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CERN approves plans for a $23B, 62-mile long super-collider

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31–40 of 223 posts

Re: CERN approves plans for a $23B, 62-mile long super-collider

#31

> The aim is to start construction of the new tunnel by 2038 Not in my lifetime, I guess.

Did you know that though vitrification, state of the art cryogenics researched have achieved to preserve 100% of the structure of a pig brain? The science for preserving with 100% accuracy your brain is already here. Those scientists use this technology to preserve organs and the cryogenic property is just a side effect. We simply need an enterprise that reproduce their results on human brains (shouldn't be different…

Have they been able to wake the pigs back up yet?

Re: CERN approves plans for a $23B, 62-mile long super-collider

#32
post #19

And these same scientists will no doubt also complain about climate change and how we aren’t investing enough to combat it...

Hint, they are not the same scientists. You're making a category error.

I’m well aware of the differences between particle physics and climatology.

My point, which you have just made the logical fallacy of straw manning, still stands. Scientists of all fields have commented on climate change, Stephen Hawking, Brian Cox, Neil Degrasse Tyson have all opined in climate change, yet also advocate for vanity projects such as the large hadron collider.

Re: CERN approves plans for a $23B, 62-mile long super-collider

#33
post #17

Honest question, what are some engineering spin-offs that could come out of this? I'm asking because I'm reminded of a Peter Thiel interview where it's mentioned that, despite changing our view of the universe, no "real world" applications came out of the quark model discovered in the 1960s. This is different from a project like ITER, which is also hugely expensive but could be a game changer.

Well, given that the world wide web was developed at CERN and they have driven a lot of big-data topics in the past I would say that the collateral developments are non-negligible. In the software field, CERN and particle physics in general, have driven quite some open source projects (both scientific and general ones).

Re: CERN approves plans for a $23B, 62-mile long super-collider

#34

> It could be a hard sell, especially as the new collider wouldn’t have as clear a goal as the LHC did. However, particle physics and the Standard Model are at a place where the application of science is needed to validate theories. I mean I understand the need to keep pushing the boundaries of fundamental physics, but how long do you justify such spending on a single project? That same money could possibly be pumped…

While it is one project it also is an umbrella to fund a large number of smaller projects. Whole institutes were funded and build in part to develop detector components for the LHC. A project like this gives everyone a common goal and pushes technology development in sectors that are critical to Europe's high tech economy. It also has consequences for the IT sector in Europe. Before cloud companies had to deal with PetaBytes of data, scientists at CERN and elsewhere developed techniques for filtering, storing and analysing this data with sophisticated statistical tools (and machine learning). You can easily scale your analysis run to thousands of machines all over the world and transparently get access to the huge experiment datastore.

There is no other scientific field in Europe that has developed a similar level of sophistication and scale. The initial idea behind the Human Brain Project was to build a similar infrastructure for Neuroscience research. But instead of the cooperation in Particle Physics it resulted in fierce opposition, out of fear that funding would be shifted away from national funding agencies and independent researchers and doubts over the ambitious goals of the project. If you think about it a project like CERN, that successfully contributed to understanding of the fundamental forces of nature is in some ways much more ambitious than a centralised program to understand the Human brain.

But the latter got badly derailed multiple times simply because the participants did not have the single minded will, focus and consensus that the Particle Physics community has been able to maintain for almost 70 years now.

Re: CERN approves plans for a $23B, 62-mile long super-collider

#35
most of the comments are about the cost-to-deliverable tradeoff, which is pretty high. But we have to consider that the new particle accellerator is not the only thing that will be created. An enormous amount of infrastructure will have to be developed and researched, including new hardware to handle all the events, new detector hardware, magnets, etc. All of these are pretty usable outside of a particle detector or even science environments, because many of the hard parts are engineering problems. I think the "useless" part of this 23B investment is far smaller than we think.

For evidence of that look at the past, two projects that immediately come to my mind as being pushed by CERN: HTTP and KiCad. But there are surely some more.

Re: CERN approves plans for a $23B, 62-mile long super-collider

#36

> It could be a hard sell, especially as the new collider wouldn’t have as clear a goal as the LHC did. However, particle physics and the Standard Model are at a place where the application of science is needed to validate theories. I mean I understand the need to keep pushing the boundaries of fundamental physics, but how long do you justify such spending on a single project? That same money could possibly be pumped…

Protontherapy alone is enough justification in my opinion. Add the many kinds of detector offshoots that find their way to industry. The web itself, if you wanna go back a bit further. Aren't those worth it you think?

Re: CERN approves plans for a $23B, 62-mile long super-collider

#37
post #35

most of the comments are about the cost-to-deliverable tradeoff, which is pretty high. But we have to consider that the new particle accellerator is not the only thing that will be created. An enormous amount of infrastructure will have to be developed and researched, including new hardware to handle all the events, new detector hardware, magnets, etc. All of these are pretty usable outside of a particle detector or…

> we have to consider that the new particle accellerator is not the only thing that will be created

The problem with this argument is it works for any spending.

The cost of $23bn on a new collider is potentially not spending $23bn on other, more fruitful, physics experiments.

Re: CERN approves plans for a $23B, 62-mile long super-collider

#38
Made this comment below but spending billions on another collider in an attempt to essentially validate SUSY is irresponsible. A few years ago, a bunch of physical philosophers tried to justify this turn of particle physics in general away from experiment, particularly suggesting the search of symmetries and mathematical beauty (I guess) was enough of a justification for the work even though it essentially is contrary to the basic scientific principles of relying on experiment and observation. Now, we're seeing real world consequences of that mistake, billions in resources and potentially decades of man-hours to be devoted to another super-collider.

Honestly, this money could be spent on myriad other projects, not to mention towards fusion research or alternative energies (solar, wind) in general especially in the face of climate change. Again, seeing the failure of the LHC and then deciding you're going to double down is just straight irresponsible. I honestly wonder what member states are thinking when they see CERN contemplate this especially after the LHC failed to find SUSY particles.

This is just another painful reminder of how narrow minded some scientists are and so focused on their own little niche. There are so many larger problems the world is facing today, it's upsetting but not surprising no one at the table even asked the most important questions when making these plans, "is this even necessary?"

Last tidbit, there are next generation acceleration schemes using lasers that could promise much cheaper acceleration of particles on a much smaller scale (centimeters) although the brightness and general beam quality isn't quite there yet. That could be a potential route forward and be much cheaper in the long run, it just would require a) some time and research but more importantly b) the current crop of experimental scientists at CERN might find it not their expertise and so might not get the grants. Again, reiterating the narrow mindedness of scientists these days.

Re: CERN approves plans for a $23B, 62-mile long super-collider

#39

> It could be a hard sell, especially as the new collider wouldn’t have as clear a goal as the LHC did. However, particle physics and the Standard Model are at a place where the application of science is needed to validate theories. I mean I understand the need to keep pushing the boundaries of fundamental physics, but how long do you justify such spending on a single project? That same money could possibly be pumped…

While it is one project it also is an umbrella to fund a large number of smaller projects. Whole institutes were funded and build in part to develop detector components for the LHC. A project like this gives everyone a common goal and pushes technology development in sectors that are critical to Europe's high tech economy. It also has consequences for the IT sector in Europe. Before cloud companies had to deal with P…

> it also is an umbrella to fund a large number of smaller projects

Then justify the spending on those merits. Spending for the sake of spending isn’t a great argument.

Why is a new supercollider a better use of resources than, say, a new telescope? Or a suite of gravitational wave or neutrino detectors? A host of fusion research reactors?

The opportunity cost of spending shouldn’t be ignored just because it isn’t entirely useless.

Re: CERN approves plans for a $23B, 62-mile long super-collider

#40
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hint, they are not the same scientists. You're making a category error.

I’m well aware of the differences between particle physics and climatology. My point, which you have just made the logical fallacy of straw manning, still stands. Scientists of all fields have commented on climate change, Stephen Hawking, Brian Cox, Neil Degrasse Tyson have all opined in climate change, yet also advocate for vanity projects such as the large hadron collider.

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