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Please, don't build another Large Hadron Collider

bigthink.com

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Re: Please, don't build another Large Hadron Collider

#51

Post by napier »

scandox wrote: post #34
irthomasthomas wrote: post #6

I wouldn't mind them building it if they just used their own money. Spinoff cern companies have earned a $trillion or more revenue and probably a hundred billions profit from things like medical imaging gear. They could well afford to fund themselves and a new collider without begging the public for money. Cern really should be investigated and audited publicly, but it would take Delloites and PWC to follow that pape…

That sounds kind of like what every government dreams of - an institution you fund that does important scientific work and also generates a thriving ecosystem of private sector companies? If that's a scam then please take the shirt off my back.

Public universities and research institutes?

Re: Please, don't build another Large Hadron Collider

#52

Post by Avamander »

uejfiweun wrote: post #10
ivanb wrote: post #7

Yeah, no. Only LHC can generate particle events in a highly controllable environment with enough energy. In physics there are energy thresholds. Below a certain level of energy a certain event just never happens. The low hanging fruit of discovering new physics looks like this. Build a bigger machine to collide particles with even more energy. Observe what comes out. It's a clear direction. Just throw money at the pr…

Does this sort of thing give us tangible benefits? Is it worth the investment? I get things like materials science, supercomputers, AI research, etc. But these colliders are so expensive, all for the sake of discovering a tiny subatomic particle that we have no way of using, AFAIK. But I know nothing, am I wrong here?

Likely yes, a bunch of tech from the previous iteration has yielded very good returns.

If we do find new particles we probably can't use them right away, yes, but that doesn't mean we can't later on. A lot of science has been like that.

Re: Please, don't build another Large Hadron Collider

#53

Post by Avamander »

isaacfrond wrote: post #4

tl;dr. Because Supersymmetry is stupid theory that can be fit to any set of facts, there is no point in building LHC++. Besides it is so expensive you could give a 100.000 physicist a million bucks and that would be more productive.

> Besides it is so expensive you could give a 100.000 physicist a million bucks and that would be more productive.

Would it? A bunch of the arguments in the article apply to pretty much all science funding.

Re: Please, don't build another Large Hadron Collider

#54

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

trinovantes wrote: post #49
black_puppydog wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see the same argument (secondary innovations) being made for war-time/military research. But I don't buy it there, and I don't buy it here. Investing the same money in something that has a known and positive primary effect will produce the same amount of secondary benefits. So if you can think of something more fruitful to do with these 100B, do that; the secondary benefits will keep coming anyhow.

Except that you don't know what the secondary benefits are until you find them so you should keep every avenue open A short story about the discovery of microscopes from https://lettersofnote.com/2012/08/06/why-explore-space/ Had the rich noble simply invested his money in doctors instead of the person with a hobby of playing with glass, they might have instead discovered more uses for leeches

Spending $100B on one big project is very much the opposite of keeping every avenue open.

Re: Please, don't build another Large Hadron Collider

#55

Post by xcambar »

moonchrome wrote: post #26
mehrdada wrote: post #11

Cannot disagree more. "Making a car is expensive, so let's not do that to explore 1000 miles out. Let's just have 1000 people walk one mile and explore." Simply ridiculous comparison. But sure, let's find a way to build/experiment LHC++ less expensively. What's concerning to me, however, is the attitude towards curiosity that this article exhibits. They should rename their domain to smallthink.com.

Your analogy is fundamentally flawed. More realistically : we can only build one car in the entire world, where a tiny minority of people can even understand the potential benefit, and anything they see will be completely useless for everyone else in day to day life because we need a civilisation level effort to even detect the implications of their theory. If their theory had some real world implications - you would…

With this logic, I assume you'd call the ISS a useless project.

Re: Please, don't build another Large Hadron Collider

#56

Post by l33tman »

moonchrome wrote: post #26
mehrdada wrote: post #11

Cannot disagree more. "Making a car is expensive, so let's not do that to explore 1000 miles out. Let's just have 1000 people walk one mile and explore." Simply ridiculous comparison. But sure, let's find a way to build/experiment LHC++ less expensively. What's concerning to me, however, is the attitude towards curiosity that this article exhibits. They should rename their domain to smallthink.com.

Your analogy is fundamentally flawed. More realistically : we can only build one car in the entire world, where a tiny minority of people can even understand the potential benefit, and anything they see will be completely useless for everyone else in day to day life because we need a civilisation level effort to even detect the implications of their theory. If their theory had some real world implications - you would…

And yet 15M people yearly are still visiting those "useless" pyramids 4600 years after they were built.

Re: Please, don't build another Large Hadron Collider

#57

Post by brazzy »

rlpb wrote: post #28

My understanding is that most (or at least many) very significant scientific discoveries were serendipitous. They were discovered while looking for something else. So statements like "When you don’t have much to go on, and limited resources, it’s better to aim at problems that you know are out there. Those things will lead you to new discoveries." don't make sense to me. I'd find this article and its opinion more cre…

The statement "When you don’t have much to go on, and limited resources, it’s better to aim at problems that you know are out there. Those things will lead you to new discoveries." which you say doesn't make sense to you, is exactly meant to promote "serendipitous" discoveries while looking for something else.

A bigger collider does not, in fact, have anything to look for, and so the only possible benefit it could yield is such "serendipitous" discoveries. But how many of those could there really be when you're essentially doing only one thing?

The point of the article is that the ridiculous amount of money, which a bigger collider would cost, is much better spent on a large amount of much more varied research activities, which do have concrete things to look for, but also have the potential for serendipitous discoveries. And since those activities are much more varied, the total potential for such discoveries would much larger as well.

Re: Please, don't build another Large Hadron Collider

#58

Post by jimmySixDOF »

gonzo41 wrote: post #8
Havoc wrote: post #5

> What it could discover is entirely speculative. Thats the point of discovery and arguably a point in favour of doing this

For the cost though, you should probably fund a lot of other science. Climate change mitigation perhaps?

$100B would go a long way experimenting with new Concrete or Desalination processes that would have immediate benefits with even moderate success.

Re: Please, don't build another Large Hadron Collider

#59

Post by navane »

moonchrome wrote: post #26
mehrdada wrote: post #11

Cannot disagree more. "Making a car is expensive, so let's not do that to explore 1000 miles out. Let's just have 1000 people walk one mile and explore." Simply ridiculous comparison. But sure, let's find a way to build/experiment LHC++ less expensively. What's concerning to me, however, is the attitude towards curiosity that this article exhibits. They should rename their domain to smallthink.com.

Your analogy is fundamentally flawed. More realistically : we can only build one car in the entire world, where a tiny minority of people can even understand the potential benefit, and anything they see will be completely useless for everyone else in day to day life because we need a civilisation level effort to even detect the implications of their theory. If their theory had some real world implications - you would…

It's the social equivalent of rocket ships. We all payed for their space holidays too.

Re: Please, don't build another Large Hadron Collider

#60

Post by yakak »

trinovantes wrote: post #49
black_puppydog wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see the same argument (secondary innovations) being made for war-time/military research. But I don't buy it there, and I don't buy it here. Investing the same money in something that has a known and positive primary effect will produce the same amount of secondary benefits. So if you can think of something more fruitful to do with these 100B, do that; the secondary benefits will keep coming anyhow.

Except that you don't know what the secondary benefits are until you find them so you should keep every avenue open A short story about the discovery of microscopes from https://lettersofnote.com/2012/08/06/why-explore-space/ Had the rich noble simply invested his money in doctors instead of the person with a hobby of playing with glass, they might have instead discovered more uses for leeches

Allocating resources worth billions on one avenue is not keeping every avenue open, it is forgoing thousands of avenues that don't force you to decide like this.
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