[HN Gopher] Please, don't build another Large Hadron Collider
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Please, don't build another Large Hadron Collider
Author : khaled_ismaeel
Score : 315 points
Date : 2022-06-07 07:51 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (bigthink.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (bigthink.com)
| bjornsing wrote:
| I fully agree. I'd even go one step further: don't spend that 100
| billion on physics at all. That's taxpayer money that actually
| can be spent on feeding the hungry. That's the humane thing to
| do, and I bet a much better investment in science too, since
| those hungry will have a chance to become scientists.
|
| PS. I have a masters in engineering physics and several friends
| who are physicists. I'm also a science nerd. But I still think
| this is the right thing to do.
| patrick0d wrote:
| Why not take the 100 billion from somewhere other than frontier
| physics research. I always consider these articles small minded
| since the people writing them don't consider projects outside
| of their domain that eat up more funding than something like
| LHC++. It's such a zero sum situation where there is a 100
| billion grant for grabs and the author wants it spent on one
| project in place of this one.
|
| The more research we do the better and 100 billion spent over
| approx 20 years by over a dozen countries is a far cry from
| putting all our eggs in one basket.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| > spent on feeding the hungry
|
| Cannot eat money, unfortunately it's far more durable and
| fungible than food.
|
| Now, perhaps there are investments that can be made to improve
| the world's agriculture.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| The best way to feed the hungry is to implement systemic change
| which improves education, distributes productivity more evenly,
| invests in primary research across a broad range of domains,
| eliminates debt slavery, and - most of all for this three -
| keeps qualified physicists in research and out of fintech.
|
| You need to throw politics at poverty and homelessness, not
| just cash.
|
| Not incidentally, lowering the barriers to physics education
| and changing the incentives towards risky imagination and away
| from calculated academic careerism would also make
| breakthroughs in physics more likely.
| dontbenebby wrote:
| But if we don't, where will the next generation of birds drop
| their bagels?
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/science/2009/nov/06/cern-big-ban...
|
| (Old physics meme :-) )
| spacemanmatt wrote:
| As much as I generally agree with the goal of knowing all the
| things, that goal exists in service to living a good life. And I
| definitely have to question the economic sense of spending $100B
| at the LHC store, compared with many other stores that sell $100B
| worth of good life for earthlings.
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| $100B into basic cancer research (not even targeting a specific
| cancer per se) would be money better spent, for example.
| popinman322 wrote:
| The LHC's development produced a number of new technologies (e.g.
| radiation resistant microcontrollers, and gas electron
| multipliers). Could the next generation produce more, valuable
| tech?
|
| I also don't have the expertise to tell whether the article is
| being overly reductive with the project's goals: are there other
| questions (besides new particles) that can only be answered with
| a larger collider? The summary of the FCC (Future Circular
| Collider) project's goals indicates that yes, there are
| unresolved questions that the FCC will address[0].
|
| [0]:
| https://link.springer.com/article/10.1140/epjc/s10052-019-69...
| musha68k wrote:
| It seems to me as if the journalist had to write about
| _something_ [outrageous] to fulfill their article quota? There
| are some good ideas buried in there but isn 't it a reductive
| vision indeed? There probably is no reason to fund this _and_
| all the good ideas he also mentions.
|
| We also need BIG SCIENCE to solve global warming and many more
| issues.
|
| Let's not narrow our focus on some fiscal numbers that are
| basically inconsequential for such a rich place as is the case
| with Europe.
|
| _Let 's do the opposite instead._ Let's bet on an _actual
| vision_ for once again - I miss the 1960s!
| black_puppydog wrote:
| 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.
| radu_floricica wrote:
| Good point with secondary benefits being equal.
| News-Dog wrote:
| WiFi > a _secondary benefit_ was developed from speculative
| theoretical research in radio-astronomy :
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/WiFi
| radu_floricica wrote:
| I've read the history section in that page and I see
| nothing about that. WiFi had several competing
| implementation - at best, you could say the Radiophysics
| Division of CSIRO sped things up a bit. But since the
| next paragraph begins with "About the same time in The
| Netherlands in 1991" (aka a year earlier)...
| [deleted]
| golergka wrote:
| Military research has enormous positive primary effect as
| it's one of the main ways to prevent wars. Nuclear weapons
| already prevented Cold war from going hot, saving tens of
| millions.
| trinovantes wrote:
| 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
| black_puppydog wrote:
| Well I agree that big projects make sense in many cases,
| and I don't want to be misunderstood as arguing against
| basic research.
|
| Frankly, given the amounts we spend on things I
| fundamentally disagree with, I'd even say "sure let them
| have at it and let's find _another_ 100B somewhere in the
| military budgets of the world, divert them to more
| research. "
|
| But even if you want to focus on "big, milestone" projects
| like the LHC[++] you can go for _other_ challenges where
| you know that there 's a tangible benefit to be had at the
| end.
|
| Fusion research for example comes to mind. Hugely
| expensive, interesting, rewarding if successful, track
| record of secondary inventions.
|
| I'm sure there are others. Off the top of my head, carbon
| capture and storage, better (more sustainable)
| battery/storage tech, elimination of rare earths in
| electronics, ...
|
| There's no shortage of big, hard problems
| ncmncm wrote:
| Right at the moment and for the next two decades, any big
| money should build out solar and wind generating
| capacity. Physics will still be there. Physicists can
| work on catalysts and excitons for a while.
| trinovantes wrote:
| That's definitely a sensible position. However, I believe
| these goal-oriented research projects have a tendency to
| fall stuck in local optima. Sometimes breakthroughs may
| come from just more people working on it and other times
| they come from discoveries made in unrelated fields. By
| cutting ourselves off from any expensive moonshot
| projects without a clear goal like the LHC, some of our
| hard problems may never be solved and we may never know
| why.
| kelnos wrote:
| > _... so you should keep every avenue open_
|
| Each avenue you keep open costs money and takes up people's
| time. You can't keep every avenue open. You have to decide
| -- with imperfect information -- which avenues are worth
| keeping open. And the entire thesis here is that the LHC++
| is probably not worth it. You can disagree with that, but
| if you're going to do so because of possible secondary
| benefits, you have to take a crack at showing that those
| secondary benefits -- whatever they may be -- are numerous
| enough and worth enough to justify the money and time.
| samstave wrote:
| This is always a factor of amazement (pun intended) for me.
|
| To quote the writer of the line uttered by the equanimous
| Jeff GoldBloom.
|
| https://i.imgur.com/XpKoQIf.gif
|
| Seriously, this is where 'black budgets' are a thing.
|
| There is serious money pumped into the MIC and the
| secondary effects are far more than tertiary at this point.
| Dark breakaway.
|
| How much is a dollar worth in space. Asking for a Musk of
| mine.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Or Judd Hirsch in Independence Day wisecracking about
| marked up hammers and toilet seats.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| Spending $100B on one big project is very much the opposite
| of keeping every avenue open.
| trinovantes wrote:
| And skipping on a big project/infrastructure because it
| costs a lot is also not keeping _every_ avenue open
| kelnos wrote:
| We can't keep every avenue open. Resources are finite.
| What makes you think that spending $100B on an LHC++ will
| be more useful to humanity than ten smaller, $10B
| projects that people might come up with (or probably
| already have come up with, but currently lack funding)?
| yakak wrote:
| 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.
| trinovantes wrote:
| Is it just one avenue? While I'm not a particle
| physicist, my layman understanding of LHC is that it can
| be used to test many theories that would otherwise go
| unsolved. Should we only research things that are cheap
| to test and eventually mass producible?
| ncmncm wrote:
| There are no theories left that LHC, or any collider we
| could build, can test.
|
| Strings are right out. Nobody has offered any clue as to
| how to make a prediction that could be tested with
| possible equipment.
|
| That does not mean none ever will, but it does not seem
| to be their focus. Physics departments like string
| theorists because they come with no equipment budget.
| yakak wrote:
| > Should we only research things that are cheap to test
| and eventually mass producible?
|
| Of course not we should choose avenues according to what
| they are likely to achieve being better than alternative
| allocations. For another LHC that is a huge burden to
| overcome.
|
| What is so great about LHC2 that you want to keep space
| exploration going at a crawl with commercial companies
| showing how to do it on a shoestring budget? Maybe the
| LHC2 will cause a discovery the LHC won't but is that
| probability of learning something worth sacrificing a
| huge portion of our resources on? Or is this that we made
| people gain an expertise and they want to continue with
| its path even though it's a pretty bad one to continually
| invest more and more in?
|
| Personally, I have mixed feelings about learning fission
| and I would rather explore space and have functionally
| independent colonies before we blow ourselves up with a
| new subatomic discovery.
| ChrisLomont wrote:
| >Investing the same money in something that has a known and
| positive primary effect will produce the same amount of
| secondary benefits.
|
| Except in reality you don't just get to take something like
| military money and just invest wherever you want. Military is
| something that can be funded politically for large sums. So
| the more likely choice is you get to fund military, with all
| the associated research and benefits, or you don't get those
| tax dollars to do anything with, or maybe just spend them on
| not science.
|
| If it were possible to simply pour money into
| science/invention politically, then the budgets of NIH, NASA,
| etc., would not be as small as they are.
| virtue3 wrote:
| silicon valley is a DIRECT result of the secondary effect of
| radar systems.
|
| https://web.stanford.edu/group/ree/archives/archive08/usa/pr.
| ..
|
| _shrug_. It 's always hard to guess?
| black_puppydog wrote:
| Military research has produced a lot of secondary
| inventions, sure. But look at its funding as well. There's
| a reason why so many companies work in that sector: the
| amount of money in there is just huge. So of course that
| sector will produce more byproducts in absolute terms.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Okay? He's not saying secondary effects don't exist. He's
| saying you don't get _more_ secondary effects from projects
| whose _primary_ purpose is highly speculative.
| giantrobot wrote:
| There's a really wide gulf between building something in a
| lab and scaling production to some industrially useful level.
| The money spent on the LHC wasn't just lot on fire in a giant
| pit. It went to contractors that took lab scale prototypes or
| just paper designs and built them at scale.
|
| Building a one inch super conductor in a lab might be
| straightforward but cost a million dollars. That lab process
| doesn't scale to building seventeen miles of superconductor.
| The LHC needed 4722 miles of superconducting cable. Simply
| manufacturing that much cable led to advances in
| superconductor manufacturing and design. Even then the LHC's
| particular superconductors only work if you've got the
| operating budget to use liquid helium to cool them.
|
| The money spent went into research to develop the components
| necessary for the design and then into the production of
| those components. The LHC wasn't some item picked out of a
| catalog. Many of its components only existed on paper when it
| was designed.
|
| No one is just going to pump development dollars into some
| paper design and hope someone somewhere finds a use for it.
| The LHC's superconductors advanced the state of
| superconductors in general but no one was going to do that
| work without an end goal and a budget.
|
| Military development ends up with a similar model.
| Requirements for a desired capability are given to a
| contractor and they need to figure out how to build it.
| Sometimes that development is easy and other times it's
| difficult and expensive. Contractors definitely make a profit
| and pad co tracts but that money does pay people to do
| things. The requirements and funding create a market for the
| development for technologies that meet those requirements.
| popinman322 wrote:
| I agree that the opportunity cost of dropping 100B on this is
| very high, but what if the new data enables tech that can't
| otherwise be achieved?
|
| We could definitely postpone this work and invest in more
| impactful work in the present. It might be worth
| reconsidering this once we've worked through climate change,
| energy consumption, and the drinking water crises we're
| facing.
| rdedev wrote:
| This video is relevant here
|
| https://youtu.be/9qqEU1Q-gYE
| B3QL wrote:
| Thanks for awesome channel!
| signaru wrote:
| Secondary innovations can also come from solving a primary
| industrial or commercial problem as is often the case.
|
| By their nature, secondary innovations are not promised. Hence,
| researchers can get away with not "delivering" any, no matter
| how much they pitch the "possibility" when asking for funding.
|
| The quality of researchers who will be working is another
| factor. Presumably it would be very competitive with LHC stuff.
| But I've seen research projects just become money black-holes
| as they just end up with unremarkable un-creative research
| staff who are just there for the paycheck and not competitive
| enough to otherwise get out of the academic comfort zone.
| practice9 wrote:
| Also, please no more Mars rovers. Sometimes it's good to do
| something radically different, instead of scaling up the same
| stuff
| atemerev wrote:
| Ctrl-F, "Sabine"
|
| Well, if this isn't predictable!
| sydthrowaway wrote:
| She is ruining Physics
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| As someone who did their PhD at CERN - I agree.
|
| The place is fantastic, you get to meet great people and life is
| cool.
|
| But what you are working on is completely useless for humanity.
| Knowing that there is a quantum foam is knowledge that brings us
| nowhere. If someone could answer to this "and so what?" in a
| meaningful way I would be glad to change my mind. For the time
| being, the energy scale we are making these discoveries is not
| useful.
|
| "yes, but this is fundamental science..." - yes it is, but where
| does this fundamental science helps in everyday problems? Have we
| had a case where the Higgs boson changed anything in our life?
|
| The quantum mechanics of the 1920's changed our everyday world.
| We could build a whole technology on it, and understand things
| that changes our everyday life. Is there a comparable impact on
| knowing that the Higgs boson is +/- 10^-9 (or whatever) aligned
| with the theoretical model?
|
| We have so many problems where physics is needed (energy
| production to start with, and then exploring biology), the money
| should go there instead. Even if it means having less particle
| physicists the same way we have less philosophes.
| JoeDaDude wrote:
| Honest question: Did you feel this way when you were working on
| your PhD at CERN? Were you working toward solving everyday
| problems, or fundamental science problems? If the latter, what
| changed your views since then?
|
| I hope I don't come off as confrontational, it is not the least
| my intention. It just sounds like you have seen both sides of
| this issue and maybe you have a deeper understanding you could
| share.
| esrauch wrote:
| How long was the time gap from quantum machanics work in the
| 1920s until serious practical applications for that work?
| BeetleB wrote:
| Most semiconductor applications involve an understanding of
| QM. The transistor was invented in 1948. So not too long
| after.
|
| Also, nuclear power...
| AprilArcus wrote:
| off the cuff, non-exhaustive list: 1930s --
| video image tubes 1940s -- nuclear power, atomic
| clocks, transistors 1960s -- lasers, fiber-optic
| communications, PET-CT scans 1970s -- MRIs
| deanCommie wrote:
| It's worth acknowledging that the fears of the cold war
| funded tremendous scientific and technological innovation
| on both sides of the iron curtain.
|
| People had singular focus - not on the betterment of
| humanity in the abstract sense, but for primal SURVIVAL -
| because both sides believed that if given the chance the
| other would wipe them out.
|
| This created a unifying focus (amongst two divided sides).
|
| A lot of people have hoped for some event to unify humanity
| (like the space squid in the watchmen) towards a common
| goal again. Alas, COVID has shown that is just simply not
| possible any longer.
| somewhereoutth wrote:
| Curiously, and sadly, it seems that the only threat we
| are always primed and ready to deal with is _other
| humans_. Which I suppose makes sense given our 'tribe'
| ancestry.
| willis936 wrote:
| Digitizer and controller platforms suitable for many other
| industries (such as uTCA.4) were developed for LHC.
|
| White Rabbit alone adds a lot of value to humanity. Proper
| coherency of data flying around an Ethernet network is super
| handy when making a big complicated controller for a big
| complicated machine.
| BeefWellington wrote:
| I understand your point of view here but I think I disagree.
|
| If you restrict your view only to the particular targeted
| research in question you are missing much of the pie. Going to
| the Moon did not help the average person in their day to day
| lives on its own but numerous side technologies emerged as a
| result of the engineering and research efforts required to
| solve problems.
|
| LHC and CERN as a whole have led to a number of technological
| improvements[1], even if the research goals themselves do not
| seem oriented towards anything an individual should care about
| today.
|
| It is certainly possible that similarly funded fusion research
| or carbon sequestration research would yield similar
| technologies, it's not a given.
|
| [1]: https://kt.cern/technology-portfolio
| ryan_j_naughton wrote:
| > knowledge that brings us nowhere. If someone could answer to
| this "and so what?" in a meaningful way I would be glad to
| change my mind.
|
| Devil's Advocate: Could that not also be said for many
| astrophysics discoveries including: - Edwin Hubble's discovery
| of the expanding universe and galaxies - Kepler's discovery of
| 1K plus exoplanets - Hubble telescope's ultra deep field
|
| None of these are practical pursuits that provide us with new,
| widely used technology (or at least investing in them is not
| the most efficient path to said practical technology). Instead,
| they provide us context on where we sit in the universe.
| Starting from Copernicus, the constant realignment of our
| perspective that we are not privileged observers in the
| universe (disproving geocentrism, heliocentrism, and
| galactocentrism), have been essential to the development of
| modern secular humanism and providing us context on our purpose
| (or at least an effective tool to knock down foolish purported
| purposes espoused by dogmatic leaders).
|
| So I guess I am taking issue with your narrowly defined purpose
| of science. What is an "everyday problem" worth solving through
| fundamental research?
|
| If however, you include these philosophical benefits of
| fundamental science, then I agree with you.
|
| "Have we had a case where the Higgs boson changed anything in
| our life?" I think nails that the reason why we shouldn't
| pursue a LHC++. It has neither benefits from providing us
| practical tools or new technologies to advance society NOR does
| it aid us in philosophically contextualizing where we sit in
| the universe.
| srveale wrote:
| Does anyone know anything like a percentage of scientific
| advancements that ended up being hugely beneficial to society,
| but were originally derided as being pointless wastes of
| resources? Might be hard to find out, for example, how many
| Victorians scoffed at Maxwell wasting his time wondering about
| imaginary waves flying through the air.
|
| At least, in 50-100 years, we'll probably still have records of
| comments and articles like these, which will make it easier to
| say just how wrong people were about the importance of pure
| research. (If anyone is reading this in 2100, and it turns out
| the ROI on these research projects wasn't worth it, feel free
| to whisper "I told you so" to my ghost.)
| staticassertion wrote:
| > But what you are working on is completely useless for
| humanity. Knowing that there is a quantum foam is knowledge
| that brings us nowhere. If someone could answer to this "and so
| what?" in a meaningful way I would be glad to change my mind.
| For the time being, the energy scale we are making these
| discoveries is not useful.
|
| How many things were discovered by ancient Greeks that only
| became useful in the last 100-200 years? The Sieve of
| Eratosthenes comes to mind - I can't imagine that was really
| helping anyone out until we had modern cryptography.
| Cd00d wrote:
| Are you claiming that no knowledge or technology has come out
| of CERN that benefits humanity in any way?
|
| I find that hard to believe considering how much technical
| innovation came out of the space race that has had an impact on
| our everyday lives [0].
|
| [0] https://www.aii.org/how-the-space-race-built-todays-
| technolo....
| orangesite wrote:
| There's a point at which theory needs to catch up to
| observations before it makes sense to gather more observations.
| louissan wrote:
| what about trying to see such advanced fields of studies as
| (extremely?) long-term investments (for the species?).
|
| I'm sure that 20,000 years ago some crazy shaman was frowned
| upon for trying to "melt rocks and see what happened", or
| "ate some weird/unknown/sacred plants" or "what if I push
| this seed into this little corner of land and look after it
| (water, sun, defend if against herbivores)"? etc, etc, etc?
| philipov wrote:
| My understanding is that theory has blasted way past
| observations and what we need now are more precise
| observations.
|
| And developing the technology capable of making such precise
| observations has immense utility outside of the particular
| experiment that drives their invention. Even if superparters
| are useless, more powerful magnets are useful. Better sensors
| are useful. Better data processing technology is useful. And
| that stuff gets invented by the people probing to find
| superpartners.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Do we pursue knowledge to build a strong economy? Or do we
| build a strong economy so we can pursue knowledge?
|
| Although I've spent a lot of my career working for a strong
| economy, I lean strongly toward the latter. The highest
| achievement of humanity is not cheap cell phone plans, it's
| more like General Relativity, or the Moon landing.
|
| What "use" is humanity? What is life for? Big questions for
| sure, and I won't claim to have the answers. But I feel pretty
| confident that most folks believe there is more to life than
| squinting at everyday problems.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| Most people care about knowledge for its ability to raise
| quality of living, a.k.a it's ability to strengthen the
| economy.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| I don't think the moon landing is celebrated because it
| gave us Velcro and Tang. I don't think Einstein is so
| famous because he helped create the foundation for cell
| phones.
|
| Daily quality of life is important but I think there is a
| deeper feeling about life that most people share.
| mateo1 wrote:
| The biggest contribution of CERN to humanity is not theoretical
| physics, it's the engineering progress made possible by the
| truly exceptional requirements of the machinery of the
| accelerator and all the supporting infrastructure. Ultra high
| vacuum, specialty detectors, electromagnetic components,
| control systems, cryonics, new alloys etc.
|
| All the know-how and human capital generated by these
| megaprojects along with a better understanding of fundamental
| physics is transferred into practical applications a few years
| later. I can understand how a physics phd might not be exposed
| so much to this aspect of the project, but the societal
| benefits are very real despite being hard to quantify and
| track.
| FredPret wrote:
| As an engineer, my sole concern is making things useful in
| everyday life for real humans.
|
| However, I need the tools science gives me. I need scientists
| and mathematicians to think about how the universe and logic
| works, so that I can know how to make it work for people.
|
| Quantum foam will almost certainly feature in some product down
| the line.
|
| Edit: there have been some instances of engineers working out
| solutions before the science existed by trial and error (steam
| locomotives before thermodynamics, airfoils before those were
| understood), but knowing proper theory upfront makes it much
| easier.
| lupire wrote:
| How many orders of magnitude of energy inprovement are needed
| to make quantum foam accessible?
| Nagyman wrote:
| The pursuit of knowledge is insanely underrated.
|
| > But what you are working on is completely useless for
| humanity.
|
| You simply can't know that. We don't know what we don't know
| and we are but babies when it comes to understanding and
| harnessing the universe. One cannot possibly predict how
| _fundamental science_ might impact our future.
|
| > We have so many problems where physics is needed (energy
| production to start with, and then exploring biology), the
| money should go there instead. Even if it means having less
| particle physicists the same way we have less philosophes.
|
| This is a false dichotomy; we have the resources for both and
| more. Perhaps a lack of willpower/grit/political incentives in
| some arenas, but none of that is insurmountable.
| dwaltrip wrote:
| > Knowing that there is a quantum foam is knowledge that brings
| us nowhere.
|
| A bit myopic, eh?
|
| We don't know which scientific advancements will result in
| practical applications or how long it will take.
|
| But history is incredibly clear on this point. In general,
| scientific pursuits and the technological advancements required
| to carry them out bring about countless incredible practical
| applications over time.
|
| In the long run, curiosity and interestingness are very good
| heuristics for worthwhile endeavors to pursue.
| bobbylarrybobby wrote:
| Did the physicists working on early QM know that it would be so
| useful? Or were they, like the scientists at CERN, just trying
| to piece together a model of reality?
| memetomancer wrote:
| Consider a hypothetical analogous argument against supporting
| fundamental science made in 1900: What they are working on is
| completely useless for humanity and doesn't help solve everyday
| problems... the "and so what?" about the photoelectric effect
| or quantum theory. Because those people in 1900 could not
| conceive of inventions like lasers and transistors. They didn't
| just lack imagination, they lacked total conceptual inability
| in that context. Just as you are seeming to do here. But of
| course, either of those two inventions have transformed human
| society on a level with fire, language, writing and metallurgy.
|
| "Is there a comparable impact on knowing that the Higgs boson
| is +/- 10^-9 (or whatever) aligned with the theoretical model?"
| perhaps there is! Might not understanding the fine points of
| the theoretical model help with something like a reactionless
| thruster? Could this unlock the door on direct manipulation of
| spacetime? Assist in devising exotic materials, like say some
| sort of stable muonic matter and opening up a whole new world
| of chemistry/solid state physics? The potential is staggering,
| and by nature is almost completely unguessable until it
| happens.
|
| If the world followed the lead of yourself or the Sabine
| Hossenfelders of the world we might never know. The argument
| that this hypothetical collider can only be used to explore
| unconfirmable symmetry theories is simply false. The cost of
| such a facility is insignificant compared to the potential.
|
| My back-of-the-envelope game theory perspective is that
| humanity should double down on all fronts, at all cost, to push
| these boundaries. The only impediment is the folks like you,
| mired in the present and seemingly unable to realize that the
| unimaginable results are very much unimaginable. Just as those
| lasers and transistors were 100+ years ago.
| lifeplusplus wrote:
| it takes time, discoveries made 100s of years ago only became
| useful later on, and in ways nobody knew, the more we
| understand fundamentals the better it's unquestionably.
| somenameforme wrote:
| "The more important fundamental laws and facts of physical
| science have all been discovered, and these are now so firmly
| established that the possibility of their ever being supplanted
| in consequence of new discoveries is exceedingly remote. .. Our
| future discoveries must be looked for in the sixth place of
| decimals." - Albert Michelson, 1894
|
| What makes that quote especially remarkable, and ironic, is
| that was the same Michelson of the famous Michelson - Morley
| experiment which [1] was an extremely important clue on the
| path to discovery that would lead rapidly to relativity, and
| then general explosion of discovery in physics to follow. Not
| only could he not even imagine the relevance of his very own
| 'discovery', but largely doubted his own results as the
| experiment was not intended to 'fail'!
|
| The point I make is that so much of major advances in science
| have come about not through directed efforts but through some
| sort of serendipity. And it seems to me that observing what
| happens with ever higher energy collisions is one area where
| what may be important is not what is expected, but what is
| unexpected. It's also an area where there is no direct profit
| motive as contrasted with things like energy or what I assume
| you are implying with biology. Those fields will naturally
| advance because there's money to be made. Atom banging is
| generally not quite as lucrative an industry and, as such,
| various sorts of public funding tends to be much more
| important.
|
| [1] -
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelson%E2%80%93Morley_exper...
| kensai wrote:
| It's ironic that you write this comment on the World Wide Web.
| An invention made in the "useless for humanity" CERN... :-/
|
| https://home.cern/science/computing/birth-web
| orhmeh09 wrote:
| I have no doubt we'd have gotten basically the same thing
| within five years from elsewhere if CERN didn't exist.
| dehrmann wrote:
| Gopher came slightly after WWW, so I'm not sure how much
| influence WWW had on it, but it makes me think you're
| right. Other people were working in the problem space.
| lupire wrote:
| Gopher came first. Berners-Lee used gopher while we was
| developing WWW.
|
| https://www.minnpost.com/business/2016/08/rise-and-fall-
| goph...
|
| But it doesn't matter. Lots of people all over the world
| were collaborating to build new Internet protocols.
| kensai wrote:
| It came because it was somewhere inspired. WWW was the
| initial spark. And it could have only come in some big
| time, blue sky lab.
| dehrmann wrote:
| It's not, though.
|
| > There are many known problems in physics right now. $100
| billion could fund (quite literally) 100,000 smaller physics
| experiments.
|
| $1M is a reasonable amount to build a prototype world wide
| web. There were 5,000 things like WWW we didn't do because we
| built LHC.
| dekhn wrote:
| folks were already putting postscript papers on FTP servers.
| Discoverability (linking) was the big hard problem.
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| > Discoverability (linking) was the big hard problem.
|
| Still is.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| the WWW had nothing to do with physics research in particular
| but with the need to document and exchange information across
| systems which was a secular trend. Hypertext as a user
| interface paradigm existed before the WWW. (Douglas
| Engelbart's NLS for example)
| BaseballPhysics wrote:
| > yes it is, but where does this fundamental science helps in
| everyday problems?
|
| PhD or not, this is an oddly utilitarian view of science.
|
| I suspect there would be countless discoveries that never would
| have been made had we only ever weighed an experiment based
| purely on its ability to "help in everyday problems".
|
| I mean, why, say, develop the theory of evolution? At the time
| that was irrelevant to "everyday problems". Today our
| understanding of evolution is valuable in countless settings,
| but at the time? At best it was an interesting exercise in
| trying to understand the natural world.
|
| And yet by this reckoning we never would've bothered.
| thehappypm wrote:
| Hertz on the discovery of radio waves: "I do not think that
| the wireless waves I have discovered will have any practical
| application".
| lupire wrote:
| Hertz was humble or unambitious, but everyone else saw the
| obvious value. Radio was commercialized within 3 years.
| bnralt wrote:
| At a certain point we have to make choices about what gets
| funded. Even if you think much more money should be going
| into science, you still have to decide what takes priority,
| and you're going to eventually run into some limits. One can
| take the view (as many seem to) that if it's science it
| should be funded, but that's not useful for any discussion of
| resource allocation. If someone doesn't have a preference,
| then it makes sense for the people who do have preferences to
| decide.
|
| Also keep in mind that some scientific endeavors can make
| other ones much more productive, so prioritizing things
| correctly can increase the overall output by a large amount
| (and neglecting to prioritize things correctly can
| significantly slow output).
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| > I mean, why, say, develop the theory of evolution? At the
| time that was irrelevant to "everyday problems".
|
| "Charles Darwin discussed how selective breeding had been
| successful in producing change over time in his 1859 book, On
| the Origin of Species. Its first chapter discusses selective
| breeding and domestication of such animals as pigeons, cats,
| cattle, and dogs." (Wikipedia)
|
| Darwin's theory of evolution was literally developed to
| explain the most significant food growing technique since
| irrigation. Seems _very_ practical to the everyday problem of
| _not starving._
| BaseballPhysics wrote:
| > Darwin's theory of evolution was literally developed to
| explain the most significant food growing technique since
| irrigation.
|
| Correct. The theory of evolution explained selective
| breeding.
|
| But it wasn't needed to _practice_ selective breeding,
| given it had been going on for literally millenia prior.
| cookingmyserver wrote:
| I think it is important to remember the context of the
| discussion. I think I it is completely reasonable, and not
| odd at all, to have a utilitarian view of science, _when you
| are talking about spending $100 Billion_.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| Well, 30 billion EUR, so not 100 billion dollars unless the
| US has some really bad inflation.
| godelski wrote:
| > when you are talking about spending _UPWARDS_ of $100
| billion, split over 10 years and over a dozen countries.
|
| FTFY
|
| Honestly, these are country budgets. That's not an insane
| amount of money. It is Germany spending $2bn/yr at the 5x
| inflated budget but $500m/yr at the estimated cost (23bn).
| XorNot wrote:
| That $100 billion doesn't vanish into thin air. It
| principally goes into plant and equipment to build the
| machine, as well as research into high tech manufacturing
| for the same.
|
| The world wide web which we are currently using was
| invented at CERN. You can literally go look at the proposal
| manuscript.
| lupire wrote:
| Eh, Berners-Lee could have written that proposal for a
| different collaborative project, or someone else would
| have eventually.
|
| We already had gopher. Web was an incremental step.
| credit_guy wrote:
| Where does this argument stop? 1 trillion, 10 trillion?
| duped wrote:
| Ideally never
| rhn_mk1 wrote:
| Isn't that the economic theory of broken windows? Given
| the choice between alternatives, added value should be
| considered, not added cost.
| BaseballPhysics wrote:
| Alright. I agree, that's certainly a very valid point.
|
| So would you have cancelled the moon landing program? In
| 2020 dollars that program cost over $257B (over $400B if
| you count related programs and costs)[1], and that goal--
| landing humans on the moon--has demonstrated very little
| utility.
|
| [1]: https://www.planetary.org/space-policy/cost-of-apollo
| whatshisface wrote:
| A lot of people wanted to cancel the moon landing program
| while it was happening, and they eventually did.
| BaseballPhysics wrote:
| And yet many ascribe a whole range of knock-on benefits
| as a consequence of the Apollo missions. Had those people
| had their way, one wonders what technologies we wouldn't
| have today because, in the moment, no one could find a
| clear utilitarian justification for the program.
| gralx wrote:
| Knock-on effects can just as well be ascribed to
| alternative targets for those Apollo funds. Those don't
| take much imagination to come up with, e.g. reducing the
| student-teacher ratios in schools.
| delusional wrote:
| Often politics is not a question of "funding this good
| thing or funding this great thing", but rather "funding
| this good thing that we can agree on, or funding
| nothing".
| gralx wrote:
| _Politicians sometimes do the wrong thing_ is a truism,
| no?
| lupire wrote:
| Maybe if we spent a few more years improving computers
| and materials before so many launches, we could have done
| more with less money. Likewise for the disastrous Shuttle
| program.
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| It had utility to the US government in demonstrating to
| the Russians our ability to accurately move payloads on
| the planetary scale. Actually landing on the moon was
| just a conveniently goal-aligned PR win. Beyond that
| though, being able to put things at that scale in orbit
| _has_ shown major dividends at in every sector.
| BaseballPhysics wrote:
| > It had utility to the US government in demonstrating to
| the Russians our ability to accurately move payloads on
| the planetary scale. Actually landing on the moon was
| just a conveniently goal-aligned PR win. Beyond that
| though, being able to put things at that scale in orbit
| has shown major dividends at in every sector.
|
| You don't need to put men on the surface of the moon to
| gain any of these benefits. The US government could've
| spent _far_ less to achieve those same outcomes.
|
| And that's ignoring the fact that, particularly regarding
| those "major dividends", much of those justifications can
| only be made in hindsight. At the time I think it
| would've been difficult to justify the moonshot on that
| kind of utilitarian basis.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| But why are you talking out of your ass? The point of
| going to the moon was never to dimly increase utility to
| the public. JFK took us to the moon because "No single
| space project in this period will be more impressive to
| mankind, or more important for the long-range exploration
| of space".
|
| https://www.jfklibrary.org/learn/about-jfk/historic-
| speeches...
| BaseballPhysics wrote:
| > But why are you talking out of your ass?
|
| Keep it civil, please.
|
| > The point of going to the moon was never to dimly
| increase utility to the public.
|
| I think maybe you've lost the thread of the conversation?
|
| The original claim was that scientific research/projects
| should be funded based on evident utility.
|
| My point is that if you fund such projects purely based
| on immediately evident utility, then projects like Apollo
| (among many others) don't happen.
|
| My unspoken corollary is that that would represent a loss
| to humanity, and that pure utilitarianism is too narrow a
| frame to use when assessing the value of a given project.
|
| Honestly, I think we're in agreement, here, and I'm not
| sure I understand your aggressive response.
| ordu wrote:
| _> We have so many problems where physics is needed (energy
| production to start with, and then exploring biology)_
|
| How can physics help to explore biology? At a first half of
| 20th century biology experienced a flow of physicist converting
| to biology and that had led to a transformation of a biology
| into what it is now and to a bunch of breakthrough discoveries,
| most notably the double helix (Francis Crick was a physicist).
| But I wonder what breakthroughs might happen now if physicists
| tried to boost biology one more time.
| yboris wrote:
| We are currently living in a very important time in humanity's
| history that the philosopher Toby Ord calls _The Precipice_. We
| likely have a 1 out of 6 chance over the next century to end
| humanity (all human life is destroyed), so this century we
| absolutely _must_ decrease the chances of _existential threats_
| to humanity or perish. This should be humanity 's #1 priority,
| yet at the moment we spend less on it than we do on ice cream.
|
| https://theprecipice.com/
|
| Please read this book, which is in my opinion the most important
| book written this century.
| oyoman wrote:
| I think people needs to put a bit of perspective on this :
|
| the FCC is a project for the next 70 years. It is supposed to be
| operational after 2040 at the earliest if I recall correctly (20
| years from now more or less), and to run for around 40 years.
|
| So if you do a very simplistic calculation on the first 20 years
| : 100 B euros over 20 years over 20 countries (there is 23 member
| states into the CERN) it is 250 M euros / year / country. This is
| not even calculated on the over-all project time, on on the
| different steps that will be happening: first FCC as electron-
| positron collider and then much later FCC hadron-hadron collider.
|
| And if you are really interested into the previewed outcomes
| (scientifically and new techs associated):
|
| https://indico.cern.ch/event/1040535/timetable/#20220503.det...
|
| You can take look at the European research communities symposium
| that just happened recently on the future of the research topics
| in Europe. There are a lot of information for FCC and so on.
| rlpb wrote:
| 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 credible if it could
| point out how this didn't apply to the LHC. Was every discovery
| and technology that came out of the LHC predicted in advance? If
| not, then this argument fails.
| ThePhysicist wrote:
| For serendipity to work its magic you need to be able to
| explore the solution space. In high energy physics that usually
| means putting more energy into a system, as (naively said) that
| will increase the amount of stuff that will happen. So I'm all
| for building bigger and bigger accelerators, even if they cost
| trillions of dollars to make, as we have only explored a tiny
| piece of the energy scale so far, and we're pretty sure very
| interesting stuff happens at higher scales (ultimately, grand
| unification of all forces).
|
| Also, there's a mutual relationship between theory and
| experiment in physics. The LHC was well motivated by
| theoretical predictions (most notably the Higgs boson) that
| needed experimental verification. In physics you have to put
| your theories to the test, otherwise they're not worth much.
| Each experimental result is like a nail that fixes a part of
| your theory space (by excluding possible alternative theories),
| and that then allows you to explore the space further with
| greater confidence. Hence the more nails, the better.
| radu_floricica wrote:
| You're missing the second part of his argument. Serendipitous
| discoveries can come from anywhere, so it does make sense to
| pay attention to cost. Which would you think would be a better
| bet for a random win, 100k separate experiments, or just one
| large experiment that's a scaled up version of something we
| already have?
|
| If you say the second, you have severe scope neglect: 100k is a
| huge number.
|
| Of course, one expensive experiment may be the right call in
| some situations, but only if you have good reason to think
| it'll pay off. Either because you're certain it will, or
| because the expected utility of unknown results is larger than
| the cost (expected utility being probability times value). This
| very much isn't the case here.
| brazzy wrote:
| 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.
| cm2187 wrote:
| I am all for spending money on scientific research but to justify
| large investments, it needs to yield something useful in
| practice. Otherwise it's a form of philosophy, minus the societal
| impact.
|
| XX century science has delivered plenty of practical
| applications. But is there any practical application to expect
| from another large Hadron collider? Wouldn't that money be better
| used in bio science or something else?
| krageon wrote:
| > to justify large investment it needs to yield something
| useful in practice
|
| The really important scientific work doesn't follow this rule
| and demanding it does is short-sighted. Perhaps worse, it's
| refusing to learn from _plenty_ of historical examples where
| you can see the work yielded nothing of immediate use but was
| still very important (that is to say, society would look vastly
| different without it). In a sense, it 's this kind of goal-
| oriented thinking that led society to the mess that it has
| become in the last 15 years.
| Aerroon wrote:
| How many of those historical examples cost so much though?
| With $100 billion you could give $10000 to 10 million people.
| Or spend it on retraining or some other education.
|
| Most previous science discoveries weren't throwing around
| oodles of money.
| musha68k wrote:
| Exactly. " _Agile_ ", efficiency-over-everything, etc won't
| save this planet.
| yccs27 wrote:
| I feel like this article does not discuss the real reasons why
| LHC++ would or would not be a success. It absolutely depends on
| whether you expect it to provide tangible evidence of new
| physics; that is, physics beyond the standard model. It's easy to
| say "high-energy physics has become highly academic and
| mathematical", but if it provided results there wouldn't be a
| problem with that. Mathematical beauty has proven unreasonably
| effective at driving innovation in physics [1], and cutting-edge
| research being academic is nothing new.
|
| The fundamental problem for high-energy physics seems to be the
| "tyranny of the standard model", as one of my professors called
| it. We know that our current model of fundamental particles must
| be incomplete towards extremely high energies (trillions of TeV),
| because it conflicts with general relativity. However, almost all
| experimental results are consistent with the standard model.
| There are some barely-significant [2] results from muon spin and
| W-boson experiments, but the effect sizes are minuscule and and
| two data-points are in no way enough to guide new theory
| development.
|
| This leaves theorists with almost no experimental input, so they
| pursue purely mathematical ideas that are in some way elegant,
| able to describe the standard model as a low-energy limit, and in
| some cases include a description of gravity as well. But the more
| advanced and theoretical the ideas get, the more difficult it
| gets to make experimental predictions. The ones which predict
| non-standard-model measurements with current equipment are
| already ruled out anyway, because _we did the measurements_ and
| the standard model just keeps getting validated.
|
| So what should we do? We can hope that a larger collider will
| find new evidence of beyond-standard-model physics, but (as I
| understand it) there is no concrete reason why there has to be
| anything interesting in the newly-accessible energy region.
|
| [1] As just one example from particle physics: Gell-Mann's
| "Eightfold Way", which uses advanced representation theory to
| describe hadrons and was successful at predicting new particles:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eightfold_way_(physics) [2] Note
| that high-energy physics has an extremely high standard of
| significance at 5 sigma, so it's not comparable to "barely
| significant" in the social sciences.
| Jweb_Guru wrote:
| I mean... dark matter exists (or MOND if you are into that). So
| there's no real question that there's physics beyond the
| standard model. Why not try our luck in the accessible regions
| to see whether that's where it lives?
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| The high energy frontier the FCC targets _is_ one of the more
| accessible regions: it 's not like there's any viable way to
| travel the interstellar distances needed to really look for
| dark matter outside the solar systems.
|
| We're stuck on earth for the foreseeable future, and building
| 2 more of the instruments we're already building won't do
| anything to resolve the problems high energy physics struggle
| with.
| Jweb_Guru wrote:
| Even if dark matter is (as seems quite possible) made up of
| unknown particles, you don't think probing the possibility
| space with a particle accelerator will help? I know many
| particle physicists disagree...
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| I _do_ think it will help more than leaving it to the
| cosmologists.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Ok, we don't want to another LHC as a physics experiment, but
| what about all the engineering coming out of such projects? From
| superconductors to data science, the LHS has done lots of new
| stuff. Whether the core science experiments succeeds or fails
| might be beside the point. There are other outcomes to such
| projects than pure science answers. One can argue that the ISS
| hasn't produced much science, but without that space station we
| probably wouldn't have seen nearly as much progress in lowering
| the costs of accessing space.
|
| The link between CERN and the web is a great example of something
| that had nothing to do with the core science but was certainly
| worth more than the investment.
| captainmuon wrote:
| As a former experimental particle physicist, I don't think string
| theory or supersymmetry is going to be a description of nature. I
| say that despite spending a couple of years searching for SUSY.
| But I still think the cost of building a LHC++ (that is, the FCC
| or the SPPC) is justified. The current theoretical "dead end" or
| maybe swamp fundamental physics is in is precisely due to a lack
| of data.
|
| Of course, there are a lot of smaller experiments that one could
| do, also in particle physics, that have great value. One example
| was the Muon g-2 measurement, another is anything neutrino
| physics. We can get a lot of interesting input and test our
| theories without going to the "energy frontier". Physicists
| understand this very well. But there are a bunch of questions
| that you can only really answer if you go to those higer
| energies.
|
| As for the costs, 100 billion is a lot, but not when you compare
| it to other large infrastructure projects, or especially military
| spending (and note the Chinese proposal SPPC would be a lot
| cheaper!). I think if we could shave off 100 billion of military
| expenses and put it into basic research, it would be a great win
| for society. That's not realistic you say, with all the threats
| out there? Great, I agree, but now we have a nice project! Lets
| put as a common goal that we want to be able to do this kind of
| research, _and then improve our societies nationally and
| globally_ so that we can reduce our military spending and do this
| kind of research.
|
| 100 billion ($/EUR) is the amount that Germany is spending as a
| special budget in response to Russia's aggression, in order to
| become the nation with the 3rd highest military spending on the
| planet. If it weren't for the war in Ukraine, we could put it all
| into such a project.
|
| If we had averted COVID in it's early stages - like we did with
| SARS-1 and MERS - imagine all the resources we could have put
| into research instead.
| magicalhippo wrote:
| But if you have say 100 billion, why put it into "yet another
| collider" rather than say condensed matter physics and quantum
| information research? To me, a non-physicist, it seems those
| areas have a lot more potential to deliver science that will
| benefits us.
|
| Alternatively, if one really wants to pursue beyond the
| standard model physics, it seems to me multi-messenger
| astronomy has a much better chance of delivering decisive data,
| so shouldn't we put that money into better observatories?
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| First of all, the proposed design is estimated to cost 21
| billion EUR.
|
| Secondly condensed matter and quantum information already get
| plenty of money: superconductivity alone is a _market_ worth
| around 5 billion dollars, google is spending billions of _its
| own_ money into quantum computers.
|
| But sure, lets give these starving fields that produce
| commercial products a some tax-payer dollars at the slight
| cost of completely de funding high energy physics, I'm sure
| that will get the scientist there to care about the proton
| despite them very consciously choosing to do something else.
| threeseed wrote:
| > But if you have say 100 billion, why put it into "yet
| another collider" rather than say condensed matter physics
| and quantum information research?
|
| Because the only reason you have $100 billion to spend is
| that it's a large scale infrastructure project. And that
| money is trickling down to member states through contracts to
| a mix of businesses who hire white and blue collar workers.
|
| It is equal part economic stimulus, political marketing and
| scientific research.
|
| You can't just ask for the last part and ignore the first
| two.
| [deleted]
| jmartin2683 wrote:
| It's a good thing guys like him didn't have any say back in the
| 1920s and 30s.
| viburnum wrote:
| End manned space flight while you're at it.
| LaGrange wrote:
| This, but unironically.
| theblazehen wrote:
| Why?
| throwawayffffas wrote:
| I completely disagree, 100 billion might sound like a lot of
| money, but it's not. It's going to take like 20 years to
| build/assemble right? That's like 5 billion a year the EU GDP is
| 17.9 trillion per year. It's worth it just to keep all these
| physicists and engineers employed.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| might have localized effects though. Like rentals, pubs, cost
| of trucking, in the regions which it's being built
| bullen wrote:
| The "best" thing to come out of CERN is HTTP.
|
| I think breakthroughs are often perpendicular to the energy, so
| the best investment in understanding the universe is probably to
| explore it.
|
| Unfortunately that also requires alot of energy.
|
| Rate of change is going to slow down with the price of energy
| going up.
| dgb23 wrote:
| I think this is grossly unfair. The things it did not find have
| a lot to say in this current discussion.
| Aerroon wrote:
| On the other hand, a protocol like HTTP was probably inevitable
| anyway. It just happened to be the one that won out.
| elashri wrote:
| I read the article and wondered where the author got the next
| hadron collider to be LHC++ and how he got this estimation for
| the cost. Anyway I remember that a couple of years ago I was
| talking with my of my professors and he mentioned LHC++ which was
| a OOP software environment proposed (1).
|
| Anyway as someone inside experimental HEP field, I would
| encourage anyone who wants to understand more about finding and
| ideas to try to follow up the snowmass process as an example on
| how the dynamics of funding and new ideas for the future forms,
| discussed and gets priorities (at least in US)
|
| Snowmass process is basically a series of meeting for the US HEP
| community where they discuss the US strategy and funding requests
| for the coming decade. the last one was in 2014 and now this
| process which takes about 3 years (probably more this time thanks
| to covid). It is really insightful but technical in nature but
| try to read more about it and the final report that gets to DOE
| committee to act as advisory guideline from the community.
|
| [1] https://cds.cern.ch/record/451601/files/p59.pdf
| rootw0rm wrote:
| Couldn't agree more.
| hoseja wrote:
| We need to start building large-scale space-based experiments.
| Not experiments to study space necessarily but because they'd be
| too big to fit on the Earth.
| throw457 wrote:
| Ah... the yearly bigthink article that we should stop funding
| other experiments and put everything into fusion.
| brazzy wrote:
| That is the exact opposite of what the article argues.
|
| It says to stop putting everything (or rather, a ridiculous
| amount of money) into high energy particle physics and start
| funding other experiments.
| robga wrote:
| Right, the article doesn't argue for fusion funding.
|
| But elsewhere the author has advocated it with "fusion power
| is a goal worth spending billions on". And in his "Why
| Particle Colliders Will Go Extinct" article, he supports the
| billions spent on fusion.
|
| The author's other writings include:
|
| - Gun Ownership Neither Increases Nor Decreases the Crime
| Rate
|
| - Fleeing Paris Accords Makes Scientific Sense
|
| - NSF Should Stop Funding Social 'Science'
| sliken wrote:
| Fusion does remind me of the space program. Surprising new
| solutions in a wide range of sciences. Easy to produce
| superconducting ribbons being one of the big successes so far.
| Said ribbons have lead to significant improvements in electro
| magnets, improving both field strength and decreasing the
| magnet sizes. Said magnets are useful for a wide variety of
| applications (outside of fusion), like improved MRI machines.
| The ribbons have the potential to help transmit power across
| the grid with less losses. Significant improvements in
| predicting and shaping turbulence in plasma has a wide range of
| applications in producing more efficient engines. Using AI/ML
| to attack the complexity of the plasma flows that were
| otherwise computationally intractable.
|
| I'm all for the LHC, but it does seem like the world needs a
| bit better of an idea of the mysteries that the LHC++ might
| solve before spending $10-$100B on it. Does seem like science
| could be pushed further in other areas.
| simion314 wrote:
| Didn't CERN and LHC had big contribution already related to
| magnets(though maybe LHC designers don't directly apply to
| fusion needs) ? There are projects related to fusion too but
| I am expecting that people agreeing to this article will also
| want to remove the funding for fusion and invest it in
| electric cars and solar panels or his pet project.
| sliken wrote:
| I heard of some news in that area, but the breakthroughs I
| heard of where fusion related and at MIT:
|
| https://news.mit.edu/2021/MIT-CFS-major-advance-toward-
| fusio...
|
| From what I can tell it's really is ground breaking,
| significant changes, well ahead of the normal projections
| for improved magnets. Literally with a single technology
| that allows magnet to be 40 times smaller. The easy to
| produce superconducting tape of arbitrary length is likely
| to find interesting applications as well.
|
| Sure, like all research, practical fusion is not
| guaranteed, but it does look promising, and real progress
| has been made, and not just the "few % better this year"
| that might lead to real progress in a decade or a few
| centuries.
|
| However Fusion is just an example, imagine 100 $1B
| projects, doesn't it seem likely for humanity to learn more
| from those then some particle that is hard to produce, last
| for a billionth of a second, and makes some models more
| likely and other models less likely? Maybe help with
| cancer, medicine, energy production, AI, space travel,
| faster computers, improving food production, mitigating
| global warning, energy storage or similar?
| throw457 wrote:
| If we solve physics we solve everything if we solve fusion we
| have solved fusion.
| brazzy wrote:
| > If we solve physics we solve everything
|
| A particle collider does not, in fact, "solve physics" in
| any meaningful way, _especially_ not in terms of practical
| applicability.
|
| > if we solve fusion we have solved fusion.
|
| The comment you are replying to has explained in some
| detail why this is not true.
| throw457 wrote:
| Why bother doing science at all if it's not practical
| applicable right? Such a nonsense argument I wonder how
| you think any scientific progress is made.
| sliken wrote:
| Research is never a sure thing, but ideally we'd push all
| areas of science equally. How many other areas of science
| have a $100B tool that may or may not reveal something
| interesting?
|
| Why should high energy physics get priority over any
| other area?
|
| It's the nature of high energy physics that the higher
| the energy the rarer the event. The standard model
| already explains our universe unbelievably accurately.
| Sure there are corner cases, and maybe, just maybe a
| LHC++ might give some evidence towards one model or
| another. But what happens if global warming, wars over
| fuel, lack of fertilizer, and lack of food makes it
| harder for humanity to survive let alone complete major
| science projects.
|
| Renewable and/or carbon neutral energy in all it's forms
| seems pretty important these days compared to slightly
| reinforcing one physical model over another.
|
| Maybe a fusion engine would let us explore the solar
| system enough to find planet 9, which might well be a
| black hole. That would open up particle energies well in
| excess of anything we could manage with LHC++.
| brazzy wrote:
| That was a small part of my argument. That you have to
| concentrate on that in this way shows that you don't
| really have any arguments yourself.
| throw457 wrote:
| brazzy wrote:
| Yes, playing stupid games (badly) is a pretty good
| description of what you're doing here.
| throw457 wrote:
| You bark so loud I can't even hear your arguments. "YOUR
| THING BAD MINE GOOD. WOOF"
| waqf wrote:
| If we solve fusion, surely we have a lot of cheap energy
| (and attendant economic output) to throw at solving
| physics?
| ncmncm wrote:
| No. It would cost far, far more to extract useful energy
| from fusion than using well-understood renewables.
|
| And, we control plenty of energy. The project is to
| concentrate it in one spot.
| waqf wrote:
| What is meant by "solving fusion" if not making fusion an
| economically viable source of power?
|
| And I didn't mean to suggest that available energy was
| the limitation on building LHC++, but rather that
| available economic surplus was.
| ncmncm wrote:
| In that case, fusion will _never_ be solved, and any
| money spent toward that goal is money wasted.
| godelski wrote:
| I hate these economic arguments. They throw around big numbers to
| scare you away but really they aren't big. Let's look at the LHC,
| which cost $4.75bn to build and costs $5.5bn/yr[0]. This may
| sound like a lot, but also consider that it took a decade to
| build ($0.5bn/yr for the first 10 years). Then consider that it
| is a joint multinational effort. If you're a member state
| (European) here's what your country contributes yearly[1]. The
| highest is Germany which does 20% of the member state
| contributions, at a whopping total of $236 million/yr (it is in
| CHF, but it is almost identical to the USD so I swapped). The US
| gives some grants in the half billion orders but I am having a
| harder time finding good logs.
|
| The other thing I hate about this is that the numbers reported in
| the article are clearly inflationary. The use the precise
| phrasing " It's entirely possible that the price could swell to
| $100 billion." while highlighting the big number. Well let's
| check another source. CNET says $23bn. So that would require a 5x
| over budget, which would be quite high. I know HN loves
| Hossenfelder, but she is overly pessimistic. At least in my group
| of physicists, we don't know other physicists who like her much
| (not that I hate her, just more ambivalent). Pessimists are good,
| but they shouldn't dominate conversations the same way optimists
| shouldn't.
|
| Either way, it is clear that this type of money is very small
| when we are discussing country budgets. It should not be inflated
| and should not be sold as if there is a single country buying it
| (which it is well cheap enough to be done. Hell, Bezos and Musk
| could each have one, or several. Hell, there's at least 20
| billionaires that wouldn't have issues building their own and
| funding them for significant periods of time).
|
| So the real question is if we should build it, not the cost. As a
| former physicist, I do think the argument for building one is
| weak. It is correct that we don't have any great things to test.
| But there are reasons to do so. We need to consider it will take
| at least another decade to build, which theorists will hopefully
| come up with something in that time. If they don't, we can still
| test precision levels which is highly helpful. But there are
| other intangible things that are hard to evaluate. Anytime we
| humans tackle difficult problems and push the boundaries of what
| we can do, we learn a lot. That's where spinoffs come from and
| we've seen them in every major scientific endeavor (NASA, CERN,
| LIGO, and many more). Also, what happens when you put a bunch of
| smart people from many countries in a room together? There's
| political advantages (and why I think it is a shame Bush killed
| the American accelerator). There's also the fact that if we stop
| doing this, we'll lose talent and skill. So yeah, the upsides
| aren't crazy good like finding a new fundamental particle, but it
| also isn't that expensive. That's the real conversation that
| needs to be had.
|
| [0] https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2012/07/05/how-
| much-d...
|
| [1] https://www.lhc-
| closer.es/taking_a_closer_look_at_lhc/0.cern...
|
| [2] https://www.cnet.com/science/cern-wants-to-build-a-
| new-23-bi...
| isaacfrond wrote:
| 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.
| Avamander wrote:
| > 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.
| isaacfrond wrote:
| No! It would not. You could fund attic hobby projects all
| year long, but it's never going to give _new_ data.
|
| It is one of the great perks of civilization that you can
| combine resources to make something truly awesome, whether it
| is pyramids, moon landings or large colliders.
| Havoc wrote:
| > What it could discover is entirely speculative.
|
| Thats the point of discovery and arguably a point in favour of
| doing this
| gonzo41 wrote:
| For the cost though, you should probably fund a lot of other
| science. Climate change mitigation perhaps?
| hnbad wrote:
| Elon Musk was willing to put up upwards of $40bn to buy out
| Twitter. If a private individual can leverage that kind of
| money, $100bn seems like peanuts for an international
| scientific endeavour.
|
| Heck, Germany just greenlit a EUR100bn special budget for
| expanding its military capabilities.
|
| It's not that world governments don't have that kind of money
| to spend on the Climate crisis, it's that they aren't
| interested and motivated to do it. Germany's special budget
| was justified with Russia being an existential threat but the
| Climate crisis has been recognized as an existential threat
| for decades, yet almost all countries have been dragging
| their feet.
|
| NATO recommends member nations put 2% of their annual budget
| into defense. Imagine its members (let alone most countries)
| would have done the same for combatting Climate change.
| Havoc wrote:
| Doesn't need to be either or. Money printers seem to work
| just fine
| kelnos wrote:
| Current levels of inflation seem to suggest otherwise.
| jimmySixDOF wrote:
| $100B would go a long way experimenting with new Concrete or
| Desalination processes that would have immediate benefits
| with even moderate success.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| The claim that we need to "invest into science" is outright
| bullshit. We don't need more investment into climate change
| science - we already know what to do to mitigate climate
| change and we have known it for decades (hell there is an
| article from over a hundred years ago that warns of the
| dangers of CO2 emissions [2]): ban ICE vehicles and coal
| power plants, promote public transit, massively restrict
| other uses of fossil material, get rid of mass animal
| farming, prevent profiteers from burning down the Amazon
| rainforest.
|
| The problem is, politicians won't do anything because they
| are either bought out by the fossil fuel industry that is at
| the top of the CO2 emitter list [1] or because they are
| afraid of telling their voters that the only way to stay on
| track regarding climate change will be a drastic cut in their
| quality of life.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_contributors_to_greenho
| use...
|
| [2]: https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/08/13/
| fact...
| aeroman wrote:
| Isn't this a reason to understand more about the climate
| though? How big cuts are needed, and how fast? What is the
| consequence of leaving those cuts an extra 10 years? What
| if we put our energy into cutting methane now and leave CO2
| for later? Does black carbon matter in the long term? What
| amount of warming is acceptable?
|
| These are the kind of questions we need answers to. Just
| saying 'we need to stop all emissions today' is not good
| enough. There is always a trade-off and we need to work out
| where this lies.
| selimthegrim wrote:
| That newspaper article is a syndicated reprint of a Popular
| Mechanics piece.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Could the money be used to offset quality-of-life to make
| fossil fuel alternatives less problematic?
| bsnal wrote:
| Ban ICE vehicles, coal power plants and get rid of mass
| animal farming? And then we do what, go back to the caves?
| Avalaxy wrote:
| There are good alternatives to all these things.
| px43 wrote:
| Use electric cars, green energy, and sustainable farming
| practices?
|
| The gross old shit only still exists because the
| entrenched industries have the ability to lobby for
| government subsidies. Imagine if people in the US had to
| actually pay full price for gas, or for their meat.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| or we go forward out of the cave we are living in now,
| believing we are so advanced that we are at the peak of
| civilization, while we still pray a non existent being
| for health and create energy by making giant holes in the
| ground that give us goo that then we set on fire.
|
| Doesn't sound so advanced to me...
| kuschku wrote:
| I never owned a car (only use trains + bicycles), I'm on
| a renewable electricity plan, and I'm vegetarian (and
| being selective with the farms I buy my eggs and milk
| from).
|
| It's not "living in caves", in fact, it's not any
| different from the life of anyone else. It's only a
| handful of tiny changes and suddenly your climate impact
| is massively reduced.
| oefrha wrote:
| That 100B hasn't been poured into climate change mitigation
| has absolutely nothing to do with a plan to build a 100B
| hadron collider. Plus this is 100B over _decades_.
| TrapLord_Rhodo wrote:
| This is why we can't get anything done. Everyone has a million
| other ideas on where this $100B should go and they would all be
| right.
|
| That shouldn't ever be the argument because you can argue about
| the exact peice of fecundity that the dollar value can have until
| you are blue in the face on X, Y, Z projects.
|
| When it comes to government spending, my reactions seems to be
| the opposite of most. I actually think that these big audacious
| projects is the only use for government. Fund big things that
| individually and within the private market would never be a
| thing. Do Hubble, Do LHC++, do scientific exploration missions
| because that is what makes you proud to be part of what is going
| on around you. That sense of inspiration in the air of progress
| is all that is required for a functioning society.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| I always figured that the bigs supercolliders were just a big job
| creation program -- the money isn't spent in a vacuum (no pun
| intended, well ok, a little), but the money is going toward
| paying people and vendors to do $100B of work, with a little raw
| materials thrown in. So even if you're not getting $100B of
| science out of it, it's not a total waste.
| Invictus0 wrote:
| There are more bad takes in this comment section than perhaps any
| other comment section I've seen in the last two years.
| rkwasny wrote:
| The target never is to just "build" bigger LHC.
|
| The important part is "building" which pumps billions into
| research programs for improving materials/electronics etc.
|
| Sure we can defund all expensive science and maintain the status
| quo, last time we did this dark ages happened.
| dmpk2k wrote:
| I have started calculating things in LHCs.
|
| The LHC is a massive machine with advanced technologies, took a
| decade to design and build, involving 10k scientists and the
| international community, and cost $9B. - Squadron
| of F-35 aircraft: ~0.2 LHCs - JWT: 1.1 LHCs - ITER:
| >2 LHCs - Elon Musk's wealth: 24 LHCs - Microsoft's
| market cap: 30 LHCs - US annual military budget: 90 LHCs
| - US national debt: 3389 LHCs
|
| Given the bizarrely huge numbers casually throw around nowadays,
| I think it's useful to keep some perspective.
| xcambar wrote:
| Anything compared to the US annual military budget seems cheap
| and a good idea.
|
| PS: Dear commenter, please don't "how about X?" in comments. I
| know you're smart. So smart you can find a counter example.
| Congratulations, you're clever.
| tragomaskhalos wrote:
| Tongue slightly in cheek, these data point to the answer - get
| Musk to pay for this thing. It'd consume a big chunk of his
| wealth but it's probably at least pitchable given his interest
| set.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| The development of Raptor 2 was orders of magnitude cheaper
| and its likely impact on human technology is pretty huge.
| redleader55 wrote:
| As someone born in a country near Russia, 5 squadrons of F-35
| change my life in a more significant way that 1 LHC.
|
| Nit: MSFT market cap is ~210 LHC.
| postalrat wrote:
| Not any more than 5 squadrons of MiGs.
| r3x_m wrote:
| I'm just a layman who loves physics, but this article does make a
| point. The LHC was built to definitively prove or disapprove
| _existing_ theoretical models, like the Higgs boson. If the
| exponential increasing of cost of the LHC++ can 't even promise
| new proofs or discoveries, then isn't that money better spent on
| other scientific experiments that will advance science? I'd have
| no problem with Europe spending that money on the Laser
| Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA), or many other projects.
| gumby wrote:
| This article summarized by xkcd: https://xkcd.com/401/
|
| Side note: this is comic number 401. Comic number 404 is
| particularly good.
| irthomasthomas wrote:
| 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 paper trail and audit
| hundreds of companies going back 25-30 years. I've always said
| it, cern is a scam, they take public money to fund product
| research, and then spin off separate companies to cream off the
| profits. Then they act broke and beg us for more money.
|
| Edit: There is very little public information on this. The
| company accounts may be public, but like I said, there are
| hundreds of them going back 30 years, and no-one is motivated to
| do that kind of research. There is a recent study here[0] which
| looks at the economic benefit to companies that help build the
| research equipment. Obviously a lot of tech has to be invented
| just to build systems like this. But I haven't seen a similar
| study of the cern spin-off companies, or KT (Knowledge Transfer)
| partners in cern nomenclature, and that is where the real meat
| is.
|
| I don't see why it would be so controversial for cern to retain
| some share in those KT companies and use that money to be self
| sufficient. That seems like a win for science.
|
| [0] https://cds.cern.ch/record/2632083/files/CERN-
| ACC-2018-0022....
|
| Further reading:
|
| https://kt.cern/success-stories/fostering-culture-entreprene...
|
| https://kt.cern/success-stories/managing-cern-intellectual-p...
|
| One example company (out of hundreds): UK firm
| buys cancer-zapping spin-off from CERN collider "The spin-
| off, known as Adam, was established in 2007 by CERN, the European
| Organisation for Nuclear Research, to build low-cost innovative
| accelerators for proton beam therapy (PBT) and conventional
| radiotherapy. Advanced Oncotherapy will pay for Adam in shares,
| giving CERN scientist Alberto Colussi, who founded the CERN
| business, a continuing stake in the technology."
|
| https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-cancer-cern-advancedoncot...
|
| https://www.avoplc.com/en-gb/Investors/Share-Price-Informati...
| scandox wrote:
| 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.
| est31 wrote:
| Yeah, it might be a non competitive investment for private
| investors because of the high risk compared to the low return
| or because the benefits are only seen years down the line, so
| results in a low annualized rate (you need to do it via nth
| root, not via dividing the returns by n). So governments do
| that investment instead. As a government you see things
| differently. Unless it goes abroad, the money is never _gone_
| , but is just going circles in your economy. If there is an
| added benefit of improvements decades down the line, even
| better.
| napier wrote:
| Public universities and research institutes?
| tormeh wrote:
| Your criticism applies to basically all STEM research.
| Personally I like progress.
| [deleted]
| dizhn wrote:
| Do you know any public sources about this topic I can look at?
| konschubert wrote:
| I don't think that's true. CERN itself didn't create many
| (any?) successful companies. People who worked at CERN went on
| to create companies, but that doesn't create any money for
| CERN.
|
| Happy to be corrected.
| irthomasthomas wrote:
| Start here https://kt.cern/success-stories
| LeoNatan25 wrote:
| "What it could discover is entirely speculative."
|
| This has been said, in one form or another, about almost any
| invention and experiment, shortly before actual discoveries were
| made. Scientific conservatism at its worst.
| ivanb wrote:
| 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 problem and get a result.
| grumbel wrote:
| But isn't that also exactly why the whole effort is a bit
| futile? If it takes this much effort to detect that an event is
| even happening, you end up describing something that only
| really happens in a lab situation and has not much relevance
| for the real world.
|
| That said, LHC cost $4.75 billion that's pretty much nothing
| compared to the amount of money that gets thrown around in the
| tech world. So might still be worth it just for the fun of it,
| even if the discoveries don't have any direct application.
| orbifold wrote:
| We need to figure out what we are missing, namely what is
| dark-matter, how does it interact with the currently visible
| matter, are there extra dimensions and so on. Once that it is
| figured out it might well be that we could engineer systems
| beyond our wildest dreams, we just don't know yet.
| blablabla123 wrote:
| From a purely isolated Experimental (Physics) point of view
| this might be true. But of course both theory and experiments
| are highly intertwined. For instance if you would like to
| observe Neutrinoless Double beta decay in nature, even if it
| exists, you might never get a chance to actually measure it
| because it would occur so seldomly. With setups like the LHC
| there is actually a realistic chance (if such phenomena
| exist) to measure them and thus applying that knowledge to
| various theories existing or in the making.
|
| That said, of course particle physics results have direct
| applications. For instance in speculative commercial
| applications of Nuclear fusion and also Quantum Computing is
| connected to particle physics. I mean even GPS systems are
| based on 4D space time. Not entirely sure if any of that can
| be directly attributed to research happening in colliders but
| this is just one part of the field, mainly the experimental
| part - which can verify/falsify theories or result in new
| ones.
| uejfiweun wrote:
| 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?
| tiborsaas wrote:
| We can't directly use the particles that are being
| discovered, but we can use the theories that they can confirm
| to be correct.
|
| By confirming a theory you can use the entire framework to
| come up with useful ideas. This is what happened to General
| relativity.
|
| If people only asked "ok, that star is a little bit off, but
| will that lead us to faster horses?" would look funny in
| hindsight.
| serf wrote:
| the collider itself lends itself to few directly tangible
| benefits, however the construction of the collider and
| analysis of the data is one of the largest innovation engines
| in the science world.
|
| a prolific amount of software, engineering, and material
| science has come from CERN, as well spinning off numerous
| high-tech startups.
| IanCal wrote:
| > But these colliders are so expensive
|
| The LHC has been in operation for about 12-14 years, and has
| been a "thing" from planning onwards for almost 40. It's cost
| $9B, split between a huge list of countries.
|
| Estimates of waste in the US medical system range from around
| $500B-$2T annualy. The lower end of that scale would support
| starting a new, fully funded, project of a similar scale for
| every state in the US every single year.
|
| At a multi-national, multi-decade scale I just don't think
| it's actually that much money.
|
| > all for the sake of discovering a tiny subatomic particle
| that we have no way of using
|
| There are few ways I'd look at this.
|
| One is that fundamental science can bleed into regular use
| over time, look at lasers. IIRC they had no clear use when
| invented, but are now absolutely key to so much. While the
| LHC had a headline goal (at least publicly) it's not just
| discovering one thing, it's a large tool to test fundamental
| physics.
|
| Another is that this money and work doesn't go nowhere.
| People are paid to work on big complex problems, building and
| designing magnets, detectors, computing systems, software for
| analysis, etc. A lot of that is not going to be entirely
| custom, and at the very least supports companies & the supply
| chain for newer advanced technology. NASA I think
| occasionally puts out some lists of things that derived from
| their work.
|
| Beyond that, I think there's value in getting a lot of people
| in a lot of countries to work together on a broadly non-
| political goal.
| Avamander wrote:
| 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.
| VaxWithSex wrote:
| Hossenfelder's critique is valid.
| VaxWithSex wrote:
| But we have thrown money at the problem and for years haven't
| gotten a result. After the Higgs: Silence... nothing new.
| datadata wrote:
| This article brings to mind the plot point [SPOILER ALERT] in
| "The Three-Body Problem" where the antagonistic and
| technologically superior aliens halt the progress of our entire
| civilization merely with nanotechnology that impedes science at
| our particle accelerators, thus preventing breakthroughs in
| physics.
| narrator wrote:
| That, or it's worth spending $100 billion on meaningless make
| work for smart people so we don't invent what comes after
| nuclear weapons.
| trasz wrote:
| It's a rather... alien way of doing something that can be
| achieved much easier, by "convincing" the leaders to spend that
| money on weapons instead.
| Animats wrote:
| But build medium-sized synchrotrons for IC fabs.[1]
|
| That paper describes a design for a 160 meter ring synchrotron to
| produce "extreme ultraviolet" for IC fabs in the 7nm and below
| range. Some large research accelerators have been used for that
| experimentally, including SLAC at Stanford. So the concept is
| known to work. It just needs to come down in price and size.
|
| ASML's tin-vaporization light source, which is a mechanical and
| optical nightmare made to work by throwing a few billion dollars
| at it, is the current technology.
|
| This may be how China leapfrogs the West in IC technology.
|
| [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-07323-z
| ainiriand wrote:
| Well, the US spends more than 700B per year in military budget
| alone, I see this thing as much more important and necessary.
|
| In any case it will be built by a conglomerate of countries and
| the budget is not huge when splitting the bill.
|
| Heck I would even like to see a couple of these built per year
| instead of more planes and warships.
|
| Edit: Typo.
| throwaway14356 wrote:
| The "who should decide" question i find the most interesting.
|
| It's one of the rare setups where i lack the arrogance to think
| my opinion would be relevant. (That said, if the goal was to burn
| the funds with minimal progress I couldn't imagine a better tool
| than the LHC BWANDO corporation.)
|
| If the tax payer is to fund the effort perhaps their opinion
| should have some non-zero influence on the choice?
|
| Im not entirely against theoretical efforts (which is like my
| opinion) but to alienate clearly productive effort under some
| "let industries do it" banner seems several bridges to far. Maybe
| the other way around: let industries decide. would be less
| sensless.
|
| useful things like wind solar wave tidal energy, clean water,
| agriculture etc all directly compete for the funds.
|
| Wait, i know. Lets spend an insane amount of money to research
| what we should be funding. Im sure we can figure out howmany
| apples an orange is worth.
| rubyist5eva wrote:
| Hey, I don't need even more Mandela Effects, ok?
| [deleted]
| rvieira wrote:
| Driven by this post, out of curiosity I started looking at the
| price tag of some mega-projects around the world.
|
| Interestingly, the most expensive ones are almost always highway
| systems. Can someone briefly explain why? I'm my naive view it's
| mostly asphalt and terrain work.
| perryizgr8 wrote:
| Probably because highways are almost always public projects,
| funded by taxpayer money. There is little incentive to be
| efficient and cost effective.
| permo-w wrote:
| yeah that'll be it. it's not the colossal scale, expensive
| machinery, or cost of land. big government is to blame
| inglor_cz wrote:
| From what I know about highways, they would have been a lot
| cheaper if they only carried personal cars. What really damages
| them are the heavy trucks.
|
| Having to carry trucks for decades means a lot more steel and
| concrete. Especially when constructing bridges and overpasses.
| julienreszka wrote:
| Highway systems are expensive projects because they require a
| lot of land, they are very labor intensive, and they require a
| lot of materials.
| rvieira wrote:
| Ah, yes. I forgot the "detail" of land
| purchasing/compensations...
| samwillis wrote:
| Anything that involves digging holes in the ground is
| enormously expensive. If you take house building as an example,
| 25-30% of the cost is the foundations - digging it out then
| filling them with concrete.
|
| It's labour, fuel, and material, intensive work.
| threeseed wrote:
| Also there is the wonderful element of surprise.
|
| Sometimes when they dig into the ground they find something
| unpredictable e.g. contaminated soil which can result in a
| major cost blowout, a legal fight between government and
| contractor and then unplanned delays which further increases
| costs.
| FairlyInvolved wrote:
| Several people have answered this from the angle of why the
| cost is large, but missed the other (necessary) angle - the
| benefits are also massive and well understood. Plenty of
| potential projects have huge costs but they don't exist because
| the benefits aren't big enough, highways exhibit a sort of
| survivor bias in the mega project world.
|
| Highway systems create massive economic benefits that are
| relatively simple to calculate, just in the raw # hours saved
| which massively increases productivity. This can be well
| captured by the state through taxes or (less frequently) by
| private industry through tolls - i.e. the people that direct
| their construction.
|
| Other mega projects have much less certain benefits, or the
| benefits are harder to capture by those with the ability to
| allocate resources because incentives aren't sufficiently
| aligned.
| leeter wrote:
| It's reasons like this that I don't necessarily see LHC or
| whatever rev of it as a problem per se. If the technologies
| developed to get there pay back the cost of the collider then
| it could end up being a very expensive toy and I wouldn't
| care. To me it's about the journey and getting there, because
| for big science in many case the real science is not the tool
| produced at the end but the science and engineering that has
| to go into making that tool.
|
| Thus the question I have to the scientists pushing for a new
| LHC is: "What would we get from the journey?" If they truly
| believe in the project they'll have a dozen technologies that
| need to be developed to make their project happen, all of
| which have practical applications beyond their experiment. If
| they don't they'll just be pushing for "same but larger"
| which is IMO a waste of resources. Because why shouldn't we
| be investing in the technology to do "Same but smaller" in
| that case so we can do more with less?
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > If they truly believe in the project they'll have a dozen
| technologies that need to be developed to make their
| project happen, all of which have practical applications
| beyond their experiment.
|
| I don't think one should even have to demonstrate
| "practical applications beyond the experiment" beforehand.
| Just that it is a complete problem that can be solved
| independently from the entire project.
|
| If there are a lot of those, it's much better to fund those
| and get the results that will push the cost of the full
| thing down. Even if the total costs turn up to be higher
| than focusing on the collider from the start.
| slickrick216 wrote:
| Not an expert but I would say for the following reasons:
|
| - It's a lot of asphalt
|
| - construction happens over a wide possibly remote area so all
| construction materials need transportation
|
| - materials are probably made to order so you are buying
| effectively a lot of custom components
|
| - engineering/architecture/construction talent isn't cheap and
| there's a lot of competing demand
|
| - hiring is even more difficult as the job isn't in one place
| may require a lot of travel, bed and board for all types of
| workers
|
| - property itself is possible a significant cost to build it
| through. Even more if you get caught up in legal battles
| acquiring certain properties
|
| - grift, with large projects in any country at any time there's
| always grift. Grift is a constant
| Ekaros wrote:
| These projects are also big in length and width. So just volume
| and area is considerable compared to buildings.
| [deleted]
| rektide wrote:
| It's a good case made here. I don't disagree. But what it raises
| is interesting & challenging:
|
| > _There are many known problems in physics right now. $100
| billion could fund (quite literally) 100,000 smaller physics
| experiments. There may not be enough physics labs on Earth to
| carry out that many experiments!_
|
| It's amazing & a bit problematic how big-biased we are. For
| reference, LHC cost a bit under $5B by compare. I have a hard
| time imagining what it would take to get $5B in funding for
| physics. How much effort would each physics project have to spend
| to go get funding, versus how much time did it take the LHC to
| get funding?
|
| I really like the idea of diversity, of a range of medium & small
| projects. But it feels like structurally we are disposed towards
| bigger higher ticket tasks. That once the ball is rolling, once
| there's critical mass, we can get the checkbooks opening. But by
| compare the channels for getting small & medium funding is more
| case by case, that large pools of money aren't as available or
| accessible.
| mehrdada wrote:
| 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.
| moonchrome wrote:
| 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 wouldn't need this car.
|
| And this is expected to be funded by everyone. It's the modern
| equivalent of building pyramids.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > It's the modern equivalent of building pyramids.
|
| I wish it was true, it would be much easier to convince
| people to have ten of them.
| xcambar wrote:
| With this logic, I assume you'd call the ISS a useless
| project.
| dehrmann wrote:
| Would you rather have 1 ISS or 200 New Horizons?
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Not the OP, but this is a good example.
|
| ISS wasn't useless, but its successor should be much
| cheaper. We absolutely need to find ways how to do space
| research more efficiently, otherwise it will stay a luxury
| of the richest nations.
|
| Fortunately, at the very least, launch costs to orbit are
| dropping and we may hope for further drops in the future -
| if Starship works as intended.
| concordDance wrote:
| In all seriousness, what use is it? How has it improved
| people's lives?
| ncmncm wrote:
| It is, really. At one time, it was the only place the
| shuttle could get to; and the shuttle was the only thing
| that could get people to it.
|
| Literally the only thing they can do at ISS, not better
| done with robots, is study how human bodies are affected by
| exposure to high radiation and long-term weightlessness.
| Which we care about only because people would be so exposed
| in ISS-like cans.
|
| Now they are pushing the "lunar gateway", that likewise has
| exactly one reason to exist: SLS could get there. And, it
| will be a place for SLS to get to. And, even more useless.
| A thing in high orbit around the moon is absolutely useless
| for any other purpose, whether you are heading for the moon
| or beyond it.
| l33tman wrote:
| And yet 15M people yearly are still visiting those "useless"
| pyramids 4600 years after they were built.
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| If the Egyptians had built a literal money pit 4600 years
| ago, tourists would now be visiting that.
| moonchrome wrote:
| I don't really want to dispute that, just want to paint a
| more realistic of what these scientific projects actually
| are. They are not investments for sure.
| Aerroon wrote:
| Sure, but the people 4600 years ago were the ones that paid
| the price for building the pyramids. How do 15M people
| visiting it today help them?
|
| We're talking about using everybody's money for these
| science projects. And this is not money that's voluntarily
| given, it's taken.
| navane wrote:
| It's the social equivalent of rocket ships. We all payed for
| their space holidays too.
| musha68k wrote:
| Europe is so rich it can _easily_ afford all of the great
| project ideas outlined in the article _in addition to a new
| LHC_ (and then some).
|
| Let's _think big_ indeed, the author unfortunately has a very
| reductive vision for the future.
|
| Instead how about:
|
| A renaissance of funding - BIG SCIENCE - education, jobs.
|
| That was basically the promise of the EU - peace through
| wealth - let's create some more.
|
| Let's bring back the excitement and scientific wonder of the
| 1960s. This could be a unilateral vision across the
| democratic spectrum (everyone wants wealth).
|
| And yes, global warming actually should dictate no less.
| Let's do it _now_.
|
| Oh and let's just fix poverty while we are at it.
|
| Again, Europe has the means and could do all of that by
| itself.
| moonchrome wrote:
| Money is just one small aspect of it - getting into that
| kind of research probably requires >2s IQ, then there's the
| affinity and motivation - you are left with a small pool of
| people who can do this work.
|
| By funding toy projects and pipe dreams you are crowding
| out useful research - and there's plenty of fundamental
| work in material sciences, superconductivity, etc. that
| could actually improve the lives of everyone
| alach11 wrote:
| It sounds like you're worried that creating high-paying
| fundamental science jobs would pull smart people away
| from engineering. But it would be more likely to pull
| smart people from zero-sum (or at least low-sum) fields
| like advertising and finance.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I feel like the last renaissance of funding (BIG SCIENCE)
| was the space race.
|
| Let's do _that_ again. It was at least a lot more multi-
| disciplinary than an atom-smasher.
| xiphias2 wrote:
| The Human Genome Project was a huge success. Being able
| to read the DNA cheaply got us a revolution in biotech
| (cancer therapies, gene therapies, mRNA delivery, and my
| favourite: partial / full cell reprogramming)
| orbifold wrote:
| Europe has an aging population, which is obese, smokes and
| has heart problems. It is a dying continent whose boomer
| generation has decided to transfer large amounts of IP to
| China for a short term profit, while refusing to have
| children, protesting against the establishment and being
| generally useless in their youth.
|
| The millennials and gen-z is royally screwed, the writing
| has been on the walls for years.
| ahoka wrote:
| Baby boomers refusing to have children? What?!
| orbifold wrote:
| Birth rates of children born during the baby boom (the
| baby boomers) is 2/3 to 1/2 of their parents generation.
| spacemanmatt wrote:
| So? Infant survival and life expectancy rates are also
| way up since their parents generation. You can't just
| throw around generational statistics without any context
| at all and call it valid.
| pvaldes wrote:
| Fortunately we have a cure for this, an endless supply of
| young blood as immigrants. Europe has been a blender of
| races since the origin.
|
| And about "obese population", Europe is not so bad in
| fact. Obese people die younger and most elders in Europe
| are slim.
| xcambar wrote:
| I thought I was an optimistic but you dwarfed me on this to
| the point of skepticism.
| musha68k wrote:
| No worries, check the numbers - this is all in reach -
| solely up to us :)
| concordDance wrote:
| What's it currently doing with that money? I guess we could
| get rid of funding healthcare and trying to help people out
| of poverty so that a small number of people get to use a
| very expensive toy...
|
| You know what would be an awesome big science project that
| would immeasurably improve future people's lives?
| Sequencing all genes and using that data provide free
| embryo selection services to everyone who wants to be a
| parent.
|
| Would probably cost the same as that giant particle smasher
| and but unlike the giant ring it would pay for itself in a
| generation.
| PietdeVries wrote:
| Well... The US Defense budget for 2021 alone is 7 times
| the money needed to build a new LHC (705 billion [1] for
| the US defense in 2021). Germany will spend a similar 100
| billion dollars on weapons in the coming years. So while
| 100 billion looks like an amazing amount of money, the
| military spends this in the blink of an eye and without
| the slightest promise of a RoI...
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the
| _United_...
| tomcatfish wrote:
| I like having something to scale 100B to, but this is a
| silly argument.
|
| "Instead of cutting this program, just have every
| military cut funding at once" is not a very realistic
| path forwards, and we're not going to get the program
| funded on stuff like that _.
|
| _ In the hypothetical universe we 're in here, where we
| have to convince people now.
| sinenomine wrote:
| Embryo selection[1] is criminally underrated. It is a
| method to permanently enhance the genetic potential of a
| child of any given couple. It is already live and there
| are living children, the only remaining issue is
| scaling[2].
|
| 1. https://www.gwern.net/Embryo-selection
|
| 2. https://www.geneticsandsociety.org/biopolitical-
| times/first-...
| otabdeveloper4 wrote:
| IVF carries risks of damaging the child's genome and so
| is fundamentally dysgenic.
| Georgelemental wrote:
| "Embryo selection"--is that a euphemism for "murdering
| any unborn child that doesn't have all the "right" genes?
| Because if so I think your definition of "people's lives"
| must be very different from mine.
| concordDance wrote:
| Well yes, but anti-abortionists are a rapidly shrinking
| minority that I assumed were pretty much extinct on
| hacker news.
| vixen99 wrote:
| Definition? Do you mean no limits at all up to and
| immediately prior to birth? I'm not sure you'd get
| unanimity on that. That implies a few seconds separating
| legal permission to kill from infanticide.
| esarbe wrote:
| No, it's just that; embryo selection. It's not an
| euphemism for what you wrote because an embryo is not a
| child and you cannot murder an embryo.
|
| From Wikipedia: "A child (plural children) is a human
| being between the stages of birth and puberty [...]"
|
| You are also conflating the abortion of an embryo with
| murder; only human persons can be murdered, embryos are
| not persons, therefore no murder.
|
| I sincerely ask you to cut down the polemics here on HN.
| It does not lead to fruitful (no pun intended)
| discussions.
| zdragnar wrote:
| It's hardly a polemic when it is a question of
| existential importance- what does it mean to be human,
| when does a human begin to exist, and at what point does
| a human have rights?
| esarbe wrote:
| Embryos are without a question human. So is my little
| toe. The question is whether they are persons.
|
| The importance of the topic doesn't make it impossible to
| be polemic. I can talk about a very serious topic and be
| polemic and I can also talk about a trivial matter and
| not be polemic. The question of polemic is decided by
| contentious rhetoric.
|
| Equating embryos with children and abortion with murder
| is polemic.
| zdragnar wrote:
| The question is _not_ are embryos human, the question is
| whether they are _independent human life with their own
| rights_.
|
| I don't think it is polemic to disagree on this point,
| but it rationally follows that if embryos are unique life
| forms, which are also human, then aborting them is
| murder.
|
| Personally, I don't agree with that line of reasoning
| either, but the argument isn't in itself polemic.
|
| Edit: I suppose I should add that I am not treating
| "human" as a collective noun, the way we might talk about
| bread or water. "A human" is not merely a little toe, for
| example.
| esarbe wrote:
| >> Embryos are without a question human. [...] The
| question is whether they are persons.
|
| > The question is not are embryos human, the question is
| whether they are independent human life with their own
| rights.
|
| I think we are pretty much in agreement what the
| contention is about.
|
| > [..] the argument isn't in itself polemic.
|
| The argument itself is not polemic. No argument in itself
| is polemic. Polemic is defined in the language used. I'm
| objecting the language in which the argument is phrased;
|
| To quote the post I originally answered to:
|
| > "Embryo selection"--is that a euphemism for "murdering
| any unborn child [...]
|
| The phrasing is polemic for reasons I pointed out before.
| Veen wrote:
| I agree with your position, but it is no less polemical
| and ideological than the comment you are responding to.
|
| > an embryo is not a child and you cannot murder an
| embryo
|
| It is not obviously and axiomatically true that embryos
| are not human (I'm assuming the previous comment meant
| human and not child). Many people think that they are,
| which is the source of the disagreement. It probably is
| fruitless to have this conversation on HN, but you
| shouldn't just assert the opposing position as if it were
| settled when it is anything but.
| esarbe wrote:
| > but it is no less polemical and ideological than the
| comment you are responding to.
|
| I beg to differ. I don't think that using dictionary
| definitions to make ones arguments can be counted as
| polemic (as in; to use contentious rhetoric). I might be
| wrong though.
|
| > I'm assuming the previous comment meant human and not
| child
|
| No, I actually meant 'child'. An human embryo is -
| obviously - human. No discussion about that. A human
| embryo is not a child - the definition of that is also
| pretty much settled, I'd say. (At least from a scientific
| point of view.)
|
| But maybe I didn't clearly state my case, thus the
| misunderstanding.
|
| The point I'm making is as follows. Embryos are not
| children and thus they are not persons. Just as I cannot
| murder my toe (it might be human, but it's not a person)
| I cannot murder an embryo.
| Alenycus wrote:
| Loads of people disagree with you and believe it is
| murder and can quote science to back up their argument.
|
| You also don't have any definition with a clear line when
| this switch from non human to human happens.
|
| It almost always boils down to "when it's convenient for
| me"
| esarbe wrote:
| > Loads of people [...]
|
| Quotation needed. Outside of religious circles there's
| very little debate about this. Scientific consensus is
| that fetal viability is considered to begin at 23 or 24
| weeks gestational age. That's long after the embryo
| stage.
|
| Just to make communication easier; are you aware that
| there's a difference between embryo and fetus?
|
| > You also don't have any definition with a clear line
| when this switch from non human to human happens.
|
| I never proposed that a embryo is not human. But we can
| talk about the line dividing persons from non-persons, if
| you like.
| Georgelemental wrote:
| Many (including myself) consider abortion to be murder
| even before fetal viability.
|
| > Outside of religious circles there's very little debate
| about this
|
| Do you live in the US or Canada? Almost every other
| country, including almost all of highly secular Western
| Europe, bans abortion before at no later than 17 weeks
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_law).
| dane-pgp wrote:
| > A human embryo is not a child - the definition of that
| is also pretty much settled, I'd say.
|
| To suggest there is only one definition of "child" is
| even more incorrect than suggesting that it can't refer
| to an unborn person: Definition of child
| ... 3 a : an unborn or recently born person
| "... Meghan Markle, married Prince Harry, now pregnant
| with child."
|
| https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/child
| rendall wrote:
| Terrifying but intriguing idea. China's one-child policy
| led to widespread female infanticide and a generation of
| missing girls. What would prevent some similar unintended
| consequence in Europe?
| martin_a wrote:
| > What would prevent some similar unintended consequence
| in Europe?
|
| We're not some fucked up dictatorship state?!?
| dane-pgp wrote:
| Yeah, we'd only kill the disabled and mediocre children
| standing in the way of our Utopia, nothing immoral like
| those awful Chinese people do.
| martin_a wrote:
| We're talking about embryos here. I think you're well
| aware about the ongoing discussions on when those are to
| be considered humans and when not. That's not an easy
| topic, obviously, but I'm fairly confident that we won't
| throw babys in the garbage can if we don't like them but
| try to make those decisions as early as possible.
| telotortium wrote:
| > I'm fairly confident that we won't throw babys in the
| garbage can if we don't like them
|
| Why not? What exactly is the limiting criterion?
| Sentience is the main criterion that people who want to
| argue for animal rights and yet support abortion use, and
| it's a pretty squishy criterion. Already Peter Singer
| supports veganism and effective altruism (i.e., rebranded
| utilitarianism), and yet is perfectly okay with both
| abortion and infanticide, at least until the child gets
| "sentience".
| timeon wrote:
| Pro-life people are vegans now? It is good that they are
| consistent.
| Georgelemental wrote:
| > No, that could never happen _here_ , are you crazy?
| We're a prosperous and civilized nation!
|
| - Every prosperous and civilized nation's last words
| martin_a wrote:
| I think the EU as a group of states seems to work quite
| well. Furthermore it seems like anti-democratic behaviour
| is getting punished now, too, if you look over to Poland.
| I'm quite optimistic that this will further improve.
| Woodi wrote:
| Dude, what is your definition of "democracy" ? Because
| your opinion about Poland state seems to be really,
| really brain-washed. At best.
|
| Democracy as in free election ? Perfect democracy here -
| one party won twice, other parties lost. You call it a
| problem ?
|
| Democracy as in free speech ? Dude ! Wake up ! In Poland
| is so much free speech that it's boarding with anarchy !
| Eg. almost decade of opposition internally and
| internationally _literally_ urges to harm their own
| country just to retake power - without any gov punishment
| or something. Mrs. Merkel ex-pet, Tusk, _literally calls
| for purges, without any law procedures ! Freedom bordered
| with anarchy !
|
| Maybe you are aware judges here act as caste and they do
| whatever they want. Law is twisted at will here. Do not
| saying all the time, just when they want it. And that
| judges are _official* opposition of elected party !
| Judges ! Acting politically ! You call that despotism ?
| Or too much freedom ?
|
| Do we have military state like in France ? No. Do we have
| censorship like in Germany ? No. Do we have problems with
| making government like Italy ? No. Do our PM resigned
| because of corruption and next PM promised silence and no
| more leeks like in GB ? No.
|
| You see ? It's oasis of peace and happiness here compared
| to rest of the EU ;)
|
| But tell me pls, what you have in mind about that "anti-
| democracy" in Poland ?
| darth_aardvark wrote:
| > Furthermore it seems like anti-democratic behaviour is
| getting punished now, too, if you look over to Poland.
|
| They're saying _anti_ -democratic behavior is being
| punished, which implies that Poland is pro-democracy.
| Georgelemental wrote:
| Only if Poland were the one doing the punishing. In this
| context, if I am correctly interpreting what the OP is
| referring to, the EU is punishing its member state
| Poland; Poland is the recipient of the punishment
| Georgelemental wrote:
| > anti-democratic behaviour
|
| You will have to be more specific, "democratic" is a
| grossly overlaoded term these days. When you write
| "democratic", do you mean "in accordance with the will of
| the majority of the population", or do you mean "in
| accordance with the will of unelected EU bureaucrats, the
| US Department of State, and media elites"?
| pessimizer wrote:
| > That was basically the promise of the EU - peace through
| wealth - let's create some more.
|
| Doing useless science is the destruction of wealth. The
| destruction of wealth is pleasurable, don't get me wrong,
| but that's all it is. They could build gargantuan statues
| to do the same thing, or accumulate huge stockpiles of
| weapons.
| larryett wrote:
| The problem is western society doesn't really believe in
| science at this point to save us, it believes in
| technology.
|
| All our problems are just the engineering problem of AGI.
| Why waste money on something like this when AI will be
| "smarter" than us by the time it is built?
|
| We should just do nothing and wait for AI to build the
| instruments it wants.
|
| Maybe there is the slightest hope in this "overpriced" and
| long delayed space telescope that is getting ready right
| now but even with that the narrative will end up being how
| "AI finds alien planet" or "AI sees first star in the
| universe".
|
| To really build a new LHC it just needs to be marketed to
| the populace as a tool for AI research. Done. Everyone
| knows AI is the future and we are not so stupid to skimp on
| AI research funding.
|
| Spend all that money on researching particle physics
| though? What a fucking waste of money.
| runarberg wrote:
| I'm not an expert on AI but I was under the impression
| that AI is just a fancy way to fit data with massive
| computative power. So if you wanted AI to do science for
| us it would basically just return the result we expected
| in a fancy and unexpected way, and even then we might be
| overfitting. If an AI would return new science we didn't
| expect--I don't see how but lets imagine--we would reject
| it as a miss.
|
| Take the Event Horizon Telescope as an example here. It
| requires a massive amount of computational modeling to
| create those images from a huge dataset. Humans did their
| science to figure out how the supermassive black holes
| would look like and created their models (AI if you will)
| based on this knowledge. Even so they are not free from
| criticism that they might be overfitting onto a
| conformation bias and many scientists are waiting for an
| independent confirmatory observation before they believe
| the image. Now if you replace the humans in that equation
| with more models (AGI if you will) how do you even know
| what you are looking at is even sensical?
|
| I'm not a fan of the LHC++ project either, but I think
| you might have too much faith in AI and AGI.
| timeon wrote:
| > western society doesn't really believe in science at
| this point to save us, it believes in technology.
|
| I'm afraid - not even in technology at this point.
| gls2ro wrote:
| How do you know that AGI can be reached?
|
| We dont know if we will ever reach AGI and if we want to
| theoretically demonstrate if we can reach it or not then
| we need to rely on science.
|
| Engineering alone cannot answer theoretical questions.
| nradov wrote:
| Much of Europe is now cranking up defense spending in order
| to deter future Russian aggression, and comply with NATO
| treaties. That will take precedence over big science
| projects for the next few years.
| rocqua wrote:
| Is the ratio of cost of car to cost of persons walking correct.
|
| It seems like the car is a Bugatti Veyron and like there is a
| huge (exponentially growing) fronteir to explore. Exploring
| another 1000 miles in a very well studied direction seems less
| curious than pushing outward another mile over the entire
| frontier. Especially at the places that have gotten less
| attention.
|
| 'Doing more of the same but bigger' feels more like small
| thinking than 'lets try lots of things we haven't tried
| before'. To me the latter also feels a lot more curious.
| discreteevent wrote:
| I read it as: "Instead of building one really expensive car to
| continue to explore in one direction let's build lots of cars
| and explore in all directions". To me that shows an attitude
| full of curiosity.
| billoday wrote:
| I think that's crazy reductive though. It's not an either/or,
| and it's a gross oversimplification that big projects only
| show benefit within their major focus. LHC has produced
| benefit in particle physics, yes, but I am 100% sure it also
| introduced new methods of construction, semiconductors,
| material science, and other fields in the construction of the
| facility. I see this argument with space exploration as well,
| "why not feed the world instead of exploring space?"
|
| Why is it zero sum to begin with? And more importantly, how
| less effective would be able to feed the world had we had no
| space race to begin with? If we were still at a 1950s
| technical level, our farming capacity would be exponentially
| lower, and most of the big leaps came as a direct result
| technologies originally developed for space.
|
| It's naive to assume we can see all the benefits of daring to
| attempt hard things, but attempting hard things is what moves
| society forward. If all we did was lots of little cars in all
| directions when we have already figured out the challenges
| with little cars, mean the ONLY benefit is the direct one. If
| we've never built a car to explore REALLY far, well, there's
| a bunch of other problems we need to solve to get there. And
| honestly, it's those results that will likely move the
| needle.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| except there are terrains where a car won't do and you need a
| giant expensive off-road vehicle.
|
| You wouldn't go to the north pole with a VW Beetle.
|
| Same thing applies here, smaller cars that explore in all
| direction can probably find a local maxima and get stuck
| there.
| musha68k wrote:
| There also is no shortage in funds and we could actually do
| all of that and more.
| rbanffy wrote:
| Just say you can weaponize the black holes formed in the
| LHC and you'll never run out of funding again.
| musha68k wrote:
| I just spilled my coffee, thanks XD
| rbanffy wrote:
| As all car analogies, this is bad. It's more like "instead of
| building a space probe to explore the solar system, let's
| build a thousand cars to explore the grass patch in a
| thousand directions".
|
| Big science projects such as the LHC go very far and very
| deep in the very fabric of reality. Instead of building a
| thousand cars, it'd be a good idea to still build the next
| space probe while, at the same time, use what we learned
| building the previous one to build a couple cars to explore
| in different directions.
| Neil44 wrote:
| I agree, it reads like a variation of 'there's nothing left to
| discover so lets all go home and not bother'
| macspoofing wrote:
| >I agree, it reads like a variation of 'there's nothing left
| to discover so lets all go home and not bother'
|
| I don't think that's quite right. The big problem isn't that
| there is 'nothing left to discover' because we know there are
| interesting physics at higher energy scales. What we don't
| actually know if there is anything interesting at the energy
| scales that this particle accelerator could achieve. You
| could literally spend two decades building this, and in the
| end, all you would do is rule out a tiny energy-scale slice.
| jvanderbot wrote:
| "Rather than building yet another city-sized internal
| combustion engine, but even bigger to carry more further, how
| about we fund a lot of blue-sky research to determine if
| there's a way to carry scientists forward without city-sized
| internal combustion engines?"
|
| It appears we suspect there is a better way.
| onpensionsterm wrote:
| >let's find a way to build/experiment LHC++ less expensively.
|
| From the people who brought you compost fueled cars?
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| If there is plenty of unexplored space, and all the car helps
| you do is figure out what is 1000 miles out but you can only
| explore one direction with it and can't directly bring anything
| back... yeah, sending 1000 people out one mile is probably more
| beneficial.
| _heimdall wrote:
| Curiousity can have many shapes. Being curious about 100,000
| smaller questions is no better or worse than being curious
| about one big one. A lack of curiousity here would have been to
| sinply say all this money shouldnt be spent on research at all.
|
| My read of the article was more a call for considering the
| practical uses of tge research. If we don't know what $100B
| worth of LHC will discover, why wouldnt we instead fund tens of
| thousands of smaller projects that often have very practical
| real world goals?
| macspoofing wrote:
| > "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."
|
| "Making a car is expensive, so let's not do that to explore
| 1000 miles out. Let's instead build an airplane."
|
| The problem with next-gen LHC is that there are no guarantees
| of any new or interesting physics for that $100 billion. And
| particle accelerators are not the only way to spend large sums
| of money, so there is an opportunity cost. Why not spend that
| $100 billion to build more space telescopes or more sensitive
| LIGOs to detect gravitational waves, etc.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| My immediate skepticism is whether there is a dollar limit to
| your perspective
|
| $100,000,000,000 with afterthought of "sure lets see if we can
| do it less expensively *since its sooo annoying to some
| people"? Where is the line for you currently?
| blablabla123 wrote:
| > The hypothetical machine could not truly test string theory
|
| Interesting point, there was a time where it wasn't even clear
| whether string theory should be considered part of Physics or
| rather Mathematics or even Metaphysics. That said, the LHC has
| continuously given additional insights into existing theories and
| also it's not the only collider in the world although probably
| there's no other where so many countries collaborate. Also an
| interesting read about the early history of CERN:
| https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.1955503
| hexo wrote:
| I'd rather see my tax poured into new much larger collider than
| into politicians pockets, olypmic stadiums or agriculture
| subsidies...
| KHRZ wrote:
| Well, there are some urgent issues where the money could be
| better spent, like solving the climate disaster, starvation,
| wars, automating most work. But after that, LHC++ is pretty much
| a top priority.
| macspoofing wrote:
| >Please, don't build another Large Hadron Collider ... A next-
| generation LHC++ could cost $100 billion.
|
| I don't think you need to worry about it
| _ph_ wrote:
| I think the question whether to build a new collider deserves
| more than a simple "yes" and "no". Indeed, it looks as if
| particle physics right now is a bit in a dead end, there are no
| obvious and imminent discoveries to be expected from such an
| instrument. And with the enormous amount of money it would
| require, a lot of other experiments could be financed, which
| short term are much more likely to advance science. On the other
| side, I unless there is evidence that we cannot discover any more
| by building a new collider, we shouldn't just stop research into
| that direction. We don't know what lies there and might be
| missing the true discoveries to be made. Also, these colliders do
| finance a lot of science around them. Just designing and building
| them fills plenty of thesises and papers. A lot of adjacent
| science is involved. Detector design, data processing just to
| name a few. The web we are using has been invented at CERN :)
|
| Consequently, the cost trade-off isn't as clear-cut as the
| article might make it sound. Which for me leads to the obvious
| answer: yes, we should build another, larger collider. But
| probably not right now. There should be plenty of funding for the
| current one and also quite a bit of theoretical preparation
| before it is getting planned/built. In this time, other projects
| should get priority funding. But eventually, we should build
| another collider. We should never stop researching.
| wasmitnetzen wrote:
| Government finances don't work the same way as other finances. A
| normally functioning democracy can basically invent as much money
| as it needs to (see Covid relief packages). If there's political
| will to do an LHC++, three ITERs and two ISS's, the money will
| appear. If there's opposition to the LHC++ and it gets scrapped,
| that doesn't mean that the funds will be re-allocated. They will
| just disappear.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| > can basically invent as much money as it needs to
|
| This is only true of the world's reserve currency (which is
| currently the USD). In all other cases they basically guarantee
| the issues stated elsewhere like inflation.
| im3w1l wrote:
| A country can print money, but there are other things that are
| in shorter supply. Namely natural resources and labor.
| SturgeonsLaw wrote:
| True, however printed money's not free free, it devalues all
| money so it's sort of a backdoor tax. Assuming that there is an
| upper bound on a nation's science budget (and in practice,
| there is), then the article makes a valid point - particle
| colliders have diminishing returns as it stands right now, and
| that money might be better spent on thousands of smaller
| studies.
|
| Forward thinking nations would take this approach, a single
| discovery in just one of these studies might unlock a huge
| amount of scientific, commercial or industrial value, and
| casting the net wide gives the greatest chance of making that
| discovery.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| "A normally functioning democracy can basically invent as much
| money as it needs to"
|
| Sure. For some time period and amount of money, indeed. What
| happens once this limit is reached and people stop trusting
| that money?
|
| Currency collapses are nasty. Look at Weimar Germany after WWI.
| izacus wrote:
| LHC costs are basically peanuts in comparison to any kind of
| spending the western countries do (especially if you compare
| it to spending on killing machines).
|
| Several LHCs, ITERs and ISSes won't bring any of the nations
| close to Weimar Germany. Aircraft carriers, F-35s, failing
| infrastructure projects and corruption have a larger chance
| of doing that.
| Aerroon wrote:
| > _see Covid relief packages_
|
| And after this the US has hit levels of inflation that it
| hasn't seen for 50 years. Before that inflation was that high
| in WW2.
|
| Printing money is not free, neither is tax money.
| musha68k wrote:
| I didn't check if that's the actual (main?) reason for the
| inflation we are seeing since before February 2022. But let's
| suppose it is, there are still some entities who have been
| earning tons of money during this pandemic so far. Maybe
| Amazon, Pfizer & co just need to be taxed higher.
| concordDance wrote:
| I think there's a certain disconnect from the underlying
| reality here. If you didn't have those things then the people
| who design, build and operate the thing would be doing
| something else. Are you sure the other things they'd be doing
| are less valuable?
|
| Also, I'll note that inflation in the UK is at 9%. Printing
| money is essentially a tax on those with cash holdings, who are
| mostly poorer. Not to mention the wastage on repricing...
| DeathArrow wrote:
| Science costs. Big science costs more. So let's not do big
| sciences, let's do some small science. :D
| brazzy wrote:
| No, the idea is to do _lots and lots_ of small science instead
| of one big one, because we 'll probably learn more from that.
| musha68k wrote:
| It's not a zero sum game though. Europe could pay for all of
| these projects. That would be even better, don't you agree?
| brazzy wrote:
| Allocation of science funding _is_ a zero-sum game.
| Increasing science funding is a quite different game.
| musha68k wrote:
| Exactly my point, in the end this is just up to voters.
| rocqua wrote:
| Doing this one thing but 10x bigger, has always given some
| extra science. So let's do the same thing but 10x bigger once
| again.
|
| It's not like we have many other great ideas for science
| experiments. Apparently.
| japanuspus wrote:
| As a low-energy quantum physicist, I completely agree:
| Experimental high-energy physics has become primarily an
| industrial subsidy scheme[1], and if we want the highest chance
| of reaching a grand unified theory, it seems the money would be
| much better spent elsewhere (cosmology, space-based
| observatories, research positions for young physicists without
| publish-or-perish incentives to run for the latest fad).
|
| The short history of physics in TFA is spot on: Einstein and the
| quantum pioneers added abstractions to build physical theories
| with prediction power, whereas current high-energy physics theory
| seems to be mostly a mathematical exercise. This has been
| confirmed by numerous insiders, including by Hossenfelder as
| mentioned in the article, and Lee Smolin ("The trouble with
| physics") who is also a theoretical physicist.
|
| Things have changed a lot since accelerators became a must-have
| for high-energy physics: Today we have detectors and computing
| power that let us observe the natural experiment of the universe
| with a precision and diligence that would be impossible when LHC
| was commissioned. I find it much more likely that we would learn
| new physics by giving 10-year grants to 1000 young physicist of
| revolutionary spirit, and let them use the tools they could build
| themselves, than by handing that money to the old guard which has
| produced nothing of significance for the last two generations.
|
| [1]: The industrial subsidy angle is not touched upon in TFA, but
| it is clear that there is a large number of people and companies
| making a good living from mega-physics, and talking to colleagues
| in the field, I get the distinct impression that it is not always
| they physicist walking in the front when asking for more
| machines.
| samstave wrote:
| > _As a low-energy quantum physicist_...
|
| ===
|
| Thats just how I read your comment to begin with.
|
| In Steven Wrights voice.
|
| "People ask me what I'm into... Low energy quantum physics...
| its basically everything"
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| > I find it much more likely that we would learn new physics by
| giving 10-year grants to 1000 young physicist of revolutionary
| spirit, and let them use the tools they could build themselves,
| than by handing that money to the old guard which has produced
| nothing of significance for the last two generations.
|
| What is interesting, is that a lot of the fundamental physics
| theories were discovered by amateurs. Einstein was a patent
| clerk, for example.
|
| Maybe we should work on democratizing data collection, and
| making more raw data available for people to work with. With
| the advent of cloud computing and on demand computing, maybe
| your hobby group could code up a an analysis and run it on AWS
| for a few hundred dollars and discover some new theory.
| dncornholio wrote:
| > I find it much more likely that we would learn new physics by
| giving 10-year grants to 1000 young physicist of revolutionary
| spirit, and let them use the tools they could build themselves,
| than by handing that money to the old guard which has produced
| nothing of significance for the last two generations.
|
| In my opinion, we are hitting diminishing returns.. It's harder
| to learn new things now than ever before. You need big machines
| to do anything interesting?
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| > Today we have detectors and computing power that let us
| observe the natural experiment of the universe with a precision
| and diligence that would be impossible when LHC was
| commissioned.
|
| Couldn't the LHC be upgraded then to take advantage of this?
| Sounds like a much cheaper option. But I'm not a physicist at
| all so I'm sure I'm oversimplifying.
| ephimetheus wrote:
| Like the sibling comment says: we're currently doing this.
| Higher energies are not really feasible without a bigger ring
| though so we're increasing the beam intensity (sort of) to
| produce more physics per time unit. This very likely won't
| reveal any new physics processes, but it will allow us to
| increase the precision in many measurements we do and could
| allow us to find discrepancies or otherwise increase our
| understanding of the existing model.
|
| This is effectively a measure to maximize the output we can
| get from the machine, so to maximize the return in
| investment.
|
| There's a lot of debate in the field what should happen next.
| FCC is one possibility, but I'm personally sceptical (even
| though I work at CERN myself).
|
| It seems to me there's a clear need for a Higgs-factory as a
| follow up to LHC, but that doesn't have to be a ring
| collider, a electron positron linear collider could fulfill
| this purpose as well.
| fnands wrote:
| The detectors on the LHC get upgraded regularly, between
| every run some part gets updated. Computing-wise as well,
| better computing resources are there.
|
| The fundamental limitations isn't the detectors or computers,
| it's the energies you can reach with a collider of that size.
| Yes you can completely retool the LHC, which will probably
| allow you to do slightly better precision measurements, but
| won't strongly affect the energies you can probe.
|
| To get to really high energies you need to build bigger. As a
| (former) particle physicist, I am also a bit sceptical if
| going bigger is better; the LHC was a calculated risk, with
| the goal of finding SUSY, which was a very plausible theory
| at the time.
|
| The FCC seems to be a shot in the dark.
|
| There is the argument that if we don't build a bigger one now
| we'll lose a lot of expertise, but that feels like a knee-
| jerk reaction from the community.
| Sakos wrote:
| > we'll lose a lot of expertise, but that feels like a
| knee-jerk reaction from the community.
|
| It's a valid concern that _must_ always be considered. It
| 's the kind of thing that's been biting Intel in the ass
| for the past 7 years. Even if your decision is "we'll lose
| a lot of expertise and that's okay", it needs to be a
| conscious, well-grounded decision, otherwise _that_ is a
| knee-jerk reaction based on your own biases and assumptions
| that could have significant, even irrevocable, consequences
| for the future.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _to get to really high energies you need to build bigger_
|
| Superconducting magnets enable much higher energies in
| smaller (granted, theoretical) fusion reactor designs than
| previously possible. Does the same not apply to colliders?
| rimunroe wrote:
| Colliders already use superconducting magnets
| xyzzyz wrote:
| With new developments, you can use much smaller magnets.
| mhh__ wrote:
| Aren't Hossenfelder and Smolin basically paying their bills by
| being contrarians though?
| pfortuny wrote:
| Well, the same way that String Theorists are paying their
| bills _from the taxpayers, mostly_ by pushing that theory as
| Physics.
| mhh__ wrote:
| Given that they are physicists and no one has actually been
| able to properly find an alternative to string theory isn't
| that what they're supposed to be doing?
|
| Isn't the main alternative LQG which is apparently a dead
| end?
| orbifold wrote:
| In any case this is not how science works, you do
| theoretical physics by publishing in peer reviewed
| journals and your peers decide whether what you are doing
| is worthwhile or not. Both Smolin and Hossenfelder have
| been somewhat successful in doing so themselves, but
| Hossenfelder specifically didn't manage to secure a
| professorship for various reasons and I am sure she has
| some axe to grind (again probably partially justified,
| partially not).
| Georgelemental wrote:
| > you do theoretical physics by publishing in peer-
| reviewed journals and your peers decide whether what you
| are doing is worthwhile or not
|
| No, science is not the act of publishing in a peer-
| reviewed journals, science is using past observations to
| make models that predict future observations, and then
| evaluating those models after making the future
| observations. Peer review is just the industry standard
| quality control mechanism.
| pfortuny wrote:
| There can be lots of new alternatives. Why not fund those
| instead, by creating "moonshine physics departments"?
| (That is just a comment, not a suggestion).
|
| The problem with String Theory is it unfalsifiability and
| that it has not even grown to explain 3D phenomena AT
| ALL. 40 years later.
|
| Quantum Mechanics and Relativity (both special and
| general) gave results in a single decade.
| mhh__ wrote:
| What do you mean by 3D phenomena?
|
| String theory is as far as I have ever read the only
| thing even close to a working theory in this area. That
| doesn't mean it's correct but in my admittedly limited
| understanding of the literature many alternatives are
| either dead or are similar to string theory only without
| the underlying principles.
|
| People do work on alternatives. there are a lot of smart
| people unhappy with string theory they just can't
| actually provide any alternatives.
|
| One thing I'd like to say as well is that if someone does
| provide an alternative there will be a large movement of
| minds. This always happens in science, people like to
| think of physicists as a kind of unionized cabal but this
| isn't true historically or today as far as I'm concerned.
| Certainly not with the physicists of tomorrow.
| jcranmer wrote:
| Of all the post-Standard Model theories in existence,
| string theory has the best publicists and has (to a
| degree) sucked up all of the air out of competing
| theories, so that the lack of competing theories is less
| due to string theory being better and more due to being
| unable to get funding to work on competing theories.
|
| As far as I understand it, string theory has yet to
| provide a working model of quantum gravity despite
| focused work on it for ~30 years. That's not exactly a
| ringing endorsement.
| pfortuny wrote:
| Newton explained interplanetary attraction.
|
| Plank explained the black-body radiation.
|
| Einstein explained too many things to say but predicted
| the precession of mercury which was unexplained.
|
| Witten has explained either everything (which is to say
| nothing useful) or nothing at all (it depends on your
| position). In any of both cases, after 40 years and
| several LHC unfulfilled "expectations" it is time to
| accept the facts.
| cycomanic wrote:
| The issue is not that nobody found an alternative to
| string theory, the problem is that nobody found a use for
| string theory. Essentially vast amount of funding and
| talent has been pushed into string theory (via the tenure
| processes at universities which favored string theory for
| a long time, because it was considered the cutting edge
| of theoretical physics), and what did we get from it? Not
| one falsifiable prediction, which as Popper would tell
| you is necessary to do science. So everything and nothing
| would be an alternative to string theory.
| dgb23 wrote:
| That's a passive aggressive ad hominem without any substance
| whatsoever.
|
| These people are not some obscenely rich opportunists in
| power. They are working scientists, who draw public interest
| because they say interesting things and they are part of a
| larger discourse.
|
| Now Hossenfelder isn't known for her fingerspitzengefuhl when
| it comes to criticizing others, but I have yet to find an
| instance where she doesn't treat the subject matter with the
| utomst respect it deserves.
| dekhn wrote:
| I don't think her analysis of LIGO made any sense at all.
| stevenhuang wrote:
| Elaborate?
| dekhn wrote:
| http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/09/whats-up-with-
| ligo....
|
| Her claim is that there isn't enough secondary validation
| to truly conclude they detected gravity waves. the
| community disagrees and is building more detectors. The
| creators of the project were awarded Nobel prizes. At
| best, she raises some interesting questions but the
| narrative that the data isn't sufficient really doesn't
| work.
| linksnapzz wrote:
| Also, Lee Smolin's been public about his opinions for...at
| least 25 years now, that my memory serves, so it's
| certainly not opportunism on his part.
| spacemanmatt wrote:
| I will always get onboard to boost Hossenfelder. She
| respects the subject matter and also the students, and it
| impresses me a lot to see it in practice.
| photoelectric wrote:
| At least for Hossenfelder, I think she's lost the message.
| She accused LIGO of fraud a while back. However, none of the
| points she made ended up being real. Even after being
| corrected, she kept pushing the narrative. I guess because it
| gets her more views.
| levi_n wrote:
| > ...than by handing that money to the old guard which has
| produced nothing of significance for the last two generations.
|
| Genuine question from an ignorant layperson: was confirming the
| existence of the Higgs boson not significant?
| dTal wrote:
| In a scientific sense - no. It was predicted, it was found.
| No theories needed rewriting.
|
| Significant would have been if they'd _failed_ to find it.
| nix23 wrote:
| So finding Black-holes is not significant because it was
| already predicted?
|
| And btw there is so much money around...we should not fight
| against different project but the spending that goes into
| science itself. LHC and NASA is really just a small drop
| compared to military spending (in the US).
|
| https://twitter.com/WillPVGreen/status/1363179862706503681/
| p...
| _heimdall wrote:
| Why hello again, tragedy of the commons!
|
| Modern monetary theory is its own can of worms, but
| justifying massive spending in one area because of even
| more massive spending elsewhere isn't solving anything.
| nix23 wrote:
| But:
|
| https://interestingengineering.com/these-7-cern-spinoffs-
| sho...
|
| And i think the ISS was still much more expensive
| (especially over the years) then LHC/Atlas etc.
| worik wrote:
| Those "practical" results were all due to the spending on
| technology. None were due to advances in physics, as far
| as I can tell (that website seems designed to obfuscate
| not illuminate)
| nix23 wrote:
| >spending on technology
|
| Like the Moon-landing right? None were due to advances in
| landing on the moon.
| fsloth wrote:
| I would claim finding it was equally significant. Theory is
| not reality but just a model until verified. I know there
| is a trend in physics where computing is supposed to
| suffice without actually verifying anything but that is
| just wrong - I presume this notion is driven by the
| incentives to focus on publishing more than tedious
| collaboration.
| geysersam wrote:
| I agree. But isn't the issue that there is not really
| anything like Higgs for a new larger collider?
| morbia wrote:
| (Former PhD student in Particle Physics Pheno here, far from
| an expert)
|
| Of course it was a significant discovery, but honestly it
| would have been a far more interesting if we detected
| literally nothing. It's kind of weird because it was
| marketted as a success story to the public (and don't get me
| wrong, it was) but theorists were very confident that it was
| there by 2012. Thus far, it behaves exactly as expected
| according to the standard model and that is very dull.
|
| HEP would have been left in a very funny position if we
| didn't find it. No Higgs Boson would have been fascinating
| from a theory perspective, but good luck trying to get
| funding for a new collider when you found nothing with the
| old one.
| toxik wrote:
| I'm pretty sure there remains a discrepancy between the
| predicted mass of the Higgs boson and the measured mass in
| experiments. Is this resolved then?
|
| I was under the impression that this was a smoking gun for
| something being off with the theory, a bit like the
| ultraviolet catastrophe that led to QM or the orbital
| aberration that was resolved by GR.
| morbia wrote:
| > I'm pretty sure there remains a discrepancy between the
| predicted mass of the Higgs boson and the measured mass
| in experiments. Is this resolved then?
|
| Sort of.
|
| The higgs boson mass is a parameter to the Standard
| Model. As far as the Standard Model is concerned, that is
| the end of the story. There are just a series of
| constants need to be fitted to data in the Standard Model
| and that's one of them.
|
| However, the "problem" is why ~125GeV. If there are
| extremely high energy particles (which are expected in a
| Grand Unified Theory), then corrections to the Higgs mass
| would be enormous. This is a fine tuning problem where we
| arbitrarily tweak those corrections such that we
| magically end up at 125GeV. Supersymmetry and other
| Beyond Standard Models look to 'fix' this, and that's
| where my knowledge ends.
|
| Honestly, when I was doing my PhD I took the pragmatic
| view on this. Trying to infer things at energy scales we
| can't probe struck me as more as a mathematical exercise
| than Physics. Many, many people would disagree with that
| though (and staked their careers on it).
| JanisErdmanis wrote:
| > However, the "problem" is why ~125GeV. If there are
| extremely high energy particles (which are expected in a
| Grand Unified Theory), then corrections to the Higgs mass
| would be enormous. This is a fine tuning problem where we
| arbitrarily tweak those corrections such that we
| magically end up at 125GeV.
|
| When I was undergraduate at CERN summer school program I
| got that this was one of main themes to justify existence
| of SUSY. However I am still puzzled even after having
| obtained a PhD (condensed matter) how does this arbitrary
| tweaking of corrections does look like.
|
| Is it simply unwillingness to accept for world as we live
| know some parameters of the world like particles masses
| are not that independent from each other?
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| There are other problems with the theory too, they
| probably weren't solved perfectly by whatever SUSY model
| your supervisor was working on so they got less
| attention.
|
| But ultimately, yes. The _entirety_ of modern physics is
| largely borne out of the unwillingness to accept the the
| world is simply as it appears and that there 's no deeper
| unifying principles.
| willis936 wrote:
| In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice,
| they are not.
| Quixotica1 wrote:
| Yogi Berra
|
| I was thinking the same thing! Haha
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| Not a particle physicist, but I think the entire history of
| human scientific discovery is set again that proposition.
| Namely: (1) that we have a fundamental theory that
| describes the Universe; (2) that it is within our technical
| capability to experimentally verify the reality of that
| theory; and (3) we choose not to do so.
|
| It's easy to monday-morning quarterback a result that was
| successful and unexciting, but imagine how intolerable the
| world would be if we'd chosen not to verify it.
| ordu wrote:
| _> It 's easy to monday-morning quarterback a result that
| was successful and unexciting, but imagine how
| intolerable the world would be if we'd chosen not to
| verify it._
|
| I once read a paper complaining that the most of
| psychology experiments are trivial in the sense that
| their results are predictable in advance. It is like all
| people know that angry people tend to make other people
| angry and so if angry person try to communicate then
| oftentimes communications ends with a conflict. What the
| point of making an experiment from this?
|
| I'm not sure how much of a psychology fall victim of
| this, but sometimes I read a paper and think that I've
| found one more example of this. I personally get nothing
| from reading such a paper. I can get some ideas while
| reading about methods researchers used, but it means that
| the paper is not about how human mind works, but about
| how to measure psychological phenomena, or how to conduct
| an experiment. I bet that the most interesting part of
| the hypothetical paper with angry communicating people
| would be the trick researchers used to make people angry
| without violating ethics.
|
| There is some value in experiments that try to prove
| something that everyone knows already, but not much of a
| value. So the question is: is it ok to spend $10G to
| conduct such an experiment?
| chriswarbo wrote:
| Information is a measure of surprise: we _should_ choose
| to verify our predictions; but it 's disappointing when
| our predictions turn out to be correct.
|
| We want our best predictions to be proven wrong, since we
| would learn a lot.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I get where you're coming from, but at the same time, we
| have to _KNOW_ things before we can continue to theorize
| about new things. If you keep theorizing on things that
| turn out to not be true, then it 's just a waste of
| everyone's time. Find things that are true, theorize on
| the next step, test, prove/disprove, lather, rinse,
| repeat.
|
| Just coming up with stuff and disproving it isn't always
| "learning a lot", it's just showing how bad we are at
| logically thinking about the next step.
| notriddle wrote:
| If "information is a measure of surprise", then you don't
| want every prediction to be wrong. You want every
| prediction to have a 50% chance of being wrong. Half of
| your experiments should be failures.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I don't understand this logic at all. At those odds,
| you're just guessing like flipping a coin. An inferred
| prediction should have a higher success rate. We look at
| the data we do know, we see what holes are there, and
| then make predictions based on all of our previous
| knowledge. The fact that the previous knowledge allows us
| to make more accurate predictions shows we have a better
| understanding of the subject than just random coin flips.
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| The most apt phrase here is "building castles in the
| air."
| specialist wrote:
| Yes and, riffing on your clarification, maybe also make a
| distinction between hypothesis and prediction. Both are
| based on models, but a hypothesis hasn't been
| experimentally validated yet.
| glenstein wrote:
| >Of course it was a significant discovery, but honestly it
| would have been a far more interesting if we detected
| literally nothing.
|
| Well you would have needed the LHC to confirm that, too,
| right? As a totally uneducated person just remembering
| media and online discussion about it at the time, I think
| the _most_ interesting possibility was the detection of
| entirely new particles, which didn 't happen.
|
| And in the run-up to the LHC, I think there was a lot of
| hope in the possibility of finding stuff, but maybe there's
| not as much hope now.
| morbia wrote:
| Well that's sort of my point. In the media there was a
| lot of excitement about detecting supersymmetry with a
| whole array of new particles. When talking to the general
| public, it's easy to drum up the excitement by saying
| we're going to find lots of stuff. On the other hand,
| wheeling out a Physicist in front of the public and say
| "Finding nothing would be the most exciting outcome!" is
| a much harder sell, even though it is arguably true.
|
| Which is the most exciting outcome between SUSY and
| absolutely nothing is very much debatable. However, I
| really can't stress how big an outcome it would have been
| if we didn't detect the Higgs. Generating a mass term for
| the W and Z bosons which is gauge invariant is _hard_.
| Without the Higgs mechanism, all the gauge bosons should
| be massless and yet the W and Z are very heavy. It wouldn
| 't just be the case of the model doesn't work in some
| cases (massive neutrinos, dark matter candidate etc), you
| might as well throw the whole thing in the bin.
|
| Edit: Typo
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Did it change your life in any way?
|
| (Most times, people don't know how to judge that, but high-
| energy physics really didn't impact anything.)
| musha68k wrote:
| How about thinking about this on a grander scale / in the open
| - and just have more and even larger "industrial subsidy
| schemes"? Wouldn't you like to work on another BIG SCIENCE
| project that tries to find answers to something that seems more
| worthwhile (to you)?
| namaria wrote:
| I'd much rather live on a planet with too many giant science
| projects than have top engineers and scientists with obscene
| budgets for blowing up whole countries into the middle ages
| for political gain.
| lthornberry wrote:
| Agree. The total US non-defense research budget has hovered
| below 2% of federal spending for the last four decades. The
| military budget has been around 15%. We need more research,
| not less.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| > I find it much more likely that we would learn new physics by
| giving 10-year grants to 1000 young physicist of revolutionary
| spirit
|
| Not entirely sure how this "lets ignore the knowledge we've
| accumulated and start over afresh" idea is supposed to mesh
| with the notion that science is a product that builds on
| earlier results.
|
| Or are you seriously imagining that there is a cabbal of old
| researchers that have found a much better way to explore things
| but for political reasons is keeping it secret?
|
| Why is it so impossible for you to believe that people have
| done honest attempts at finding new ways to do the fundamental
| physics they want to explore for decades and keep coming to the
| conclusion that they'll need big machines to do anything
| worthwhile on the timescale of a PhD position?
| tsimionescu wrote:
| It's also often said that science advances one funeral at a
| time. It's entirely possible for an entire field to be stuck
| in a local maximum and refuse to admit that they are not
| advancing, especially when huge money depends on it. A recent
| example is the amyloid hypothesis for Alzheimers, which has
| failed every single time it was tested in clinical trials,
| but is still being pushed again and again, mostly by a cabal
| of academics that refuse to accept that were wrong, and
| industry bureaucrats that are afraid to challenge the
| orthodoxy (no one was ever fired for approving research
| proposed by the foremost expert in their field!).
| XorNot wrote:
| Yes it's said a lot by non-scientist commentators on
| internet forums, frequently about 5 seconds before they
| push whatever bizzare conspiracy theory they've made their
| pet cause.
|
| And there it is right in this post.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| It was said by Max Planck (well, not this exact quote,
| but the spirit is entirely there), not exactly a non-
| scientist commenting on an internet forum.
|
| Also, the controversy over the amyloid hypothesis is
| real. Here [0] is a paper showing arguments for and
| against with 268 citations. Here [1] is a more
| journalistic article in Nature. While this is still up in
| the air, it's nby no means a "conspiracy theory" to
| suggest that it's possibly a 25-year wild goose chase, or
| close to it. I would love to be wrong about this, but I
| suppose time will tell.
|
| [0] https://actaneurocomms.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.
| 1186/s4...
|
| [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05719-4
| rocqua wrote:
| > "lets ignore the knowledge we've accumulated and start over
| afresh"
|
| The idea of getting young physicists to do lots of research
| is not at all about ignoring the old knowledge. These young
| people will have gotten a PhD in physics. They will have
| absorbed a lot of the relevant old knowledge. The idea is
| that, because they came to this knowledge quite quickly, they
| have a fresh view on it. You simply get a different view on
| knowledge you build over decades as opposed to knowledge you
| learnt in a few years. This different view could very well
| lead to new and valuable insights.
|
| There is not a "cabbal of old researchers that have found a
| much better way to explore things but for political reasons
| is keeping it secret". But there is a "group of people who
| have been doing high energy physics that want to keep doing
| high energy physics". It makes sense that they want to keep
| doing it, even if other approaches would be more fruitful.
| They have invested lots of time into it, and they might not
| even know about the other approaches. And doing 'more of the
| old thing' is a safe bet.
|
| It's just that by now 'more of the old thing' is getting
| really stupidly expensive. And it looks to be a lot more
| efficient to try a lot more new things. Give the people with
| a fresh look on it a change to come up with ideas.
|
| > Why is it so impossible for you to believe that people have
| done honest attempts at finding new ways to do the
| fundamental physics they want to explore for decades and keep
| coming to the conclusion that they'll need big machines to do
| anything worthwhile on the timescale of a PhD position?
|
| These people surely do exist. But there are plenty of others
| out there that have ideas for 10 million dollar machines
| rather than 100 billion dollar machines. Try some of the 10
| million dollar machines rather than only the 100 billion
| dollar machines.
|
| I think many of the 10 million dollar machines are currently
| not being funded because that level of funding requires
| clout, reputation, and political acumen to get. This
| currently lies with the people who like doing accelerators.
| They don't like building non-accelerators that cost 10
| million dollars, so they don't help the 10 million dollar
| machines as much.
|
| That is not malice, these people aren't evil. They just like
| a tool that is getting inefficient.
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| > But there is a "group of people who have been doing high
| energy physics that want to keep doing high energy
| physics".
|
| Apparently it needs to be said because people act like they
| don't know it: those are the only people interested in
| answering questions about the fundamental particles!
| Diverging interests is the fundamental reason people
| separate into different fields.
|
| > they might not even know about the other approaches
|
| You can easily find the lists of seminars given at CERN and
| other places: they do know about other fields. In fact
| people from HEP move to other fields, and folks from other
| fields move into HEP.
|
| > Try some of the 10 million dollar machines rather than
| only the 100 billion dollar machines.
|
| They _are_ being built though! In fact there are 2 billion
| experiments being built.
|
| The argument here is something else: that High energy
| physics should just stop building big machines _at all_ ,
| and instead magically solve the problem that small machines
| were built and fully exploited many many decades ago.
|
| The proposed FCC cost is 30 billion.
| dylan604 wrote:
| >Not entirely sure how this "lets ignore the knowledge we've
| accumulated and start over afresh" idea is supposed to mesh
| with the notion that science is a product that builds on
| earlier results.
|
| This is coming from a forum where it's normal to see
| "something that already exists, but written in
| $newLanguage/Framework" as a thing to celebrate. So why not
| just redo science but with newShiny so we haven't actually
| achieved anything? /s
| SiempreViernes wrote:
| Just do "import SUSY" I don't know why you think it's hard
| to find!
| dylan604 wrote:
| I'm pretty sure this is wrapped in all sorts of
| dependancy hell
| yccs27 wrote:
| > Einstein and the quantum pioneers added abstractions to build
| physical theories with prediction power, whereas current high-
| energy physics theory seems to be mostly a mathematical
| exercise.
|
| I'm not sure there is a fundamental distinction here. The only
| difference is success: Einstein's and Schrodinger's theories
| etc. predicted effects that were later experimentally proven to
| exist. When new high-energy theories predict something, the
| hypothetical effects are either not testable in the foreseeable
| future, or eventually disproven by experiment.
|
| It feels like nature itself is against physicists here.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > Einstein's and Schrodinger's theories etc. predicted
| effects that were later experimentally proven to exist.
|
| Nope. It's the other way around. The most important theories
| from Einstein an Schrodinger were created to explain effects
| there were experimentally known. The ones where they
| predicted the effects first and found them later were much
| less impactful.
| LordDragonfang wrote:
| Right, but a theory's inferred veracity is only as good as
| its testable, falsifiable predictions.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Let me turn this around.
|
| A scientific theory is only as valuable as much as it can
| guide the action of some person.
|
| Popperism is an incredibly successful simplification that
| made it viable to judge a theory. But at the end of the
| day, it's just a proxy that nobody really cares about.
| eastbound wrote:
| Noob here, can we discuss about what are the practical
| effects of understanding high-energy theories? ie have we
| invented anything practical based on those colliders?
| dekhn wrote:
| There are some side-effects of running a place like CERN
| that benefit scientists (for example, CERN makes and
| stores antimatter for experiments, and they sometimes
| develop new tech to solve their problems that can be
| applied in the real world, but by-and-large, high energy
| physics doesn't contribute directly to applied science or
| products. Countries run projects like this for prestige,
| not applications.
| saiya-jin wrote:
| I would add creating WWW as a nice side product of CERN.
| I am sure they do much more in their highly specialized
| fields, ie seen tons of stuff open sourced (but I am not
| an expert on this so can't say how usable it actually is
| to other physicists).
| dekhn wrote:
| The web woudl have been created without CERN. If you have
| to fund a $10B accelerator to make the web, your funding
| model is broken.
| bee_rider wrote:
| The WWW is looking like kind of a mixed bag nowadays.
| mrtweetyhack wrote:
| marcosdumay wrote:
| I think the LHC was the first collider that didn't create
| any practical application from its main working. There
| were still spin-offs, but for a few decades the main
| research topic of high-energy physics has been entirely
| theoretical.
|
| Anyway, this is not a large problem. Theories taking
| decades to give you any practical result is perfectly
| fine. If all of science gave quick returns, it wouldn't
| need government spending. The problem is that we do not
| expect practical results on the future at all, and also
| do not expect the next large collider to bring anything
| different enough to change the physics into a new,
| unpredictable course.
|
| Or, in other words, the next big collider (as we can plan
| now) is probably way too small to matter. It will also be
| the largest scientific project ever (space and fusion
| projects included), and larger than most infrastructure
| projects on the world. It is a pretty bad picture.
| pfortuny wrote:
| Sorry but several of the most prominent string theorists have
| gone from "LHC will find this to be a fact" to "We need a
| bigger LHC" as time passed. Not very trustworthy.
| XorNot wrote:
| Gonna have to ask you to show your work here: who
| specifically made an LHC prediction and is now asking for
| as bigger LHC?
| xyzzyz wrote:
| > When new high-energy theories predict something, the
| hypothetical effects are either not testable in the
| foreseeable future, or eventually disproven by experiment.
|
| One of the reasons LHC was built in the first place was to
| try to detect the theoretically predicted Higgs boson.
| qiskit wrote:
| > Einstein and the quantum pioneers
|
| Einstein wasn't a 'quantum pioneer'. Einstein was a proponent
| of classical physics and against quantum physics.
| mikebenfield wrote:
| I didn't read that as intending to include Einstein in that
| group.
| tzs wrote:
| His Nobel Prize was for his early quantum work (explaining
| the photoelectric effect). He was a major participant at the
| first Solvay conference. Bose-Einstein statistics didn't get
| that name just because someone though it looked cool.
|
| He of course fully knew that the world is quantum, not
| classical. His beef with the mainstream QM past the mid to
| late '20s was with the Copenhagen interpretation. Einstein
| believed that a complete theory would have realism and so
| Copenhagen could not be the complete theory.
| ketralnis wrote:
| That isn't true. Einstein's "breakout" paper was on the
| Photoelectric effect. He wasn't a fan of probabilistic
| interpretations of quantum mechanics but it's not accurate to
| say that he didn't have a hand in it
| rwalle wrote:
| If you had even the shallowest understanding of what
| Einstein's contributions to physics are, you wouldn't make
| such comments... He literally got his Nobel prize for
| photoelectric effect in 2021.
| hackinthebochs wrote:
| Solving the photoelectric effect gave birth to the field. He
| just didn't like the monster he had created.
| qiskit wrote:
| No. He was working on the photoelectric effect because "the
| field" already existed. And he was working on it from a
| classical physics standpoint. What makes quantum physics
| revolutionary is it's non-classical nature. That's what
| einstein was against - quantum physics as we know it today.
| Einstein was a life long classic physicist. His relativity
| was grounded on classical physics. It's why many are
| working towards a quantum theory of gravity.
| pyb wrote:
| True, but sadly, if you defund Big Physics, it doesn't mean the
| money will go to 1000 experiments. It's more likely that
| nothing will be funded.
|
| Same reason why nobody was able to effectively compete with YC:
| it's a lot less work for VCs to fund a few "big bets" than find
| 100 good early-stage startups. The VC strategy is a lot less
| effective, but they still earn their fees no matter what
| gumby wrote:
| The money could be spent on telescopes looking at non-human
| sources of particles (hard to do for particles of short
| lifetimes, but then again you have whole galaxies to work
| with). This is how much of QM and cosmology in general have
| been investigated.
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| > it doesn't mean the money will go to 1000 experiments. It's
| more likely that nothing will be funded
|
| Perhaps it is reasonable to allow the money to remain unspent
| on topics related to physics! Spending has opportunity costs,
| after all; if these other experiments are not really the
| measure of the cost, then something else of value to society
| surely is.
| pyb wrote:
| The premise of this discussion is that those 1000
| experiments would likely to be very scientifically
| vaaluable.
| Teever wrote:
| Yes but if the person who is saying that those 1000
| experiments won't be funded but the next large hadron
| collider will and the next LHC is a waste of money then
| the alternative is between funding a waste of money and
| funding possibly not a waste of money like maybe some
| social programs or something.
| ironmagma wrote:
| There is other science we can do besides just physics.
| pessimizer wrote:
| The premise of this subthread is that failing to fund
| another collider does not mean that those 1000
| experiments will be funded. The person you're replying to
| is saying that even if money not thrown at a collider
| doesn't end up going to 1000 physics experiments, _it
| will go to something._ If that something is net-useful,
| it will be better than a new collider whose usefulness is
| questionable.
| Beldin wrote:
| Physics is (or should be) regarded enviably by other
| disciplines. They keep managing to get these crazily
| expensive multinational projects funded: LHC, ITER,
| various space telescopes... multi-billion projects. I
| honestly cannot recall an official scientific experiment
| or tool in another discipline funded for even only 100
| million. Just imagine that level of funding for your
| favourite discipline.
|
| The direct scientific value may be limited; the spinoff
| of that much attention / funding isn't.
|
| Not saying we should definitely fund a new collider. But
| the amount of effort needed is so huge, that even just
| the discussion will have positive impact for science.
| webnrrd2k wrote:
| California funded stem cell research with Proposition 71
| at 3 billion, and the follow-up funding for Proposition
| 14 at an additional 5.5 billion.
|
| This might not count as it's not a single 'official
| scientific experiment or tool', but I think that biosci
| is clearly getting heavily funded.
| sanxiyn wrote:
| Human Genome Project was $3B. It is especially salient
| because in a sense it was in competition with
| Superconducting Super Collider, which it won.
|
| Big Science and Big Politics in the United States:
| Reflections on the Death of the SSC and the Life of the
| Human Genome Project (1997) is a classic in history of
| science analyzing this competition.
| neltnerb wrote:
| They could even pay scientists a more reasonable wage and make
| funding easier to get with all that money and maybe not have an
| unsustainable university system where even amazing researchers
| can't get multi-year reliable funding (in the US, I know it is
| less bad elsewhere).
|
| But sure, go build a $100B machine out of habit.
| musha68k wrote:
| The article's pretext is a false dilemma. You can "fix" lots of
| science issues with money _as well as have more_ of these large
| scale scientific efforts. It 's up to the European funding and
| the extension of it. There is enough money to go around in one
| of the richest economic zones in the world.
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