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Finding new physics will require a new particle collider

economist.com

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Re: Finding new physics will require a new particle collider

#161

Post by xyzzyz »

SiempreViernes wrote: post #155
djaque wrote: post #70

My personal opinion (and I might be biased since I'm not a collider guy) is that it's time to take a break from the energy frontier and put our efforts into other kinds of physics. There's a whole world out there besides "fixing" the standard model. I'm having a hard time finding it, but there's a quote from a famous physicist along the lines of "we already have a theory of everything we encounter in daily life, it's…

The field of x-ray light sources seems to be pretty well developed, lightsource.org lists 30 of them world wide, so adding one more doesn't look like it's going to critically impact anything except maybe the local community getting the extra jobs. There was at one point truly a fight about the relative importance of the various fields, but the condensed matter people won that. Just look at lightsources.org again, tha…

> that protein structure isn't as sexy for the public as the search for beyond the standard model physics.

You mean, looking for a cure for cancer isn’t as sexy for the public as some arcane things with strange particles nobody understands?

Re: Finding new physics will require a new particle collider

#162

Post by SomeoneFromCA »

Jabbles wrote: post #157
culturestate wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a difference between theoretical and practical expertise. I don't know much about particle accelerators, but I do know a bit about advanced manufacturing and I think you might be surprised at the degree to which Chinese industry is still functionally dependent on foreign machinery and expertise. This is a country that, until about two years ago, couldn't successfully produce an entire ballpoint pen using full…

> an entire ballpoint pen using fully domestic processes Which countries can?

USSR was capable of doing it in 1980s.

Re: Finding new physics will require a new particle collider

#163

Post by knzhou »

Nima-Arkani Hamed likes to point out that particle colliders aren't getting more expensive at all, in relative terms. The price tags are going up for just the same reason that you can't buy a loaf of bread for a nickel anymore, but as a fraction of GDP, the next big collider has always been about 0.01%.

In fact, if there's any identifiable trend at all, it's that this fraction has been falling. The LHC, for instance, was slapped together after the last would-be supercollider was defunded, and reuses the LEP tunnel (built in the 1980s). If you're wondering why we took so long to find the Higgs boson, it's because the field has already been shrinking under the pressure of declining funding for 40 years.

Re: Finding new physics will require a new particle collider

#164

Post by jjtheblunt »

djaque wrote: post #70

My personal opinion (and I might be biased since I'm not a collider guy) is that it's time to take a break from the energy frontier and put our efforts into other kinds of physics. There's a whole world out there besides "fixing" the standard model. I'm having a hard time finding it, but there's a quote from a famous physicist along the lines of "we already have a theory of everything we encounter in daily life, it's…

So well said!

Re: Finding new physics will require a new particle collider

#165

Post by AnimalMuppet »

axla wrote: post #19
dang wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't post flamebait here. It never leads anyplace new. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

One cannot leave smooth articles or headlines un-contradicted, for the unfortunate reason that if humans read something often enough, it tends to become the truth.

I'm pretty sure that anyone who reads HN regularly is quite well aware of the issue of housing costs in cities. It doesn't need to be inserted into an article about particle accelerators for us to be able to remember that there's problems in housing.

Re: Finding new physics will require a new particle collider

#166

Post by godelski »

dylan604 wrote: post #149
hpcjoe wrote: post #108

As a (non-practicing) physicist, I've always disliked the penchant of some in the HEP community to say what this article says. They (the HEP community) tends to equate physics with HEP physics. It's not. When this is pointed out to the people espousing this odd viewpoint, they usually respond with some passive aggressive comment. I've seen/experienced much of this during my time in research. New physics not requiring…

So, what other types of physics is not well understood and requires funding to further research. We know F=ma, things in motion stay in motion, blah, and so on. We know a current flowing down a path will generate a magnetic field. We electrons moving to a lower energy path will release energy. We know light bends in a lens, and how to make that useful. Essentially, the funding for pure research and discovery is going…

Super conductors, semiconductors, cosmology, qm (including computing), and optics to name a few. There's still significant research to be done in all these fields, and more.

Re: Finding new physics will require a new particle collider

#167

Post by godelski »

SiempreViernes wrote: post #155
djaque wrote: post #70

My personal opinion (and I might be biased since I'm not a collider guy) is that it's time to take a break from the energy frontier and put our efforts into other kinds of physics. There's a whole world out there besides "fixing" the standard model. I'm having a hard time finding it, but there's a quote from a famous physicist along the lines of "we already have a theory of everything we encounter in daily life, it's…

The field of x-ray light sources seems to be pretty well developed, lightsource.org lists 30 of them world wide, so adding one more doesn't look like it's going to critically impact anything except maybe the local community getting the extra jobs. There was at one point truly a fight about the relative importance of the various fields, but the condensed matter people won that. Just look at lightsources.org again, tha…

Considering that x-ray lithography still isn't a thing, I'd say that we have a lot more to do with x-ray research.

Also, according to CERN[0]

>As of 2017, more than 17 500 people from around the world work together to push the limits of knowledge. CERN’s staff members, numbering around 2500...comprising over 12 200 scientists of 110 nationalities, from institutes in more than 70 countries.

[0] https://home.cern/about/who-we-are/our-people

Re: Finding new physics will require a new particle collider

#168

Post by nurbl »

SiempreViernes wrote: post #155
djaque wrote: post #70

My personal opinion (and I might be biased since I'm not a collider guy) is that it's time to take a break from the energy frontier and put our efforts into other kinds of physics. There's a whole world out there besides "fixing" the standard model. I'm having a hard time finding it, but there's a quote from a famous physicist along the lines of "we already have a theory of everything we encounter in daily life, it's…

The field of x-ray light sources seems to be pretty well developed, lightsource.org lists 30 of them world wide, so adding one more doesn't look like it's going to critically impact anything except maybe the local community getting the extra jobs. There was at one point truly a fight about the relative importance of the various fields, but the condensed matter people won that. Just look at lightsources.org again, tha…

X-ray lightsources are improving too, not just multiplying. They are an important tool for many areas of science, not just physics but chemistry, biology and pharmaceutics to name a few. Whether there's any "new physics" left to discover there I guess depends on your point of view, but there's still plenty to learn about how matter works.

Re: Finding new physics will require a new particle collider

#169

Post by jcims »

Complete physics moron here, is there no way to use particle/anti-particle annihilation to drive collision energy up?

Also, i think if we invested the money for a new collider into an effort to develop what we've learned so far into a useful technology that inspires the general public, the funding for the next collider would take care of itself.

Re: Finding new physics will require a new particle collider

#170

Post by jjdredd »

hpcjoe wrote: post #108

As a (non-practicing) physicist, I've always disliked the penchant of some in the HEP community to say what this article says. They (the HEP community) tends to equate physics with HEP physics. It's not. When this is pointed out to the people espousing this odd viewpoint, they usually respond with some passive aggressive comment. I've seen/experienced much of this during my time in research. New physics not requiring…

SM/beyond SM is the only field in fundamental physics though. Everything else is either a consequence of those models or applied physics.
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