[HN Gopher] CERN accepts $1B in private cash towards Future Circ...
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CERN accepts $1B in private cash towards Future Circular Collider
Author : zeristor
Score : 125 points
Date : 2026-01-31 09:58 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (physicsworld.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (physicsworld.com)
| Fh_ wrote:
| These projects are extremely expensive and the findings can alter
| humanity itself. That's why private donors sounds a bit sketchy
| murkt wrote:
| How can they alter humanity? What's the difference for humanity
| since CERN found Higgs particle? In what ways could the
| potential dark matter particle detection alter humanity?
| niemandhier wrote:
| It's a place where extremely skilled people work highly
| motivated on humanities hardest problems at scale.
|
| CERN pushed distributed computing and storage before anyone
| else hat problems on that scale.
|
| CERN pushed edge computing for massive data analysis before
| anyone else even generated data at that rate.
|
| CERN is currently pushing the physical boundaries of device
| synchronisation ( Check ,, White Rabbit" ), same for data
| transmission. CERNS accelerator cooling tech paves the way
| for industrial super cooling, magnet coils push super
| conduction...
|
| Companies are always late in the game, they come once there
| is money to be had: No one founded a fusion startup until we
| were close enough to the relevant tripple product.
| vjvjvjvjghv wrote:
| Seems these are all positive things and it's good that
| private donors are adding some money.
| sylware wrote:
| You are perfectly right, this has been similar to the
| "space industry" (which includes 'ballistic nukes' knowhow
| maintainance). The thing with a bigger collider is it seems
| there are, not that honnest, scientists retro-fitting
| models in order to reach 'appropriate for this new
| collider' energy ranges where 'new physics' could be found.
| XorNot wrote:
| What does that even mean? The FCC is essentially the next
| plausible energy range we can probe with a collider.
|
| Going larger would cost more, and add risk.
|
| So like, yes? The obvious thing to do is to analyze our
| models and come up with experiments to do within energy
| ranges which are plausibly accessible with near future
| technology.
| sylware wrote:
| This is where there is a questionable issue: some network
| of dishonest scientists may have retro-fitted the models
| in order to get realitic energy ranges for this new
| collider.
| zeristor wrote:
| I misread the first bit as the hardest problem in the
| Humanities.
|
| I'm not sure I have any idea what the hardest problem in
| the humanities is.
| crote wrote:
| Sure, but if experimental physics don't matter, wouldn't it
| be a far better idea to develop all those kinds of
| technology _without_ actually building the expensive
| collider itself?
| spongebobstoes wrote:
| that's like building an API with no customers -- rarely a
| good idea
| mr_mitm wrote:
| In what way would studying black body radiation alter
| humanity? Oh just the basis for quantum mechanics and thus
| transistors, lasers, MRIs, photovoltaics, and more.
|
| The point is, you don't know in advance. I admit it's a bit
| more far fetched with these experiments that are so far
| removed from everyday life, but they're still worthwhile.
| hnthrow0287345 wrote:
| Less that and more "we built a really complex machine and we
| can apply those skills elsewhere".
| pjmlp wrote:
| Cancer treatment goes back to particle physics research at
| CERN, the Web was born there, cloud was previously known as
| Grid Computing at CERN,
|
| Three examples of how humanity would not be as we know it
| today without CERN.
|
| As Alumni, there are many other changes that trace back to
| CERN.
|
| We don't sit only on the H1 beer garden and go skiing.
| mikkupikku wrote:
| I understand how linacs and even small compact syncrotrons
| can have practical medical and industrial applications, and
| I understand that in the past CERN has developed technology
| and produced research which is relevant to hardon therapy.
|
| What I don't understand, and maybe you can clarify, is how
| the very largest gargantuan accelerators can ever have
| practical relevance. How can effects and products which can
| only be studied with accelerators that are many miles large
| ever have application in hospitals unless those hospitals
| are also many miles large? Not going to lie, I get _" NASA
| invented Tang"_ vibes whenever this subject comes up; like
| the medical applications of small accelerators are obvious
| and parsable to the public, so they are used to sell the
| public on accelerators the size of small countries.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Because of the engineering effort required to build such
| systems, that no one has built before, means there is a
| gigantic amount of R&D discoveries that can be eventually
| applied in other fields outside particle physics.
|
| Mechanical, electronic, informatics, chemistry,
| physics,...
|
| Hence why CERN eventually created an industry
| collaboration office, responsible for finding business
| partners that would like to make a business out of such
| discoveries.
|
| https://knowledgetransfer.web.cern.ch/activities-
| services/co...
| bonsai_spool wrote:
| > Cancer treatment goes back to particle physics
|
| Are you speaking about proton therapy? I don't think
| there's any evidence that works better than alternatives
| pjmlp wrote:
| What matters is that exists, and is another possibility
| for treatments.
|
| https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4724719/
| bonsai_spool wrote:
| I disagree that any new possibility for treatments should
| be lauded. The theoretical side of things is fine, but
| many new treatments are far more expensive than existing
| options without offering improved outcomes.
|
| This is orthogonal to your point about CERN being useful.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Some people also believe praying beats vaccination
| programs.
|
| Unfortunately I have got to know people that are only
| still around me thanks to this technology that you find
| needless.
| bonsai_spool wrote:
| > Some people also believe praying beats vaccination
| programs.
|
| > Unfortunately I have got to know people that are only
| still around me thanks to this technology that you find
| needless.
|
| There is no way to know whether these people would have
| been served better by receiving radiation therapy. Your
| statement is tantamount to believing in prayer.
| pjmlp wrote:
| I know they are better than not having received anything
| at all.
| somethingsome wrote:
| What do you mean by 'any evidence that works better Than
| alternatives'?
|
| It can deliver radiations to the brain that will peak at
| the exact position of the cancer, and reduce irradiation
| in sane tissues. The 'better' is 'less irradiation to
| sane tissues' that in turn reduces the risk for new
| cancers.
|
| Note: I'm not expert on the matter, but I had technical
| visits to IBA and know several PhDs that work there
| bonsai_spool wrote:
| > What do you mean by 'any evidence that works better
| Than alternatives'?
|
| I mean exactly that, clinical trials demonstrating that
| proton therapy is superior to radiation therapy. This is
| not a question about the physics but about how patients
| respond (and whether the expense of delivering proton
| therapy outweighs the expected marginal benefits).
| somethingsome wrote:
| As a non expert, I can't pronounce myself on the subject,
| I found this recent study:
|
| https://www.mdanderson.org/newsroom/research-
| newsroom/proton...
|
| But on the subject of discoveries and practical uses, the
| IBA cyclotrons are also used for other purposes than
| proton therapy: cleaning exotic fruits from dangerous
| substances and personalized medicine.
| bonsai_spool wrote:
| This may be one of the good cases, then. I'm not an
| expert in cancer but I am a biologist and physician. The
| head and neck cancer (here) and various pediatric
| indications get the most attention but it has felt that
| proton therapy has been seeking an indication for almost
| 40 years now.
|
| https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS014
| 0-6...
|
| The study was designed to show non-inferiority, which
| doesn't preclude their ability to show an improvement. It
| would be helpful to see other studies before determining
| that proton therapy is better (or even non-inferior) to
| radiation therapy. It's certainly much more expensive,
| which shows up in the study as many subjects being denied
| insurance coverage.
|
| Edit: This is now in the weeds, but the per-protocol
| participants didn't fare better than the intention-to-
| treat participants, which one might expect since
| insurance approval lead to dozens of subjects changing
| treatment arms.
| somethingsome wrote:
| In Europe at least, many insurances cover it if you have
| the right criterias.
|
| From my visits, they mostly focus on children that have
| some very nasty cancers, the IBA hospitals are all
| designed with children in mind (to avoid stressing them),
| and from my memory, a unique hospital is often enough to
| treat a whole country for the kind of cancer they target.
|
| Now, if it is on par with classical radiotherapy BUT it
| gives less subsequent problems, it might be worth the
| cost as subsequent problems can be as expensive or even
| more than the original treatment. It becomes an actuarial
| issue to know where is the tradeoff.
| bonsai_spool wrote:
| Yes, all of your points are presented as arguments to pay
| for this (children, comorbodities, specialization,
| specific cancers)
| SoftTalker wrote:
| > the Web was born there
|
| The internet existed, hypertext existed, it was just
| happenstance that it was put together there. It would have
| happened somewhere, maybe not exactly the same protocol but
| the same end result.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Indeed and we are all still waiting for Xanadu.
| waihtis wrote:
| So complain to your government about their spending. Probably
| at least 30% of government spend is used on completely
| worthless or fraudulent things.
|
| It's good that someone is funding this stuff.
| sampo wrote:
| > findings can alter humanity itself
|
| Higgs boson was predicted in theory in 1964, and found in LHC
| in CERN in 2012-2013. With this, all elementary particles in
| the standard model of particle physics have been found.
|
| From the 1970s to 2010s, physicists believed in a theory called
| supersymmetry, which predicted supersymmetric partner particles
| for the known elementary particles. But these should have been
| already found in the energies used in LHC.
|
| For the first time, there is no mainstream theory that would
| predict any new findings. Maybe the next bigger particle
| collider will find no new particles at all?
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlixMNBlQos
| sandworm101 wrote:
| A collider produces far more than new particles or
| explanations. They produce papers and phds. In effect, thier
| primary goal is to produce stem careers. The new particles
| are just the public announcements. The collider doesnt even
| need to be functional. Much/most of the work occures before
| first light, before anyone turns it on. The design of the
| ring and its innumerable detectors and subsystems takes
| decades. So a great many people want the next collider to be
| funded regardless of its potential for scientific discovery.
|
| The same discussion can happen re the ISS. Its primary
| purpose was not science. It existed to give shuttle a parking
| spot, to keep the US manned space program ticking along and
| to keep a thousand russian rocket people from going to work
| for rando countries. The ISS will soon end. Are we going to
| put up a new one? A place to park starliner and dragon? Or
| are we going to shut down low earth orbit spaceflight? The
| decision will not turn on the potential for new science,
| rather it will be about supporting and maintaining a flagship
| industry.
| SecretDreams wrote:
| > thousand russian rocket people from going to work for bad
| people.
|
| Just like for the Germans before!
|
| I agree with you that it is an educational tool, but if
| that's all it is, there are cheaper ways to educate that
| might also have a higher likelihood for scientific
| discoveries. To build a new collider, we should have some
| things we're trying to do/find.
| forgotpwd16 wrote:
| >The same discussion can happen re the ISS. Its primary
| purpose was not science.
|
| But it's worth noting that many experiments took place on
| ISS covering few domains, examples being AMS (cosmology),
| CAL (quantum physics), SAFFIRE (combustion), and Veggie
| (botany/sustainability).
| sandworm101 wrote:
| And the LHC did science too. But, in both cases, the
| amount of science generated was not worth the money
| and/or the same could have been acomplished at far lower
| cost via other means.
| westurner wrote:
| > _Higgs boson was predicted in theory in 1964, and found in
| LHC in CERN in 2012-2013. With this, all elementary particles
| in the standard model of particle physics have been found._
|
| Before LHC Large Hardron Collider (CERN), there were other
| experiments with lower raw and final recorded data rates:
| SppS (CERN; MB/s; 1-10 Hz), SLC (SLAC (Stanford); 50 MB/s; 2
| Hz), LEP (CERN; 100 MB/s; 1-5 Hz), Tevatron (Fermilab
| (Chicago); 250 GB/s, 100-400 Hz), HERA (DESY; 500 MB/s; 5-20
| Hz), LHC CMS/ATLAS (CERN; 40 TB/s; 1000 Hz).
|
| HL-LHC (CERN; 10X LHC;)
|
| FCC-ee (CERN), FCC-hh (CERN)
|
| Non-confirmed non-elementary particles of or not of the
| Standard Model?
|
| What about Superfluids and Supersolids (like spin-nematic
| liquid crystals)? Are those just phases? Is the phase chart
| for all particles complete?
| T-A wrote:
| > can alter humanity
|
| or at least keep some of it warm:
|
| https://home.cern/news/news/cern/heating-homes-worlds-larges...
| dharma1 wrote:
| "Eric Schmidt, who founded Google" no he didn't
| mc32 wrote:
| That kind of reporting is awful.
|
| How is it they can't either go to Wikipedia or one of the LLMs
| (despite hallucinations, tend to get simple things right) and
| get some corroborating evidence before making such basic
| mistakes on an article?
| Forgeties79 wrote:
| Man I can't even trust simple things these days from LLM's.
| Hardly scientific but I just decided to do my own little test
| one time when I was on discord talking to some friends about
| The Game Awards back in December or so. ChatGPT would simply
| omit winners and/or categories - got it wrong (twice the same
| way, one unique way) 3 times. We tried Gemini, it gave 1
| wrong answer and omitted 2 categories. It was impressive how
| much worse than a basic search they were at a simple "what
| were the results of the 2025 Game Awards?"
| simianwords wrote:
| You are right. ChatGPT doesn't catch this, instead catches
| things like CERN having 25 member states instead of 24.
|
| I would have expected it to catch it but it did not. I'm sure
| pro version would have though.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| I can understand the confusion since he was CEO for the
| companies most critical years.
| user3939382 wrote:
| This should have a $1T budget not a B. We waste _so_ much money
| on low efficiency computing infrastructure and energy that should
| be going to this.
| SecretDreams wrote:
| Maybe we can just have the AI hardware make the discoveries for
| us!
| sandworm101 wrote:
| A thousand gpus running a thousand LLMs will one day soon
| give us the next shakespeare. It will all be worth it in the
| end. Maybe we can try putting in on a blockchain.
| SecretDreams wrote:
| > Maybe we can try putting in on a blockchain.
|
| Anything less would be a wasted opportunity!
| TeapotNotKettle wrote:
| " Perhaps my old age and fearfulness deceive me, but I
| suspect that the human species - the unique species - is
| about to be extinguished, but the Library will endure:
| illuminated, solitary, infinite, perfectly motionless,
| equipped with precious volumes, useless, incorruptible,
| secret."
| tgv wrote:
| I have low expectations that physics can dig itself out of the
| hole it dug by building an even larger collider. It's not worth
| EUR1T to find out.
| mike-the-mikado wrote:
| As someone who supports pure science research, I would be
| interested to understand if any of the discoveries of CERN (and
| related projects) in the last 50 years (say) have proved to have
| practical application.
|
| (Specifically, "discoveries", not technology developed in support
| of the research)
| bryant wrote:
| Before your edit:
|
| The world wide web: https://home.cern/science/computing/birth-
| web
|
| certain medical imaging: https://home.cern/news/news/knowledge-
| sharing/medipix-partic...
|
| grid computing advances:
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00104...
|
| PIMMS: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4724719/
|
| Medicis: https://home.cern/news/news/accelerators/cern-
| accelerates-me...
|
| FLASH radiotherapy: https://home.cern/news/news/knowledge-
| sharing/cern-chuv-and-...
|
| ---
|
| After your edit:
|
| No, not yet, but those are long tail efforts. The technologies
| are the short term yield.
| daveguy wrote:
| I don't know why you were getting down voted for this.
| Discovery during technological development of scientific
| instrumentation is one of the greatest returns on investment
| of funding pure science research. And like your sibling
| comment says, the pure science helps direct applied science,
| eg cutting edge materials science. Long tail, if for no other
| reason, because its a whole other development process that
| happens after the pure science.
| hammock wrote:
| It's an interesting question. After all we were using
| electricity, batteries, electric motors, radios and
| telegraphs long before we ever discovered electrons and
| photons.
|
| But discovering the electron was necessary for us to develop
| vacuum tubes. And developing quantum mechanics was necessary
| for developing transistors.
|
| Think about the relative impact of the telegraph vs the
| vacuum tube.
|
| When we do eventually find something to do with the W and Z
| bosons, it's likely to look more like a transistor-level tech
| than an immediately practical tool like a lightbulb. But the
| second-order effects from whatever that new tech turns out to
| be, have the potential to be world-shattering.
| Certhas wrote:
| Quantum Mechanics, protons, electrons... That's the theory
| of everyday matter. You don't need very special situations
| to see their effects. Understanding the underlying
| equations enabled us to do more with what we already have.
|
| High energy stuff only exists unstably for fractions of
| seconds. I find the idea that any of Standard Model
| physics, nevermind beyond standard model physics, could
| lead to a technological advance like the transistor
| extremely unconvincing.
|
| Technological advance and scientific advance sometimes
| align. But there is no law that the former by necessity
| follows from the former. The expectation that they do is an
| extrapolation from a very brief period of human history.
| mrtksn wrote:
| With that kind of fundamental science I would expect no
| practical applications but guidance for researchers that work
| on practical applications.
|
| There are many ideas on how the universe works, right? Knowing
| which ideas are closer to the truth must be helpful to people
| who work on nano scale stuff, like chips so fine that quantum
| effect are considerable.
|
| It must be somewhere between knowing if there's alien life or
| not AND knowing that atoms can be split at sub particles at
| will.
| jocaal wrote:
| What actually happens is, smart people are isolated from the
| problems of the general population and work towards
| meaningless goals at the cost of the everyday tax payer doing
| unglamorous work to earn a living. Decoupling science from
| the state will also reduce the meaningless competition of
| academia that leads to the publish-or-perish and replication
| crises, because the people who will be doing it, will do it
| for the love of the game, regardless of social status and
| money.
|
| If you want to live in this world, you have to trade your
| time and provide value to others. You shouldn't get a free
| pass because, just because you convinced yourself and the
| government that you're smarter than everyone else.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| This makes no sense.
|
| "Decoupling science from the state" is just bullshit from
| "government icky, taxation is theft" morons.
|
| No, governments should definitely fund scientific research.
| When it is public it is the only guarantee that it will
| benefit everyone. Scientific research done by private
| entities is kneecapped by their financial interests (and be
| very sure they will bury any advance that jeopardize their
| financial interests).
| jocaal wrote:
| How are radio telescopes and mars rovers in my interest?
| How would you know what is in my interest? I worked for
| my money so the person in the best position to judge what
| is in my interest is me. I am sorry for you if that is
| such a hard concept to understand.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| It would be great if we had line-item vetoes on our tax
| forms. However, we don't. You have to fund some things
| you don't like or agree with, and so do I, and so do the
| rest of the taxpayers.
|
| That's just how taxes work. Like capitalism and
| democracy, taxes suck, but nobody has come up with
| adequate substitutes that check all the necessary boxes.
| dgfl wrote:
| You're free to vote towards your goals, or move to
| countries which invest basically nothing in research.
| There's plenty of them. I suspect you may not enjoy such
| great quality of life there.
|
| In case it wasn't a rhetorical question, they're in your
| interest because through the process of building them we
| improve our understanding of the world, develop new
| technologies which the industrial system wouldn't have
| backed, educate the next generation of engineers and
| scientists, and inspire the kids that will form the
| second next generation.
|
| Private research already exists and works well in some
| fields, mine included. But public research is just as
| important since it can afford higher risk and longer
| scope. You can't begin to count the startups that were
| created as spin-offs of university research groups.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| Frankly, your particular interest is completely
| irrelevant.
|
| Scientific research is of societal interest, even if your
| particular interest differ. The best you can do is vote
| for parties that promise to shut down scientific
| research, or find another group of likeminded morons and
| form such a party with them.
|
| If you disagree with the concept of taxes, well, sucks to
| be you. May your desires never come to fruition, because
| life would be hell.
| patmorgan23 wrote:
| So you think we shouldn't try to understand the world
| around us?
| roody15 wrote:
| Agree this reminds me of the level my Herman Hesse "The
| Glass Bead Game". Academics and researchers have a moral
| duty to give back to the larger society that enables their
| endeavors .
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Glass_Bead_Game
| T-A wrote:
| > Knowing which ideas are closer to the truth must be helpful
| to people who work on nano scale stuff, like chips so fine
| that quantum effect are considerable.
|
| Sorry, no. That's solid state physics on inter-atomic scales:
| tenths of nanometers, a handful of electronvolts. The LHC
| probes physics at the electroweak scale: hundreds of billions
| of electronvolts, billionths of nanometers. It has zero
| relevance to anything of practical use.
| dwaltrip wrote:
| Isn't one of the limitations to transistor density quantum
| tunneling?
| dgfl wrote:
| In a few cases and in a simplistic sense, yes. But the
| point of the comment you're replying to still stands
| completely. Quantum tunneling is nothing exotic and we
| have plenty of devices exploiting the principle (e.g.
| tunnel diodes). It was basically fully understood the
| moment the Schrodinger equation appeared.
|
| These accelerators are as large as they are to try and
| find mismatches between theory and experiment. And even
| then, we can explain virtually every experiment that the
| LHC has conducted. If we did find something unexpected
| with one of these colliders, it would only really apply
| to experiments made in the collider. Particle physics is
| irrelevant for everyday stuff since we already fully
| understand everything involved.
| port11 wrote:
| Fundamental research is entwined with practical applications,
| you can't have the later without the former. Europe is known
| for FR, while everyone else seems to be better at
| commercialising. It's alright, progress for us is progress for
| everyone.
| naasking wrote:
| That's not an answer to the specific question asked. Not all
| types of fundamental research have the same potential for
| material benefits, or the same cost.
| chmod775 wrote:
| > Not all types of fundamental research have the same
| potential for material benefits, or the same cost.
|
| It is hard to gauge this is in advance though. If you were
| sure what you were gonna find, it wouldn't be much of a
| discovery. Historically it has sometimes been decades
| before manufacturing and practical applications caught up
| to frontier research. For an extreme example, mankind knew
| of electricity in some form for 2400 years before doing
| anything practical with it. If all the people who prodded
| at it instead thought "man I can't imagine what this could
| be useful for" and found something else to do with their
| time, we'd live in a very different world.
|
| Our civilization can afford to aim higher than incremental
| improvements on pixel density for screens on which to
| spectate people kicking a ball around. Personally I find
| frontier discoveries to also have much greater
| entertainment value than sports events and will happily
| fund them with a tiny fraction of my tax dollars.
| naasking wrote:
| > It is hard to gauge this is in advance though. If you
| were sure what you were gonna find, it wouldn't be much
| of a discovery.
|
| Virtually all previous particle discoveries were
| predicted, and then we built devices to find them, eg.
| the Higgs was predicted in the 1960s. There is no such
| motivation here. There is no theoretical or significant
| practical benefit for the FCC, it's basically a jobs
| program.
|
| There is better frontier research that could use those
| funds for much better payoffs. For instance, just
| sticking with particle physics, Wakefield accelerators
| would be orders of magnitude smaller and cheaper than the
| LHC while achieving the same energies. We've also never
| built a muon collider, and so that's largely unexplored
| territory.
|
| We just don't need another radio frequency particle
| collider, we've reached the limits of what they can do
| within a reasonable research budget.
| elashri wrote:
| > Virtually all previous particle discoveries were
| predicted
|
| That's not true at all. To give just few examples.
|
| Electron was not predicted but Thomson found it during
| first fundamental particle discovered came from cathode-
| ray experiments, not from a prior microscopic theory of
| matte. Remember this was during thr 19th century.
|
| Another one is the muon discovered in 1936 which was
| detected as "heavy electron" in cosmic rays. it did not
| fit any clear theoretical need in nuclear physics at the
| time, leading Rabi to quip "Who ordered that?"
|
| Heck there are many more examples that I will bypass the
| comment limits if I tried to list them (resonances in
| particular will be very numerous).
|
| You can of course move the goal target by narrowing what
| you mean by particle but this is exactly why physicists
| try to define what they talk about before making an
| argument.
|
| > There is no such motivation here. There is no
| theoretical or significant practical benefit for the FCC,
| it's basically a jobs program.
|
| Really? There is a huge volume of the feasibility study
| about the physics program of FCC. Are you claiming that
| it is false. Have you even read it?
| biophysboy wrote:
| No. It is purely a model tester.
| colechristensen wrote:
| This is such a weasel question because you can keep saying
| whatever was new was "just technology" not pure discoveries.
|
| No, there hasn't been any big "new physics" since the standard
| model in the 70s, everything has been refinement and specifics.
| You can't go to Walmart and buy something that couldn't exist
| unless we knew the precise mass of the top quark or the Higgs
| boson.
|
| There have been a tremendous amount of developments and
| technologies that have come out of CERN with varying degrees of
| closeness to particle physics, but depending on who you're
| talking to, most of them don't count.
|
| >(Specifically, "discoveries", not technology developed in
| support of the research)
|
| Ok, but Tim Berners-Lee was working at CERN when he created
| HTTP, HTML, etc.
|
| The Internet through web browsers as you know it was created at
| CERN in order to enable scientific communication and
| collaboration.
| mike-the-mikado wrote:
| I was hoping that someone would be able to point me to some
| practical technical advance enabled by discoveries or
| measurements at CERN (or similar establishments).
|
| It seems plausible to me that better understanding of the
| properties the subatomic particles might enable some
| previously unexploited technology (e.g. in quantum computing
| or sensing).
| dwaltrip wrote:
| Why do you not count the technology developments needed to do
| the research?
| sva_ wrote:
| Maybe this one will finally make a black hole that ends it all
|
| https://hasthelargehadroncolliderdestroyedtheworldyet.com/
| kachapopopow wrote:
| https://hasthelargehadroncollidercreatedablackholeyet.com/
| (Yep, of money)
| lelandfe wrote:
| source code has us at 89%
| dawnerd wrote:
| Or maybe just undo this weird timeline the last one put us in.
| arthurfirst wrote:
| it's already a black hole for funding
| chrystalkey wrote:
| Said the grumpy grandpa, shaking his hand at the cloudy sky. I
| dont know what value that comment contributed, funding research
| is always a long shot. And often times it fails, but that is
| kinda its purpose, we dont know what we dont know.
| mc32 wrote:
| There's an abandoned one around Dallas, the SSC. Lots of
| sunken cost in that one.
| arthurfirst wrote:
| your comment made me smile like a grandpa :)
|
| Also lighten up! oh... damn black hole...
| chrystalkey wrote:
| Haha nice :) Yeah those black holes are everywhere these
| days when you dont look...
| crote wrote:
| You could use the same argument to justify spending $1B on
| searching for the Loch Ness Monster. The problem is, you can
| only spend money once. If you're spending $1B on the FCC you
| _aren 't_ spending that same $1B on all kinds of other
| research.
|
| With the LHC there was a very clear goal: verify the Standard
| Model and prove (or disprove) the existence of the Higgs
| boson - and hopefully discover some unexpected stuff along
| the way. On the other hand, the FCC is mainly a shot in the
| dark: they aren't validating a widely-accepted theory, they
| are just _hoping_ that if you spend enough money on a bigger
| collider something interesting will fall out.
|
| Most research gives you at least _some_ insight. With the FCC
| there is a very real possibility that the insight will be
| "our $20B collider found absolutely nothing, now give us $1T
| to build an even bigger one". Sure, funding research is a
| long shot, but at a certain point you're just setting money
| on fire.
| chrystalkey wrote:
| I see your point, but thats a really bad comparison. We are
| pretty certain that there is no giant dinosaur in a lake,
| but in terms of fundamental research there is a lot we
| cannot really explain a great many things. We dont even
| know if we are "looking" correctly, with the right concept
| in mind.
|
| I agree that money spending must be carefully considered,
| but for this research there really is no replacement. You
| can shuffle public spending around, but an Experiment not
| dont will explain no part of the Universe. If the countries
| and Supranationals that are able to dont fund them we will
| be stuck with what we know now until they do.
|
| It is a lot of money, but it is also the only way. Does
| that meaningfully stop the EU and all others from doing
| their thing? I would argue no. We can still afford it and
| so we should.
| whatshisface wrote:
| That's not true. There are a huge number of theories that
| would be falsified by a more precise measurement of the
| Higgs mass.
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| It's largely fans of Sabine Hossenfelder youtube channel,
| where some years ago sadly she shifted into just being a
| grifter selling conspiracy theories about the funding of
| particle physics.
|
| The audience here tends to vastly overweight contrarian near
| conspiracy theory style stuff, so this sort of comment shows
| up on literally every damn post about physics research.
| chrystalkey wrote:
| Dont be too harsh on the first comment, I'm Sure he's a
| good guy. Interesting to see that hossenfelder thing, I
| was'nt aware of it. Her videos got recommended to me but
| title+thumb always felt like an over the top commentary
| with more drama than actual problem to be aware of.
|
| So I never clicked and at some point youtube stopped.
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| Yeah, it's sad she went that direction, because her
| educational videos that aren't agitpop are very good.
|
| It's just another example of how the incentives on modern
| social media pull people towards ragebait and other forms
| of grift.
| throwaway198846 wrote:
| As a non physicist I like the idea of a moun collider more - more
| compact (thus should be cheaper) as well as something which
| haven't done in similar energy scales and therefore more likely
| to need new technology in building it and finding something new.
| assaddayinh wrote:
| What changeable vectors are there except to scale up the energy
| levels? Can particles be altered prior to collission with the
| existing system to observe interesting effects?
| naasking wrote:
| Wakefield accelerators would be orders of magnitude smaller and
| higher energy than radio frequency colliders like the FCC. If
| it has to go to particle physics, this money would be better
| spent on that research.
| naasking wrote:
| What a waste. So many more science experiments with better
| expected ROI could be funded for the money needed for the FCC,
| and we're not even expecting any significant new insights from
| it.
| astrobe_ wrote:
| Sometimes you get huge value from things you _didn 't expect_
| ;-)
| naasking wrote:
| 1. That's not an argument unless the evidence for these
| payoffs is so huge as to dwarf the payoffs of 1000 smaller
| experiments. There is no evidence of this.
|
| 2. There is no world in which this applies to particle
| physics at this point, especially using radio frequency
| particle collider tech. This is known physics and there are
| no mysteries in the regime the FCC would reach.
| surgical_fire wrote:
| Do you have evidence that "1000 smaller experiments" would
| give payoffs?
|
| And how do you measure payoffs? With how much money you get
| in return? Should scientific research expect this?
| naasking wrote:
| Payoffs have many forms, the most important for pure
| research being "advancement of knowledge". We have nearly
| zero expectation of knowledge advancement from yet
| another radio frequency collider.
| z3ratul163071 wrote:
| amen
| z3ratul163071 wrote:
| FCC is "physics" equivalent of easter island statues. Useless
| resource sink with no perspective productive outcome whatsoever.
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