Of course it does. They finished the LHC, it's time for another white elephant to keep the gravy train rolling.
Finding new physics will require a new particle collider
211–220 of 254 posts
Re: Finding new physics will require a new particle collider
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is not tunnel vision when the problem they're tackling is literally stuck in a tunnel. Bigger and bigger colliders are the only direct way we have to study high energy phenomena. It's not that physicists are lazy, it's that the problems they're studying are hard. I'm also seeing a lot resentment for the price tag of colliders in this thread. My personal opinion is that we shouldn't build a new one, but I'll point…
Comparing the cost against defense spending, which has a reputation for waste, doesn't convince me. If the cost is similar to two B-2 bombers and one thinks that the B-2 bomber is overpriced, one would probably also think that the LHC is overpriced. To me, bringing up that the WWW, fancy PET scans, etc. came in part from HEP and therefore we should be grateful is missing one major point. In the WWW case, in an altern…
I think GP is saying that the value of LHC is greater than the marginal value of 2 bombers when you already have 18.
LHC would be one way to use that some of that "waste" in defense spending more wisely.
Regarding "practical" study-- Where you see value in the output of engineering work, those guiding the work of engineers see value in the output of scientific work. If we had more people of the latter type that appreciated the value of scientific work, we might have more productive engineers and developers.
Re: Finding new physics will require a new particle collider
#213i’m skeptical because that was the promise of the LHC.
One of the main goals[1] of the LHC was finding the Higgs, which it has done. Another goal was to look for the matter-antimatter asymmetry, where it has[2] and will likely continue to find interesting things.
So as such it has had decent success I think.
Another goal was to look for supersymmetry. While the LHC so far has excluded large sections of the possible parameter space for supersymmetry, I don't think it was unreasonable to think at the time LHC was designed that it had a decent chance of finding evidence for supersymmetry.
However given how things are looking currently, maybe effort should be focused on the areas where we know there's something weird, such as neutrinos[3], as well as astronomical searches such as LIGO[4] which can constrain Beyond Standard Model physics.
[1]: https://home.cern/resources/faqs/facts-and-figures-about-lhc
[2]: https://home.cern/news/press-release/physics/lhcb-sees-new-f...
[3]: https://www.quantamagazine.org/neutrino-evidence-could-expla...
[4]: https://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/what-gravitational-...
Re: Finding new physics will require a new particle collider
#214Finding new physics will require removing a lot of dust on the politics of that field, and a vast re-evaluation of why and how people get funded. How important the is science versus everything else in the matter.
It's not going to happen overnight, but it's good that people are opening their eyes. Let's reevaluate in 2040 and see if we've moved the needle in fundamental physics even just a little compared to what was achieved in the first half of the 20th century.
Re: Finding new physics will require a new particle collider
#215As 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…
I remember at the University of Chicago there was a researcher studying "breakfast physics" - what governs the peak angle of granular piles (like salt piles or grain or sandpiles), what happens at the singularity when a drizzle of honey goes from a hyperboloid of one sheet to a hyperboloid of two sheets. I think he also measured the effect of vacuum on fluid splatters.
These are all quotidian problems in I guess "condensed matter" physics which are 0) largely unsexy and ignored 1) still largely unsolved, 2) liable to watershed huge, life- and money- saving innovations, while exotic HEP and Low Temp Condensed, are still what most physics students study their way into.
Re: Finding new physics will require a new particle collider
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think a lot of it comes from the fact that they used to be the golden child of science, but the influence and prestige of HEP has been a victim of it's own success. HEP just doesn't hold the same importance it used to, and that stings for the people who dedicated their lives to it. As they pushed to higher and higher energies and events with lower and lower cross sections, they're solving problems that matter less…
> but without a promise of practical applications, or at least a convincing argument that they'll find something interesting with this new collider, I find it really hard to justify the price tag. I mean, you can say that about people going to the moon, right? What data are they going to get? Something about rocks and the consistency of the moon dust, right? The technologies developed in going to the moon got us so m…
> If the United States, for example, distributed the defense budget into social care and the sciences, we wouldn't be having a conversation about monetary distribution.
You tease us with such sweet words, something like Star Trek but more real.
Re: Finding new physics will require a new particle collider
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Non-sequitur. Quantum mechanics didn't require $10B (or whatever the equivalent would be in 1930-ish currency) to create. The "inventors" of QM were trying to explain measurements that were already made, quite inexpensively, that did not fit the model of nature that we had at that time. Basically, the experiments were done, measurements made. Now the theorists were trying to understand what they needed in order to be…
The federal government just wrote a $2T stimulus check of funny money they pulled out of thin air to (largely) cover for their incompetence in handling the pandemic. But $10B (that's a factor of 200x less!) for basic physics research is somehow too expensive? Our priorities are way off.
Re: Finding new physics will require a new particle collider
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
Comparing the cost against defense spending, which has a reputation for waste, doesn't convince me. If the cost is similar to two B-2 bombers and one thinks that the B-2 bomber is overpriced, one would probably also think that the LHC is overpriced. To me, bringing up that the WWW, fancy PET scans, etc. came in part from HEP and therefore we should be grateful is missing one major point. In the WWW case, in an altern…
I think GP is saying that the value of LHC is greater than the marginal value of 2 bombers when you already have 18. LHC would be one way to use that some of that "waste" in defense spending more wisely. Regarding "practical" study-- Where you see value in the output of engineering work, those guiding the work of engineers see value in the output of scientific work. If we had more people of the latter type that appre…
Defense spending is inefficient, but why should that money be spent on HEP rather than something else? I'm not even convinced that projects like the LHC are a net positive for humanity for the last reason I mentioned.
As for your final paragraph, I'm not really sure what you're getting at. If you believe I have misunderstood you, I'm interested in learning how. Most physicists I've met seem to severely underestimate the amount of scientific research conducted by engineers. If you get a PhD in engineering, you're typically doing primarily (if not exclusively) science. The main difference is that this research keeps in mind the applications. That's what makes it useful. I think it's a shame that so many very smart people choose to study HEP rather than engineering where they would do better in the world. And I don't think people working in HEP (for example) make engineers or programmers more productive.
Re: Finding new physics will require a new particle collider
#219As 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…
As a practicing physicist in quantum information, I can say
(1) "New physics" is jargon understood by experts to mean new fundamental physics, i.e., new laws/forces/particles at the base of our theoretical edifice. This does not mean that non-fundamental physics is necessarily less important -- see for instance the late Phillip Anderson's "More is different" [ https://science.sciencemag.org/content/177/4047/393 ] -- but the distinction is real and meaningful. The use of this phrase does not equate physics with HEP physics. The reason you might make that mistake is because...
(2) To my knowledge, every single discovery of new physics in the past half century years has been made with a particle accelerator. I am confident that a new particle accelerator is a lot more likely to discover new physics than building a quantum computer or any other experimental work in quantum information. This, I'm sure, is the consensus view, even among people who put a low credence on the chance that new physics will be found at the next accelerator, or that such an investment is worthwhile.
(3) In my opinion, the strongest argument for pursuing quantum information experiments over HEP is that a departure from quantum mechanics would be more revolutionary than merely finding another set of particles and forces with largely unexplained parameters. In that sense, you need to make the reverse argument to the one you are trying to make, i.e., that quantum information is more fundamental than HEP. But for the very same reason, discrepancies with quantum mechanics are just very, very unlikely to be found.
Re: Finding new physics will require a new particle collider
#220As 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…
There's always new physics in the next digit of theory or experiment. It's not sexy, and doesn't fall into (subjective) notions of "fundamental." Discovery may be hard, but can't be ruled out.