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Is particle physics dead, dying, or just hard?

quantamagazine.org

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Re: Is particle physics dead, dying, or just hard?

#181

Post by Iulioh »

brazzy wrote: post #176
sigmoid10 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This kind of slow, incremental improvement that costs tens of billions of dollars and takes decades gave us the microchips that ultimately enabled you to type this comment on your phone/computer. The return on that investment is obvious. But it is not just about making money: The entire field of radiation therapy for cancer exists and continues to improve because people figured out ways to control particle beams with…

> This kind of slow, incremental improvement that costs tens of billions of dollars and takes decades gave us the microchips that ultimately enabled you to type this comment on your phone/computer. No. These two cases are absurdly different, and you're even completely misunderstanding (or misrepresenting) the meaning of the "tens of billions of dollars" figure. Microchips were an incremental improvement where the ind…

I'm torn between "yes, these experinets are way too expensive and the knowlage is too niche to be really usefull" and "We said this about A LOT and we found utility in surprising ways so it could be a gamble worth taking"

That's the problem with cutting edge reaserch....you don't even know if you will ever needed it or if a trilion dollar industry is waiting for just a number to be born

Re: Is particle physics dead, dying, or just hard?

#182

Post by plastic-enjoyer »

brazzy wrote: post #176
sigmoid10 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This kind of slow, incremental improvement that costs tens of billions of dollars and takes decades gave us the microchips that ultimately enabled you to type this comment on your phone/computer. The return on that investment is obvious. But it is not just about making money: The entire field of radiation therapy for cancer exists and continues to improve because people figured out ways to control particle beams with…

> This kind of slow, incremental improvement that costs tens of billions of dollars and takes decades gave us the microchips that ultimately enabled you to type this comment on your phone/computer. No. These two cases are absurdly different, and you're even completely misunderstanding (or misrepresenting) the meaning of the "tens of billions of dollars" figure. Microchips were an incremental improvement where the ind…

> Absolutely not

Engineers not being able to fathom that by building this huge-ass and complicated machines to answer questions about the fundamentals of nature, other problems are solved or new things are invented that improve and change our life will never not be funny to me

Re: Is particle physics dead, dying, or just hard?

#183

Post by bayindirh »

brazzy wrote: post #176
sigmoid10 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This kind of slow, incremental improvement that costs tens of billions of dollars and takes decades gave us the microchips that ultimately enabled you to type this comment on your phone/computer. The return on that investment is obvious. But it is not just about making money: The entire field of radiation therapy for cancer exists and continues to improve because people figured out ways to control particle beams with…

> This kind of slow, incremental improvement that costs tens of billions of dollars and takes decades gave us the microchips that ultimately enabled you to type this comment on your phone/computer. No. These two cases are absurdly different, and you're even completely misunderstanding (or misrepresenting) the meaning of the "tens of billions of dollars" figure. Microchips were an incremental improvement where the ind…

> Absolutely not.

I'd not be so sure about that. Doing this research will probably allow us to answer "it works but we don't know exactly why" cases in things we use everyday (i.e. li-ion batteries). Plus, while the machines are getting bigger, the understood tech is getting smaller as the laws of physics allows.

If we are going to insist on "Absolutely not" path, we should start with proof-of-work crypto farms and AI datacenters which consume county or state equivalents of electricity and water resources for low quality slop.

Re: Is particle physics dead, dying, or just hard?

#184

Post by jhanschoo »

adrianN wrote: post #172
jhanschoo wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, and I think that your claim is compatible with the comment that you are responding to. Indeed, perhaps it's turtles all the way down and there is systematic complexity upon systematic complexity governing our universe that humanity has been just too limited to experience. For a historical analogy, classical physics was and is sufficient for most practical purposes, and we didn't need relativity or quantum me…

The experiments that lead to the invention of quantum theory are relatively simple and involve objects you can touch with your bare hands without damaging them. Some are done in high school, eg the photoelectric effect.

Whereas I did hedge my point regarding macroscopic quantum phenomena, I think that the quantum nature of the photoelectric effect would have been harder to discern without modern access to pure wavelength lighting. But you could still rely on precise optics to purify mixed light I suppose. But without even optics it should be even harder.

Re: Is particle physics dead, dying, or just hard?

#185

Post by bl0rg »

brazzy wrote: post #176
sigmoid10 wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This kind of slow, incremental improvement that costs tens of billions of dollars and takes decades gave us the microchips that ultimately enabled you to type this comment on your phone/computer. The return on that investment is obvious. But it is not just about making money: The entire field of radiation therapy for cancer exists and continues to improve because people figured out ways to control particle beams with…

> This kind of slow, incremental improvement that costs tens of billions of dollars and takes decades gave us the microchips that ultimately enabled you to type this comment on your phone/computer. No. These two cases are absurdly different, and you're even completely misunderstanding (or misrepresenting) the meaning of the "tens of billions of dollars" figure. Microchips were an incremental improvement where the ind…

> The latest ones cost billions and have confirmed a few things we already thought to be true.

Yes, but we had hopes that it would lead to more. And had lead to more, something only known to be false in hindsight, who knows where that would have ended us up? What if it upended the standard model instead of reinforcing it?

> Absolutely not.

What are we supposed to do then? As humans, I mean. No one knows why we're here, what the universe really is like. We have some pretty good models that we know are wrong and we don't know what wonders the theoretical implications of any successor models might bring. That said, do we really need to motivate fundamental research into the nature of reality with a promise of technology?

I'm not arguing for mindlessly building bigger accelerators, and I don't think anyone is - there has to exist a solid line of reasoning to warrant the effort. And we might find that there are smarter ways of getting there for less effort - great! But if there isn't, discrediting the venue of particle accelerators due to their high upfront cost as well as historical results would be a mistake. We can afford it, and we don't know the future.

Re: Is particle physics dead, dying, or just hard?

#186

Post by longfacehorrace »

drdeca wrote: post #107
epsilonsalts wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah that's the outcome theorized by Gödel. Incompleteness is inherent to our understanding as the universe is too vast and endless for us to ever capture a holistic model of all the variables. Gödel says something specific about human axiomatic systems, akin to a special relativity, but it generalizes to physical reality too. A written system is made physical writing it out, and never complete. Demonstrates that our…

Gödel’s incompleteness says almost nothing about this. I wish people wouldn’t try to apply it in ways that it very clearly is not applicable to. An environment living in Conway’s Game of Life could be quite capable of hypothesizing that it is implemented in Conway’s Game of Life.

That's not what they were saying.

Systems can hypothesize about themselves but they cannot determine why the rules they can learn exist in the first place. Prior states are no longer observable so there is always incomplete history.

Conway's Game of Life can't explain its own origins just itself. Because the origins are no longer observable after they occur.

What are the origins of our universe? We can only guess without the specificity of direct observation. Understanding is incomplete with only simulation and theory.

So the comment is right. We would expect to be able to define what is now but not completely know what came before.

Re: Is particle physics dead, dying, or just hard?

#188

Post by Paracompact »

dgfl wrote: post #165
tehjoker wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

another one that thinks they solved the hard problem of consciousness by addressing the easy problem. how on earth does a feedback system cause matter to "wake up"? we are making lots of progress on the easy problem though

This is not as good a refusal as you think it is. To me (and I imagine, the parent poster) there is no extra logical step needed. The problem IS solved in this sense. If it’s completely impossible to even imagine what the answer to a question is, as is the case here, it’s probably the wrong question to pose. Is there any answer you’d be satisfied by? To me the hard problem is more or less akin to looking for the true…

> If it’s completely impossible to even imagine what the answer to a question is, as is the case here, it’s probably the wrong question to pose. Is there any answer you’d be satisfied by?

I would be very satisfied to have an answer, or even just convincing heuristic arguments, for the following:

(1) What systems experience consciousness? For example, is a computer as conscious as a rock, as conscious as a human, or somewhere in between? (2) What are the fundamental symmetries and invariants of consciousness? Does it impact consciousness whether a system is flipped in spacetime, skewed in spacetime, isomorphically recast in different physical media, etc.? (3) What aspects of a system's organization give rise to different qualia? What does the possible parameter space (or set of possible dynamical traces, or what have you) of qualia look like? (4) Is a consciousness a distinct entity, like some phase transition with a sharp boundary, or is there no fundamentally rigorous sense in which we can distinguish each and every consciousness in the universe? (5) What explains the nature of phenomena like blindsight or split brain patients, where seemingly high-level recognition, coordination, and/or intent occurs in the absence of any conscious awareness? Generally, what behavior-affecting processes in our brains do and do not affect our conscious experience?

And so on. I imagine you'll take issue with all of these questions, perhaps saying that "consciousness" isn't well defined, or that an "explanation" can only refer to functional descriptions of physical matter, but I figured I would at least answer your question honestly.

Re: Is particle physics dead, dying, or just hard?

#189

Post by tokai »

bl0rg wrote: post #185
brazzy wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This kind of slow, incremental improvement that costs tens of billions of dollars and takes decades gave us the microchips that ultimately enabled you to type this comment on your phone/computer. No. These two cases are absurdly different, and you're even completely misunderstanding (or misrepresenting) the meaning of the "tens of billions of dollars" figure. Microchips were an incremental improvement where the ind…

> The latest ones cost billions and have confirmed a few things we already thought to be true. Yes, but we had hopes that it would lead to more. And had lead to more, something only known to be false in hindsight, who knows where that would have ended us up? What if it upended the standard model instead of reinforcing it? > Absolutely not. What are we supposed to do then? As humans, I mean. No one knows why we're her…

>I'm not arguing for mindlessly building bigger accelerators, and I don't think anyone is

But you are and they are. Just by the comments here its clear that even suggesting not to use untold billions on maybe pushing theoretical physics a little forward is meet with scorn. The value proposition either, in knowledge or technology, is just not well argued anymore besides hand waving.

Re: Is particle physics dead, dying, or just hard?

#190

Post by brazzy »

bl0rg wrote: post #185
brazzy wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This kind of slow, incremental improvement that costs tens of billions of dollars and takes decades gave us the microchips that ultimately enabled you to type this comment on your phone/computer. No. These two cases are absurdly different, and you're even completely misunderstanding (or misrepresenting) the meaning of the "tens of billions of dollars" figure. Microchips were an incremental improvement where the ind…

> The latest ones cost billions and have confirmed a few things we already thought to be true. Yes, but we had hopes that it would lead to more. And had lead to more, something only known to be false in hindsight, who knows where that would have ended us up? What if it upended the standard model instead of reinforcing it? > Absolutely not. What are we supposed to do then? As humans, I mean. No one knows why we're her…

> Yes, but we had hopes that it would lead to more. And had lead to more, something only known to be false in hindsight, who knows where that would have ended us up? What if it upended the standard model instead of reinforcing it?

Sure, but it didn't. Which is knowledge that really should factor into the decision to build the next, bigger one.

> What are we supposed to do then? As humans, I mean.

Invest the money and effort elsewhere, for now. There are many other fields of scientific exploration that are very likely to yield greater return (in knowledge and utility) for less. You could fund a hundred smaller but still substantial intiatives instead of one big accelerator. And be virtually guaranteed to have an exciting breakthrough in a few of them.

And who knows, maybe a breakthrough in material science or high-voltage electrophysics will substantially reduce the costs for a bigger particle accelerator?

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