HN: Governments don’t fund enough scientific research projects. Also HN: Governments shouldn’t be funding this scientific research project. Can’t win with this crowd.
HN isn't a person.
CERN approves plans for a $23B, 62-mile long super-collider
151–160 of 223 posts
Re: CERN approves plans for a $23B, 62-mile long super-collider
#152I heard a top phycists are going to china as they are building the next generation there. Is this a strategy to stop that.
It's more like hedging their bets. The Chinese proposals (CEPC + SppC) are simultaneously underwhelming in terms of performance specs and over-ambitious in terms of timescale. There's also always a chance that they will never materialise. If they do actually get built, construction of the FCC will be cancelled and CERN will participate in (and hopefully improve) CEPC+SppC. Similarly if Japan builds the ILC, FCC-ee will be cancelled and CERN will join that while bringing forward the FCC-hh.
Re: CERN approves plans for a $23B, 62-mile long super-collider
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
The big one was the discovery of the Higgs boson, a missing piece of the so-called 'standard model' of particle physics, plus a bunch of other stuff (lack of evidence for super-symmetry so far, discovery of some tetra- and pentaquarks states, potentially some hints of physics beyond the standard model from B-meson decays, ...). In large part, it 'merely' confirmed our current theories, disappointing people hoping for…
That's the headliner so far, but LHC has produced an enormous amount of data. There are also some quite interesting findings for example from LHCb: Tetraquarks: https://arxiv.org/abs/2006.11952 Lepton flavor violation: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2006.07287.pdf
LHCb has not seen lepton flavour violation, and neither has anyone else outside of neutrino oscillations.
LHCb, Belle and BaBar have however seen hints of lepton flavour non-universality.
Re: CERN approves plans for a $23B, 62-mile long super-collider
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
> [...] instead of doing blue-sky research. In 1921 the photoelectric effect, for which Einstein won a Nobel, was blue-sky research with no practical applications. Fast forward a few decades and it was used as the basis for making laser: you know, those things that all modern communication uses to transfer information over long distances. While it is up to debate how much to spend on "blue-sky research", cutting off…
photoelectric effect in 1921 was definitely not blue-sky research with no practical applications; it was one of the core problems in physics at the time.
> it was one of the core problems in physics at the time.
What were the specific "practical" problems that investigating and figuring it out that were solved?
Re: CERN approves plans for a $23B, 62-mile long super-collider
#155I'd guess Prof. Sabine Hossenfelder (herself a physicist, and a Research Fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies) must be pretty annoyed, to put it politely. She posits that a lot of current physicists are working with outdated notions of "beauty": (quote) But if it’s clear that putting forward new hypotheses just because they are beautiful doesn’t mean they’re likely to be right, then why do theorists…
Oh come on, every second sentence she writes outside of a book mentions her books. Do you really have to quote /that/ part. I am a Prof. for Nuclear Physics, so maybe HEP-adjacent and biased. I don't think I will ever get much use of LHC/FCC myself (EIC will do that for the stuff I'm doing), but I'm happy if they will build it. It's a fallacy to believe that this money takes away from other research. There would be e…
Sorry, I didn't meant to quote "that" part (by that I take it that you're referring to the "beautiful theory" aspect — edit: I think you were referring to the mention about her book) to provoke. I just wanted to briefly mention Hossenfelder's position as I haven't seen it mentioned when I saw the thread.
And yeah, this might be a "piddling" amount compared to the military spending.
On the whole, we're in agreement; as the 'PS' in my first comment hints, I'm of course all for anything that instills scientific curiosity in the broader public, while discovering new stuff or carefully sussing out bogus hypotheses.
Re: CERN approves plans for a $23B, 62-mile long super-collider
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's the headliner so far, but LHC has produced an enormous amount of data. There are also some quite interesting findings for example from LHCb: Tetraquarks: https://arxiv.org/abs/2006.11952 Lepton flavor violation: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2006.07287.pdf
LHCb has not seen lepton flavour violation, and neither has anyone else outside of neutrino oscillations. LHCb, Belle and BaBar have however seen hints of lepton flavour non-universality.
You are right, I miss-typed, I had non-universality in mind.
Re: CERN approves plans for a $23B, 62-mile long super-collider
#157Re: CERN approves plans for a $23B, 62-mile long super-collider
#158Honest question, what are some engineering spin-offs that could come out of this? I'm asking because I'm reminded of a Peter Thiel interview where it's mentioned that, despite changing our view of the universe, no "real world" applications came out of the quark model discovered in the 1960s. This is different from a project like ITER, which is also hugely expensive but could be a game changer.
I recently posted a link to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_particle_discoveri... in another thread. Go on and look at it. Cross off composite particles like Antihelium-4 and antihydrogen, just look for the timeline of newly verified particles by decade. Note that each was predicted far in advance of the actual verification. (As a side question, ask "What newly predicted fundamental particles are we attempt…
Isn't the best way to try to see if the Standard Model breaks is by pumping more energy into it? (And watching for the decay channel anomalies and whatnot?)
What are other ways to check its predictions?
Re: CERN approves plans for a $23B, 62-mile long super-collider
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
The goal of every top-tier collider is new physics, that greater understanding that progresses mankind. What did the previous collider discover? It certainly validated current theories, but did it create anything new? If it did, why do we yet need a new one? If there is new physics to study let us keep the experiment going as is to study that for a generation or two. If there is no new physics from the last experimen…
>What did the previous collider discover? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgs_boson >why do we think that building a bigger microscope will be any different? Why do we think building a bigger telescope then Hubble will be any different: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope
The James Webb Space Telescope is an interesting case. It has gone hugely over budget. The original budget was $1.6 billion and is now around $10 billion. In 2010, the journal Nature called it "The telescope that ate astronomy" because its expanding budget was stopping other important astronomy projects. [1]
The JWST is also hugely behind schedule, to the point that XKCD mocks it [2]. Originally scheduled for 2007, the launch date repeatedly slipped. The latest date, 2021, is now in doubt.
I think there's a big risk that this CERN supercollider would have the same cost and schedule risks.
[1] https://www.nature.com/news/2010/101027/full/4671028a.html [2] https://xkcd.com/2014/
Re: CERN approves plans for a $23B, 62-mile long super-collider
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh come on, every second sentence she writes outside of a book mentions her books. Do you really have to quote /that/ part. I am a Prof. for Nuclear Physics, so maybe HEP-adjacent and biased. I don't think I will ever get much use of LHC/FCC myself (EIC will do that for the stuff I'm doing), but I'm happy if they will build it. It's a fallacy to believe that this money takes away from other research. There would be e…
Sorry, I didn't meant to quote "that" part (by that I take it that you're referring to the "beautiful theory" aspect — edit: I think you were referring to the mention about her book ) to provoke. I just wanted to briefly mention Hossenfelder's position as I haven't seen it mentioned when I saw the thread. And yeah, this might be a "piddling" amount compared to the military spending. On the whole, we're in agreement;…
No offense taken! If anything, I'm annoyed by her, not by you quoting her.
I meant the "in my book" part. But thinking about it, it's important to give the context: she is trying to sell a book, and why I don't want to speculate whether it's her primary motivation, it is /one/ motivation, otherwise she wouldn't mention it all the time.