Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises

backreaction.blogspot.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 204 posts

Re: Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises

#21

Post by emailrhoads »

orbifold wrote: post #9

Science shouldn’t be a zero sum game. As a physicist I love that we get a huge chunk of science funding for all kinds of stuff. Generally speaking developing a new accelerator leads to excellent technical advances at all levels of the stack. Web browsers and HTML were invented at CERN. Super conducting magnets at scale were pioneered for LHC. The detectors with custom radiation hard ASICs for particle detection and t…

She addresses many of your rebuttals quite well here http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/03/nonsense-arguments-...

Re: Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises

#22

Post by gus_massa »

czzr wrote: post #8
m0zg wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like engineers think about research. I worked in both engineering and research, so I could perhaps elucidate the difference. Basically if one idea out of a hundred major ones really takes off, that's considered a success for a researcher. We're talking one, maybe two real hits throughout the entire scientific career. Researchers are well aware that much of what they do and publish is of little consequence. And t…

I agree, but the issue here is different I think. The linked article is also arguing for open ended research, the claim is that other open ended research is likely to be more fruitful, and that we have reached the limit of what we can learn from the particle accelerator route. This is a fair debate to have, even if my personal preferred answer is “do both”.

The problem is what "open ended" means.

A typical experiment is to accelerate a lot protons and a lot of antiprotons (or other particle), make them collide, and see the "debris".

The "debris" can be a lot of things. So you must filter some of them. For example pick only the one that produce exactly two photons and two "jets" of mixed particles that are difficult to identify. Now you calculate the energy of the photons and make a nice graph, of number of collisions versus energy of the photons. Using the standard theory you expect a smooth curve, but if there is a new particle you will see a peak somewhere.

If you see something, you only see the peak. So good luck imagining what the particle can be and how it interact with the other particles.

Another team peek another filter, like the experiment that produce two photons and electron and a positron. They make a nice graphic and hope to see an unexpected peak.

Another team ...

If the current theory predicts a peak somewhere you should find it, but if you find an unexpected peak yuo may have founded a new particle.

The theoretical frameworks are useful to guess which filters may be interesting and give a chance to find a new particle. The problem is that there are just too many possible filters and you can't try all of them.

Re: Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises

#24

Post by krspykrm »

I somewhat agree with the premise, but the real kicker is the opportunity cost: there is so much Europe could be doing with this money that would have actual, real-world impact. There is a critical need for independent European software infrastructure - for this kind of money, they could fund their own web browser or OS or social media platform, which would exist independently of US-controlled tech.

Would I trade a European-controlled alternative to Android and iOS for yet another particle collider in Geneva? Yes, absolutely.

Re: Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises

#25

Post by orbifold »

JesseMReeves wrote: post #11
orbifold wrote: post #9

Science shouldn’t be a zero sum game. As a physicist I love that we get a huge chunk of science funding for all kinds of stuff. Generally speaking developing a new accelerator leads to excellent technical advances at all levels of the stack. Web browsers and HTML were invented at CERN. Super conducting magnets at scale were pioneered for LHC. The detectors with custom radiation hard ASICs for particle detection and t…

> She didn’t cut it and now is in a non-tenured position at a second rate institution. What an awful reply to legitimate criticism. I infer that some of your friends at CERN talk about her (quite successful) book this way?

That was uncalled for, so I took it out.

Re: Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises

#26

Post by thombat »

anonytrary wrote: post #14
nmlnn wrote: post #6

What a fucking waste of money, imagine if these resources for a new collider could instead be used to bolster the ECB/SNB/BOE programs for purchasing corporate debt and equity. My understanding is they've only had ~few hundred billion to a couple of trillion for that so far. THE MONEY SHOULD GO TO BAIL OUT BANKS AND THE CREDITORS OF LARGE CORPORATIONS, WHAT'S THE POINT OF TRYING TO UNDERSTAND THE UNIVERSE ANYWAY.

There's no way this isn't a troll.

Surely not so much a troll as a tub-thumping snort of sarcasm.

The truism of sales is that if a customer comes looking to buy a suit and a pullover then you make sure to sell them the suit first, after which the price tag on the most exorbitant cashmere pulli will seem utterly reasonable. With that as a guide maybe science budgets are best discussed on the tails of bailouts?

Re: Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises

#27

Post by simonh »

nmlnn wrote: post #6

What a fucking waste of money, imagine if these resources for a new collider could instead be used to bolster the ECB/SNB/BOE programs for purchasing corporate debt and equity. My understanding is they've only had ~few hundred billion to a couple of trillion for that so far. THE MONEY SHOULD GO TO BAIL OUT BANKS AND THE CREDITORS OF LARGE CORPORATIONS, WHAT'S THE POINT OF TRYING TO UNDERSTAND THE UNIVERSE ANYWAY.

Sabine gave specific examples of scientific areas the money could be better spent on. Your bile is irrelevant to the discussion and has no place here.

Re: Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises

#28

Post by sega_sai »

aroberge wrote: post #5

Dr. Sabine Hossenfelder is an opiniated physicist who gets a lot of flak for constantly commenting on this issue. Yet, I believe she does society a service in doing so. I have yet to see anyone contradict her basic premise with factual information. I wish she were wrong, as I would love to see a breakthrough towards an experimentally verified Grand Unified Theory, including an explanation for what we currently identi…

In my opinion the problem with her messaging is that while she says that we should not fund the next collider, I think the argument should be, what's the best allocation of money in physics? And there are legitimate reasons to have the next collider even if we have no guarantee that it will deliver GUT or whatever. We have to venture into the unknown. We just should not lie that it will prove supersymmetry or is guaranteed to find dark matter because it sounds better.

Re: Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises

#29

Post by orbifold »

tokai wrote: post #20
orbifold wrote: post #9

Science shouldn’t be a zero sum game. As a physicist I love that we get a huge chunk of science funding for all kinds of stuff. Generally speaking developing a new accelerator leads to excellent technical advances at all levels of the stack. Web browsers and HTML were invented at CERN. Super conducting magnets at scale were pioneered for LHC. The detectors with custom radiation hard ASICs for particle detection and t…

>This is personal to me, some of my friends work at CERN That is very clear. You didn't engage her argument at all. Is is really too much to ask for scientific mega project to generate all that value, while at the same time same pursuing a central object that is scientifically viable?

Building a high energy collider is like building a larger telescope. The only things you can be sure of is that you will be able to understand whatever you have seen better than before. There is scientific consensus that we should be able to understand dark matter better by building one aswell. This is supported by technical arguments which are hard to communicate to the general public. Attacking this communication to the general scientific community is different from attacking the substance of these technical arguments. One can be done by a blog post, the other would need to be accepted by a scientific journal. Physical review letters would be more than happy to publish substantive attacks on prevailing beliefs about dark matter.

Re: Particle Physicists Continue to Make Empty Promises

#30

Post by mnl »

orbifold wrote: post #9

Science shouldn’t be a zero sum game. As a physicist I love that we get a huge chunk of science funding for all kinds of stuff. Generally speaking developing a new accelerator leads to excellent technical advances at all levels of the stack. Web browsers and HTML were invented at CERN. Super conducting magnets at scale were pioneered for LHC. The detectors with custom radiation hard ASICs for particle detection and t…

I usually have to bite my tongue when it comes to Sabine's ramblings. BTW, I would love if anyone could point me any phenomenology paper of hers, I can't find them. Maybe when she single-handedly finishes with the slaying of the particle physics dragon she might tackle idk, condensed matter physics, she has the same kind of background there so who knows.

Anyway, I'd like to link Dorigo's post where this anti-science stirrup might have shown up first:

https://www.science20.com/tommaso_dorigo/what_it_means_to_be...

I don't find it surprising tbh.

Post reply on HN