people also believe praying beats vaccination programs. Unfortunately I have got to know people that are only still around me thanks to this technology that you find needless.

> Some people also believe praying beats vaccination programs. > Unfortunately I have got to know people that are only still around me thanks to this technology that you find needless. There is no way to know whether these people would have been served better by receiving radiation therapy. Your statement is tantamount to believing in prayer.

I know they are better than not having received anything at all.

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

#93

Post by roody15 »

jocaal wrote: post #55
mrtksn wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Agree this reminds me of the level my Herman Hesse “The Glass Bead Game”. Academics and researchers have a moral duty to give back to the larger society that enables their endeavors .

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Glass_Bead_Game

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

#94

Post by dwaltrip »

T-A wrote: post #59
mrtksn wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 o…

Isn’t one of the limitations to transistor density quantum tunneling?

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

#97

Post by naasking »

surgical_fire wrote: post #86
naasking wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Do you have evidence that "1000 smaller experiments" would give payoffs? And how do you measure payoffs? With how much money you get in return? Should scientific research expect this?

Payoffs have many forms, the most important for pure research being "advancement of knowledge". We have nearly zero expectation of knowledge advancement from yet another radio frequency collider.

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

#98

Post by dgfl »

dwaltrip wrote: post #94
T-A wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 o…

Isn’t one of the limitations to transistor density quantum tunneling?

In a few cases and in a simplistic sense, yes. But the point of the comment you’re replying to still stands completely. Quantum tunneling is nothing exotic and we have plenty of devices exploiting the principle (e.g. tunnel diodes). It was basically fully understood the moment the Schrödinger equation appeared.

These accelerators are as large as they are to try and find mismatches between theory and experiment. And even then, we can explain virtually every experiment that the LHC has conducted. If we did find something unexpected with one of these colliders, it would only really apply to experiments made in the collider. Particle physics is irrelevant for everyday stuff since we already fully understand everything involved.

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

#99

Post by CamperBob2 »

jocaal wrote: post #89
surgical_fire wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes no sense. "Decoupling science from the state" is just bullshit from "government icky, taxation is theft" morons. No, governments should definitely fund scientific research. When it is public it is the only guarantee that it will benefit everyone. Scientific research done by private entities is kneecapped by their financial interests (and be very sure they will bury any advance that jeopardize their financi…

How are radio telescopes and mars rovers in my interest? How would you know what is in my interest? I worked for my money so the person in the best position to judge what is in my interest is me. I am sorry for you if that is such a hard concept to understand.

It would be great if we had line-item vetoes on our tax forms. However, we don't. You have to fund some things you don't like or agree with, and so do I, and so do the rest of the taxpayers.

That's just how taxes work. Like capitalism and democracy, taxes suck, but nobody has come up with adequate substitutes that check all the necessary boxes.

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

#100

Post by dgfl »

jocaal wrote: post #89
surgical_fire wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes no sense. "Decoupling science from the state" is just bullshit from "government icky, taxation is theft" morons. No, governments should definitely fund scientific research. When it is public it is the only guarantee that it will benefit everyone. Scientific research done by private entities is kneecapped by their financial interests (and be very sure they will bury any advance that jeopardize their financi…

How are radio telescopes and mars rovers in my interest? How would you know what is in my interest? I worked for my money so the person in the best position to judge what is in my interest is me. I am sorry for you if that is such a hard concept to understand.

You’re free to vote towards your goals, or move to countries which invest basically nothing in research. There’s plenty of them. I suspect you may not enjoy such great quality of life there.

In case it wasn’t a rhetorical question, they’re in your interest because through the process of building them we improve our understanding of the world, develop new technologies which the industrial system wouldn’t have backed, educate the next generation of engineers and scientists, and inspire the kids that will form the second next generation.

Private research already exists and works well in some fields, mine included. But public research is just as important since it can afford higher risk and longer scope. You can’t begin to count the startups that were created as spin-offs of university research groups.

Post reply on HN