As the Large Hadron Collider Revs Up, Physicists' Hopes Soar (nytimes.com) 124
The particle collider at CERN will soon restart. From a report: In April, scientists at the European Center for Nuclear Research, or CERN, outside Geneva, once again fired up their cosmic gun, the Large Hadron Collider. After a three-year shutdown for repairs and upgrades, the collider has resumed shooting protons -- the naked guts of hydrogen atoms -- around its 17-mile electromagnetic underground racetrack. In early July, the collider will begin crashing these particles together to create sparks of primordial energy. And so the great game of hunting for the secret of the universe is about to be on again, amid new developments and the refreshed hopes of particle physicists. Even before its renovation, the collider had been producing hints that nature could be hiding something spectacular. Mitesh Patel, a particle physicist at Imperial College London who conducts an experiment at CERN, described data from his previous runs as "the most exciting set of results I've seen in my professional lifetime."
A decade ago, CERN physicists made global headlines with the discovery of the Higgs boson, a long-sought particle, which imparts mass to all the other particles in the universe. What is left to find? Almost everything, optimistic physicists say. When the CERN collider was first turned on in 2010, the universe was up for grabs. The machine, the biggest and most powerful ever built, was designed to find the Higgs boson. That particle is the keystone of the Standard Model, a set of equations that explains everything scientists have been able to measure about the subatomic world. But there are deeper questions about the universe that the Standard Model does not explain: Where did the universe come from? Why is it made of matter rather than antimatter? What is the "dark matter" that suffuses the cosmos? How does the Higgs particle itself have mass? Physicists hoped that some answers would materialize in 2010 when the large collider was first turned on. Nothing showed up except the Higgs -- in particular, no new particle that might explain the nature of dark matter. Frustratingly, the Standard Model remained unshaken.
A decade ago, CERN physicists made global headlines with the discovery of the Higgs boson, a long-sought particle, which imparts mass to all the other particles in the universe. What is left to find? Almost everything, optimistic physicists say. When the CERN collider was first turned on in 2010, the universe was up for grabs. The machine, the biggest and most powerful ever built, was designed to find the Higgs boson. That particle is the keystone of the Standard Model, a set of equations that explains everything scientists have been able to measure about the subatomic world. But there are deeper questions about the universe that the Standard Model does not explain: Where did the universe come from? Why is it made of matter rather than antimatter? What is the "dark matter" that suffuses the cosmos? How does the Higgs particle itself have mass? Physicists hoped that some answers would materialize in 2010 when the large collider was first turned on. Nothing showed up except the Higgs -- in particular, no new particle that might explain the nature of dark matter. Frustratingly, the Standard Model remained unshaken.
Really? 17 miles? (Score:3)
Isn't it a bit disrespectful to refer to one of the great modern scientific accomplishments using imperial units? I'm not a metric snob in general. I know my height in feet, my weight in pounds, and my oven temperature settings in fahrenheit or celcius (ambi-temperous?). But this feels incorrect.
Re: Really? 17 miles? (Score:2)
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I suppose... but to me it seems like "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone". Dumb it down if you want it to fly in the U.S.. I don't know that it's doing them a favour.
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"dumbing down as you call it"
Arthur Levine of Scholastic (the company that bought the U.S. distribution rights) negotiated the name change because he thought children would find the word "Philosopher" too arcane. The U.S. is apparently the only country where that concession was thought necessary. Rowling later regretted it and wished she had the power at the time to reject it.
What would you call it?
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It wasn't because the word "philosopher" was too arcane. It was because he thought that the legend of the "philosophers stone" was unknown in the US and thus did not imply "magic". And it doesn't. I'm guessing I could find loads of references that Americans would get that would have little meaning to someone in the UK - does that mean it is 'dumbed down' to change it to a reference the UK would get? For instance, the film "Hoosiers" had to be dumbed down to "Best Shot" in the UK, because those idiots i
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My apologies. Levine used the word "archaic" rather than arcane.
I guess you can argue from the position of regional translation, but it is stretched when it's literally "everybody else". Think of changing the name of the movie "Best Shot" to "Exciting Basketball Movie" but just for Indiana, since the reference "shot" might not be clear enough for them to want to watch. It's not a positive implication for that populace.
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I hate replying to myself... I apologize.
The other consideration is that "Philosopher's Stone" is an established term with a very long history. "Sorcerer's Stone" ads market appeal for the uneducated and removes context.
So yes, "dumbed down".
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I know my height in feet, my weight in pounds, and my oven temperature settings in fahrenheit or celcius (ambi-temperous?). But this feels incorrect.
You probably know how many horses are still tucked underneath the hood of your car too. Try not to feel so "incorrect". Ignorance is far more prevalent than you assume.
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In Europe it's common use to kW rather than horsepower. Even in the UK that's becoming common due to the move to electric vehicles, were battery capacity is measured in kWh.
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Why? I was reading an article this morning written out of the UK about an American kid who makes money on youtube. All dollar figures were in GBP, not USD. NYT is a US based publication, seems less logically for them to use metric, it's not a scientific publication by any stretch of the imagination.
Re:Really? 17 miles? (Score:4, Informative)
Isn't it a bit disrespectful to refer to one of the great modern scientific accomplishments using imperial units?
No.
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Besides which, we need accelerators that are 100 miles in diameter. These toy accelerators aren't going to be enough to shake up the standard model and we know that the SM is either incomplete or incorrect. (It's merely the best we have and we're going to need to look a lot harder to find anything seriously new.)
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While we know the standard model is incomplete, what we don't know is whether a higher powered collider will shed any insight into that. Previously physicists knew what they were looking for. But they've already found all the particles predicted by the SM. At this point they're just hoping to get lucky.
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While we know the standard model is incomplete, what we don't know is whether a higher powered collider will shed any insight into that. Previously physicists knew what they were looking for. But they've already found all the particles predicted by the SM. At this point they're just hoping to get lucky.
Well they can continue to squeeze supersymmetry out of existence.
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which also squeezes string theory out of existence, which is probably a good thing as string theory was a hysterical hype
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Which is why increasing the power of the collider by a little bit is unlikely to answer that question. You need to increase the power by a lot, both to ensure that you're not missing new particles and to ensure that your accuracy in measuring the ones you know about is able to really test the maths and to narrow down all the constants involved with sufficient precision to be able to start answering questions about why the values are what they are.
Once we understand what the Standard Model is actually saying
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Your description of "more power" is a bit fuzzy, IMHO.
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I don't see what's fuzzy. You can't accelerate faster than the curvature for a given magnet strength will allow. So you need to reduce curvature or increase magnetic field strength. Five times the diameter is a reduction in curvature that will allow higher energy collisions than can be achieved simply by upgrading the magnets. And if you can upgrade the magnets, you can use the more powerful magnets on the larger diameter ring.
Yes, luminosity is important and will show rarer events but it can't show events
So you want Trump Physics? (Score:1)
> Frustratingly, the Standard Model remained unshaken.
What, boring doesn't sell? After the pandemic et. al., we need a period of boring. Otherwise, someone will discover a particle that eats planets or something; making Covid, war, and supply problems look tame.
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...we need a period of boring. Otherwise, someone will discover a particle that eats planets or something.
Given the human infection, I think we can stop pretending our host planet is doing just fine.
We found that "particle" you're talking about. It's us.
Well (Score:2)
I need anti-gravity, cheap energy, and faster than light travel.
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bet you believe in ancient aliens too.
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Cheap energy is easy. Divert 5% of the annual subsidy for fossil fuels to fusion. We'd have fusion well within the timeframe we need to be off oil, and although it wouldn't be too cheap to meter, it would be a lot cheaper.
Re:Well (Score:4, Funny)
Cheap energy is easy. Divert 5% of the annual subsidy for fossil fuels to fusion. We'd have fusion well within the timeframe we need to be off oil, and although it wouldn't be too cheap to meter, it would be a lot cheaper.
So, about 20 years?
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Oh, much less. The 20 years prediction is based on cutting fusion funding in real terms with respect to our understanding of what is needed, I'm suggesting increasing funding in real terms with respect to our understanding of what is needed.
If you increase funding the way I suggested, we'll know how to build a workable fusion reactor inside of FIVE years and have built a first generation of commercial fusion reactors within fifteen.
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No, my plan is to properly fund the research at the levels necessary to carry it out. If you deprive a field of the necessary funds, of course it'll never actually reach the goal. Less has been spent on fusion research over the last 50 years than is spent on subsidising coal every 3 days, but you don't have a problem with coal technology not improving.
Spending 18.25 day's worth of subsidy on fusion each year as extra funding (so more than six times the total ever spent on such research) and you'll actually
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I need anti-gravity, cheap energy, and faster than light travel.
`import antigravity` will do the first for you.
Who writes this crap? (Score:3)
"The naked guts of hydrogen atoms", this is probably the result of taking your whole micro-dosing stamp sheet at the same time.
Re:Who writes this crap? (Score:4, Funny)
Well, let's see if a hydrogen atom could be said to have guts. It has a bottom quark, so that's a start. The gluons connected to the bottom would be the guts, I reckon.
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I'd say call a proton a proton.
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There also could be a couple neutrons...
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Do they send deutrons down the pipe? Or just protons?
Start asking the right questions (Score:2)
But there are deeper questions about the universe that the Standard Model does not explain: Where did the universe come from? Why is it made of matter rather than antimatter? What is the "dark matter" that suffuses the cosmos? How does the Higgs particle itself have mass? Physicists hoped that some answers would materialize in 2010 when the large collider was first turned on. Nothing showed up except the Higgs -- in particular, no new particle that might explain the nature of dark matter. Frustratingly, the Standard Model remained unshaken.
From what I've seen, the entire field of cosmology is due for a revolution. And for my money, the really interesting questions have to do with the nature of time.
What is time?
Ask most who are familiar with GR, and they'll tell you that time dilation results from the curvature of spacetime, which tells matter how to move. And matter informs spacetime how to curve.
It's circular.
When you dig in, you find that the GR geodesics that define the path of an object in motion are those that comprise the le
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Time and space are most likely emergent properties of something more fundamental. Certainly, they are identical in nature - GR shows that much. Why time is also the chronological dimension (this is important to distinguish, as GR does show that space and time are indeed identical in other respects) is important.
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Not quite identical. We seem to be very long in time and arguably infitesimal in space. If you're one of those "flowing river" types, translated this is "we can move in time but not in space."
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Well, one model is that electrons don't move at all - in time or in space. They exist for an instant and are replaced by another electron at a different point.
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>What is it about matter, then, that brings about these gradients in time?
Not matter - mass. Which is to say, energy. All energy has mass* as determined by E=mc^2 (or in the original expression, m= E/c^2). Matter just happens to be the densest concentration of energy normally seen. But take lumps of matter and antimatter with combined mass M, and seal them within a perfectly reflective and indestructible container, and the mass of the container and contents would not change at all as they annihilated
Big Bang obligatory (Score:5, Funny)
Every 12-14 billion years or so the scientists somewhere build a Large Hadron Collider...
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If we knew everything the "colliding" particles could do, we wouldn't need the collider, would we?
And what part of my post said anything close to that we know everything about colliding particles? What we do know is that colliding a finite amount particles does not end the universe considering the amount of energy compared to what the Sun emits every second.
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of course there could be side effects that are not noticeable at intergalactic distances that would be unpleasant in Geneva. But there is no reason to think there is a problem .
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Nah, it's the first Galactic civilization which builds the Universal Hadron Collider every few billion years. After that the next first Gal Civ will do it again, and again.
Do they have enough electric power? (Score:2)
Given the Russian sanctions and all, are they going to have to shut it down to keep the lights on, and the refrigerators running elsewhere in Europe?
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Those little tiny refrigerators don't use much power.
Tainted Research Premises (Score:1)
Try reading Sabine Hossenfelder's recent work
"Lost in math: how beauty leads physics astray" ISBN 9780465094257
A fun read, if you wan't to help, see 'Lost in Math... Appendix C.'
Hossenfelder is a theoretical physicist and research Fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced
Studies where she leads the Superfluid Dark Matter group (per Wikipedia)
TLDR: The premise is that the unsupported assumption that nature 'must or should' follow rules of mathematical elegance, coupled with human cognitive bias
Re:Tainted Research Premises (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyone who admits to being 'religious' (spiritual, whatever), should not be allowed to publish "scientific works", without a big red fat rationality warning, because their logic and arguments are tainted by deep and incurable delusions about the underlying nature of reality.
The thing is that you can have that without religion, so why discriminate? Just put that notice on everything.
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Not Religious, Just Occam's Razor (Score:3)
The premise is that the unsupported assumption that nature 'must or should' follow rules of mathematical elegance, coupled with human cognitive bias...is causing us to waste billions on these massive and unproductive experiments.
The problem with this statement is that it's not consistent with the data. Believing that nature is mathematically elegant is what has got us this far - all of physics up to this point is more-or-less based on the assumption that we can find reasonably elegant maths to model how the universe works.
It is also worth remembering that the "massive and unproductive experiments" found exactly what the elegant mathematical model Higgs constructed to explain mass predicted. How is this unproductive?
The searc
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>TLDR: The premise is that the unsupported assumption that nature 'must or should' follow rules of mathematical elegance, coupled with human cognitive bias, and our abject failure to build a culture of criticism and rational civil critique, is causing us to waste billions on these massive and unproductive experiments.
She also raises the rather insightful point that what is considered beautiful mathematics has been skewed by what the current theories look like. So it has set up a self sustaining bias.
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You should read Hossenfelder a little closer. Her point is that "these massive... experiments" have all been *productive* because their objectives have been justified by reasonably sound predictions. Her objection is to people who insist that arguments from elegance are sufficient to predict new physics at slightly higher energies and justify building another bigger LHC at this time.
Hossenfelder is a phenomenologist, which means she advocates looking for indirect evidence of high energy physics at lower ene
Death of SUSY (Score:2)
Another great success of LHC is largely killing off the super symmetry wanking.
Yawn (Score:2)
Charle
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Higged is Rigged? So is the moon: https://i.redd.it/s540z5yyw4y8... [i.redd.it]
Scientific Controversies (Score:5, Interesting)
I have a copy of a 1970s college level Intro to Astronomy textbook. The author repeats the scientific belief, and yes, belief is the correct word, that Pluto was once a moon of Neptune. This seems like one of these things the late Stephen Jay Gould remarked upon about claims and turns-of-phrase that get passed down through generations of textbooks, perhaps without the textbook author attempting to "fact check" and dig into the literature on such matters. Gould's favorite is the repeated comparison between Eohippus (the "dawn horse") and a fox terrier, which has lost all of its meaning to modern audiences unfamiliar with English fox hunts, where a diminutive dog would be carried along on a horse and then set down on the ground by the horse's ride to finish chasing down the fox, sort of like a crewed warship launching a torpedo.
Besides having images now of Neptune, Triton, Pluto and its moon Charon, we also have the Internet where one quickly finds that British astronomer Raymond Lyttleton offered this speculation in 1936, which has been handed down in this textbook without attribution.
This book, naturally, has homework problems, make-work exercises so that some hapless professor, adjunct, or TA stuck teaching Intro to Astronomy in front of 300 students, most taking it as a "science requirement", can assign letter grades at the end of the semester.
One question reads, "describe the evidence that Pluto was once a moon of Neptune." I guess the "correct" answer to this homework exercise is to paraphrase the lame reasoning in the chapter on planets, that Pluto's orbit passes closer to the sun than Neptune over a portion of Pluto's eccentric orbit and that Pluto (speculated at the time) is of similar size and icy composition as Triton.
Suppose, just suppose, a budding young astronomer was registered for the class, a person with the snarky skepticism to serve as a reviewer for a journal manuscript submission, suppose that person wrote on their homework paper,
Evidence for Pluto having been a moon of Neptune? None. Absolutely none.
Missing the Point (Score:5, Insightful)
However, if they had launched into an argument as to why there was no evidence by undermining and pointing out the errors in the evidence that was used at the time to claim that Pluto was a former moon of Neptune then I'd have given them full marks since they clearly know what the evidence is well enough to find errors in it! Indeed, I would have suggested that they seriously consider a graduate degree.
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You're already at 5, so I'll just comment. Well said. Except... I would hope that the point of the exams is what you describe. But that requires an engaged teacher willing to analyze a nuanced response, rather than a quick check that facts were regurgitated as expected.
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Hmm... perused the info. Thought? Any idiot can be a contrarian. Better come with more than that if you're going to belittle something as fantastically successful as the standard model.
Make's me think of Anton's commentary on criticism in print at the end of Ratatouille.
Re: The Higgs Fake. (Score:4, Informative)
Yes. That's exactly what you do. Except it's not a can't it's a won't.
If some idiot walks into the kitchen of some four-star restaurant and begins telling the cooks, not how to cook, but they can't fucking cook and should stop cooking. Then yes, you call the person an idiot and maybe chase them out of the kitchen with a rolling pin, perhaps get the cops involved. YOU DO NOT sit there in debate on the combination of flavors and meats for tonight's dinner service.
Alexander Unzicker has a PhD in neuroscience and has a rough intro degree into physics. He's got just enough understanding of UFT and the Standard Model to be confidently incorrect on the matter. People point out how he won "Science Book of the Year" by leading science journalists in Germany, but if you actually look at the award it's "most controversial science book" of the year by Bild der Wissenschaft. In that the publication of it had some people talking about the subject matter. Which yeah, Scientist could be more transparent but shit there is a ton corporate interest in ensuring status quo too by putting up shit that distracts everyone. The argument, "it's too difficult to understand, ergo it is wrong" is a fucking dumb argument in the book that's being hocked here. And yes, we literally have an anonymous coward that posted a link to buy a book from Amazon. It is a FUCKING AD, you all bought the fucking Kool-Aid and drank it. He is an idiot and his points are not worth the time to be refuted. Just because a person can speak does not mean they are intelligent on the subject matter. I don't know if dude himself posted a link for people to buy or what, but the guy is fucking trying to make quick bucks. He's not presenting anything new, he's not backing up anything he says, he has zero research to hammer his point on. NO! HE JUST WANTS TO MAKE SOME MONEY. STOP GIVING IDIOTS YOUR MONEY AND TIME!!
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Congrats. You wandered into a forest, found a specific tree you didn't like, and damned the ecosystem.
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Depressingly average?
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Finding a cure for cancer seems pretty damn simple.
Only for people who don't know what cancer is.
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Finding a cure for cancer seems pretty damn simple.
Only for people who don't know what cancer is.
You sound just like a person making six figures being an "administrator" for a cancer "society".
I guess this is where I should put on my shocked face and act like a better human now that you have educated me on the topic.
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You sound just like a person making six figures being an "administrator" for a cancer "society".
Yup, that's the only thing it could be. No other possibilities at all.
You could try acting like a better human but I'm not going to get my hopes up.
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Finding a cure for cancer seems pretty damn simple.
Sure it's simple. It's just a matter of killing a bunch of cancer cells. That's easy. It's just when the arbitrary requirement of not killing the rest of the cells in the patient alive is imposed that it gets very, very difficult.
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I perused the provided summary, and followed it up with a short search for additional info. No I did not buy it. There's plenty enough context in that brief look for me to recognize shitty thinking. A little critical thought was all that was needed to triage it.
If you have the time to completely consume everything you intend to pass judgement on, more power to you. But when the flags are numerous enough, I simply judge and move on with my life.
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Re:The Higgs Fake. (Score:4, Funny)
"Once you smash two of the "smallest" particles together, won't they be separated into even smaller particles?"
Maybe... maybe not. So, try it!
"I am not convinced the potential for scientific discovery justifies the expense"
That's you right along side the first guy to say, "I don't know why you're wasting resources working on that 'wheel'. No idea why you think that's valuable."
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It's more like they're at the stage of rolling anything they can find that will roll downhill, and studying rolling. Eventually they hope to come up with a wheel, i.e. a practical rolling thing. Or in this case, some new thing.
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"Comparing the very high level theoretical stuff being done at the LHC to the practical exercise of inventing the wheel is pedantic at best."
Okay, hold on. the LHC is a completely practical effort, intended to aid the theoretical. It's every bit as practical as the invention of the wheel, just with more forethought.
The person who first tried to improve a rolling rock didn't envision a Ferrari. Yet here we are. And history is littered with examples of "pointless" investment that provided unanticipated tangi
Re: The Higgs Fake. (Score:2)
You're clearly unaware of the Plank Length and requirements to form a particle.
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There's this ancient Greek dude Democritus you might find interesting.
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How could it be that there really is a "smallest" particle? Once you smash two of the "smallest" particles together, won't they be separated into even smaller particles?
I'm not sure where you're getting this smallest particle stuff but let me ask you a question to gauge your understanding. Let's say that you smash two small particles together at very high velocity and one of the byproducts you end up with is a particle with a mass greater than the original two particles put together. Can you tell me where the extra mass comes from?
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Frustratingly, the Standard Model remained unshaken.
Somebody get James Bond on the line. He prefers his Standard Models shaken, not stirred.
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Only old fashioned standard models, the kind with potato oils still in it. These days they filter all of the oils out of their standard models.
The Fake Physicist (Score:5, Informative)
1) the so-called standard model has grown unbelievably complicated
This is not a scientifically valid criticism because there is no requirement that nature is simple. However, I would disagree that the Standard Model is incredibly complex - it's really not. It's fundamentally based on 3 symmetries: U(1), SU(2)L and SU(3). The maths required to explain that is non-trivial but at its heart the model is incredibly simple given that it describes so much of the universe.
2) none of the great riddles of physics that have persisted for a century have been solved
What are these riddles? Almost every serious problem we have in particle physics dates from much less than 100 years ago because things like "how do the protons in a nucleus bind together" were solved by the Standard Model and most of the ones we are struggling with now are far more recent. The only big riddle I can think of that is close to this mark is the quantum nature of gravity but while GR dates from 1915 Schrodinger only published his equation in 1926 so arguably we did not know that we had this problem until then making it only 96 years old. However, from a scientific point of view, the age of the problems a new theory solves is much less relevant than the importance of the problems it solves so really again this is not a valid criticism and the SM solves so many problems that existed before it that it's ludicrous to ignore this.
3) history suggests that the current model is a dead end
There is zero evidence for this, in fact, history shows the exact opposite. Nobody would claim that Newtonian mechanics was a "dead end". If gave us a mathematical model to base our experimentation on and, when we started to find behaviour it could not explain, it caused us to rethink fundamental physics and come up with new theories which, for everyday situations, gave the behaviour of Newtonian mechanics, but which fundamentally changed our understanding of how the universe works. Today we would regard the SM as an "effective field theory" which means that it is a valid description of a more fundamental, higher energy theory whose features we are still trying to figure out. To call this a "dead end" shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how scientific progress is made. Quantifying what we do know, which is what the SM does, helps us identify what we do not know and have not tested which is essential for increasing our understanding.
The last three points are all the same and basically boil down to "I don't understand the analyses so they cannot be valid". This is perhaps the most egregious statement of all. The fact that the author doesn't understand something is simply a statement about the author's personal ignorance - although it's not too surprising that he can't understand it since he lacks a physics PhD. The fact that someone does not understand something does not make that thing invalid. These analyses are looked at by people in the field who do understand them - indeed any analysis put out by ATLAS is looked at closely by CMS and vice versa since either experiment would love to show that their competitor got something wrong.
Re:With stock market crashing and stagflation (Score:5, Funny)
Can we really afford this? People are having to decide weather to put fuel in the tank, or food in there childrens mouths. Hope a meteor wipes it out. MAGA 2024
By "we", I suppose you were ignorant the fact that annual CERN funding [cds.cern.ch] by the US is 0.0%, for very large values of 0. But, yes, won't anyone think of the children?!
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That's why it's called the LARGE Hadron Collider.
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You mean a meteorite? It would be pretty hard for a meteor to destroy it, since it's not in outer space.
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And it won't be a meteorite until the damage is done. As it's entering the atmosphere and right up until the point of impact, it is a meteor. Meteorites aren't likely to jump up and destroy things on their own.
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The trip has to be over in order to consider the complete trip survived. Hence it would have already struck.
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I didn't say it has to do with damage. It has to do with landing. Until it lands, it's a meteor.
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If you go all the way back to the original post I was replying to, it might make a little more sense:
You mean a meteorite? It would be pretty hard for a meteor to destroy it, since it's not in outer space.
And then I said:
And it won't be a meteorite until the damage is done.
But really, the key part is what I said after that:
As it's entering the atmosphere and right up until the point of impact, it is a meteor. Meteorites aren't likely to jump up and destroy things on their own.
The OP was claiming that meteorites are what it's called when a rock is flying through the atmosphere burning hot.
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Whether I remember or not, I can copy and paste it. You're absolutely determined that your original idea of what I meant is accurate and you're ignoring the context to do so. Meteorites don't do damage. Because they've already landed by the time they earn that name. OP thought that a rock streaking through the atmosphere was a meteorite rather than a meteor and I was only correcting that. I have no idea why you decided to derail it into somewhere I never went.
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Can we really afford this? People are having to decide weather to put fuel in the tank, or food in there childrens mouths.
This is mostly a political problem, which, like all political problems, has its roots in poor education. So, yes. We can and should afford this, and it will actually help put more gas in our tanks and food in our children's mouth, eventually.
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LHC
- provides many thousands world wide
- keeps scientists talking when politicians behave like jibbering idiots
- improves medical and security scanning
- Develops much of the fusion plasma containment tech that will allow energy independence for everyone.
- Develops data center technologies that enable machine learning on enormous scales
I can go on, but, as a massive multinational collaboration with enormous global funding, LHC makes science and tech advancements we need that can't be ach
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LHC
- provides many thousands world wide
Thousands what? Did you mean to put jobs there?
Though I agree that the LHC is useful, just wasn't sure what you were going for with that line.
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https://www.forbes.com/sites/a... [forbes.com]
The total operating costs of the LHC in its lifetime was about 14 Billion up to Higgs siacovery so lets be generous and say the whole project cost about 25 Billion in total up to now.
https://nationalinterest.org/f... [nationalinterest.org]
The US has spent about 50 Billion dollars PER YEAR on nuclear deterrence since 1945 for a total system cost of over a trillion dollars
https://www.esa.int/Science_Ex... [esa.int]
And then there is the most expensive thing ever built, the ISS, which cost about 100 Billion dol
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Re: With stock market crashing and stagflation (Score:2)
They're even more afraid of what they DO understand.
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I'm far from liberal but this just makes you sound fucking stupid.
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This is what you call wishful thinking. You notice nobody stated any specific objectives for the run, they're just hoping something interesting turns up, Maybe it will, maybe it won't.
Hoping that something interesting turns up is called 'research'. And something interesting turns up just often enough that in the long run, it's called 'civilization'.