Finding new physics will require a new particle collider

Post by agumonkey » Sun, May 10, 2020, 7:24 PM UTC

godelski wrote: post #166

dylan604 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Post by magicalhippo » Sun, May 10, 2020, 7:38 PM UTC

djaque wrote: post #128

magicalhippo wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, there seems to be a lot of interesting areas in, for example, condensed matter physics[1] such as topological insulators[2] which appear have a lot higher chance of having a measurable impact on our lives. That said, there's a lot of know-how in building the complex parts that make up the accelerators and detectors, reducing the HEP investments could erode that know-how. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conde…

I'd contest that second point. I'm actually one of those people that builds the parts that make accelerators (accelerator physics PhD student). There's a lot more interesting accelerator tech outside of the energy frontier. My specific interests for instance are how we can build university scale light and matter sources for atomic physics. It requires the same types of advances that will power future colliders, but e…

Post by jjdredd » Sun, May 10, 2020, 7:47 PM UTC

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #119

kochthesecond wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think its too dismissive to claim it will have 0 practical applications. Often this type of fundamental research take decades to result in something useful in an unexpected way. We can only go where the roads lead us, who are we to dismiss the roads not taken.

You're dismissing other roads not taken. What is more likely to revolutionise physics - spending $20bn on an incremental increase in collider energies, on spending $20bn funding a new generation of PhDs and postdocs exploring quantum gravity fundamentals? At this point practical HEP shows every signs of being a boondoggle. There are plenty of hard theoretical questions that haven't been answered, but with a few excep…

Post by eigenspace » Sun, May 10, 2020, 7:50 PM UTC

fsflover wrote: post #175

eigenspace wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that the effects they're looking at are confined to such high energy and small length scales that they're utterly invisible to things even on the scale of a single proton. It's very difficult to imagine how (or even why) one would ever build a device that takes advantage of a TeV scale effect to do something useful, given that these effects are meaningless to the sorts of matter we care about and inter…

You could say the same during invention of quantum mechanics: "They are looking at the effects on the scale of single atom/electron, hardly ever useful in our everyday life." Or about going to the space. You can never know what new discoveries bring.

Post by ngcc_hk » Sun, May 10, 2020, 7:57 PM UTC