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Please, don't build another Large Hadron Collider

bigthink.com

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

#121

Post by orbifold »

mhh__ wrote: post #101
pfortuny wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the same way that String Theorists are paying their bills from the taxpayers, mostly by pushing that theory as Physics.

Given that they are physicists and no one has actually been able to properly find an alternative to string theory isn't that what they're supposed to be doing? Isn't the main alternative LQG which is apparently a dead end?

In any case this is not how science works, you do theoretical physics by publishing in peer reviewed journals and your peers decide whether what you are doing is worthwhile or not. Both Smolin and Hossenfelder have been somewhat successful in doing so themselves, but Hossenfelder specifically didn’t manage to secure a professorship for various reasons and I am sure she has some axe to grind (again probably partially justified, partially not).

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

#122

Post by permo-w »

perryizgr8 wrote: post #44
rvieira wrote: post #9

Driven by this post, out of curiosity I started looking at the price tag of some mega-projects around the world. Interestingly, the most expensive ones are almost always highway systems. Can someone briefly explain why? I'm my naive view it's mostly asphalt and terrain work.

Probably because highways are almost always public projects, funded by taxpayer money. There is little incentive to be efficient and cost effective.

yeah that'll be it. it's not the colossal scale, expensive machinery, or cost of land. big government is to blame

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

#123

Post by JKCalhoun »

musha68k wrote: post #67
moonchrome wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your analogy is fundamentally flawed. More realistically : we can only build one car in the entire world, where a tiny minority of people can even understand the potential benefit, and anything they see will be completely useless for everyone else in day to day life because we need a civilisation level effort to even detect the implications of their theory. If their theory had some real world implications - you would…

Europe is so rich it can easily afford all of the great project ideas outlined in the article in addition to a new LHC (and then some). Let's think big indeed, the author unfortunately has a very reductive vision for the future. Instead how about: A renaissance of funding - BIG SCIENCE - education, jobs. That was basically the promise of the EU - peace through wealth - let's create some more. Let's bring back the exc…

I feel like the last renaissance of funding (BIG SCIENCE) was the space race.

Let's do that again. It was at least a lot more multi-disciplinary than an atom-smasher.

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

#124

Post by musha68k »

peoplefromibiza wrote: post #120
discreteevent wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I read it as: "Instead of building one really expensive car to continue to explore in one direction let's build lots of cars and explore in all directions". To me that shows an attitude full of curiosity.

except there are terrains where a car won't do and you need a giant expensive off-road vehicle. You wouldn't go to the north pole with a VW Beetle. Same thing applies here, smaller cars that explore in all direction can probably find a local maxima and get stuck there.

There also is no shortage in funds and we could actually do all of that and more.

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

#126

Post by SturgeonsLaw »

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.

True, however printed money's not free free, it devalues all money so it's sort of a backdoor tax. Assuming that there is an upper bound on a nation's science budget (and in practice, there is), then the article makes a valid point - particle colliders have diminishing returns as it stands right now, and that money might be better spent on thousands of smaller studies.

Forward thinking nations would take this approach, a single discovery in just one of these studies might unlock a huge amount of scientific, commercial or industrial value, and casting the net wide gives the greatest chance of making that discovery.

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

#127

Post by rbanffy »

discreteevent wrote: post #33
mehrdada wrote: post #11

Cannot disagree more. "Making a car is expensive, so let's not do that to explore 1000 miles out. Let's just have 1000 people walk one mile and explore." Simply ridiculous comparison. But sure, let's find a way to build/experiment LHC++ less expensively. What's concerning to me, however, is the attitude towards curiosity that this article exhibits. They should rename their domain to smallthink.com.

I read it as: "Instead of building one really expensive car to continue to explore in one direction let's build lots of cars and explore in all directions". To me that shows an attitude full of curiosity.

As all car analogies, this is bad. It's more like "instead of building a space probe to explore the solar system, let's build a thousand cars to explore the grass patch in a thousand directions".

Big science projects such as the LHC go very far and very deep in the very fabric of reality. Instead of building a thousand cars, it'd be a good idea to still build the next space probe while, at the same time, use what we learned building the previous one to build a couple cars to explore in different directions.

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

#128

Post by peoplefromibiza »

bsnal wrote: post #18
mschuster91 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The claim that we need to "invest into science" is outright bullshit. We don't need more investment into climate change science - we already know what to do to mitigate climate change and we have known it for decades (hell there is an article from over a hundred years ago that warns of the dangers of CO2 emissions [2]): ban ICE vehicles and coal power plants, promote public transit, massively restrict other uses of f…

Ban ICE vehicles, coal power plants and get rid of mass animal farming? And then we do what, go back to the caves?

or we go forward out of the cave we are living in now, believing we are so advanced that we are at the peak of civilization, while we still pray a non existent being for health and create energy by making giant holes in the ground that give us goo that then we set on fire.

Doesn't sound so advanced to me...

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

#129

Post by rbanffy »

musha68k wrote: post #124
peoplefromibiza wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

except there are terrains where a car won't do and you need a giant expensive off-road vehicle. You wouldn't go to the north pole with a VW Beetle. Same thing applies here, smaller cars that explore in all direction can probably find a local maxima and get stuck there.

There also is no shortage in funds and we could actually do all of that and more.

Just say you can weaponize the black holes formed in the LHC and you'll never run out of funding again.

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

#130

Post by IanCal »

uejfiweun wrote: post #10
ivanb wrote: post #7

Yeah, no. Only LHC can generate particle events in a highly controllable environment with enough energy. In physics there are energy thresholds. Below a certain level of energy a certain event just never happens. The low hanging fruit of discovering new physics looks like this. Build a bigger machine to collide particles with even more energy. Observe what comes out. It's a clear direction. Just throw money at the pr…

Does this sort of thing give us tangible benefits? Is it worth the investment? I get things like materials science, supercomputers, AI research, etc. But these colliders are so expensive, all for the sake of discovering a tiny subatomic particle that we have no way of using, AFAIK. But I know nothing, am I wrong here?

> But these colliders are so expensive

The LHC has been in operation for about 12-14 years, and has been a "thing" from planning onwards for almost 40. It's cost $9B, split between a huge list of countries.

Estimates of waste in the US medical system range from around $500B-$2T annualy. The lower end of that scale would support starting a new, fully funded, project of a similar scale for every state in the US every single year.

At a multi-national, multi-decade scale I just don't think it's actually that much money.

> all for the sake of discovering a tiny subatomic particle that we have no way of using

There are few ways I'd look at this.

One is that fundamental science can bleed into regular use over time, look at lasers. IIRC they had no clear use when invented, but are now absolutely key to so much. While the LHC had a headline goal (at least publicly) it's not just discovering one thing, it's a large tool to test fundamental physics.

Another is that this money and work doesn't go nowhere. People are paid to work on big complex problems, building and designing magnets, detectors, computing systems, software for analysis, etc. A lot of that is not going to be entirely custom, and at the very least supports companies & the supply chain for newer advanced technology. NASA I think occasionally puts out some lists of things that derived from their work.

Beyond that, I think there's value in getting a lot of people in a lot of countries to work together on a broadly non-political goal.

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