Cern Aims To Build $21 Billion Collider To Unlock Secrets of Universe (theguardian.com) 103
Researchers at Cern have submitted plans for a next-generation particle accelerator that's at least three times the size of the Large Hadron Collider. The Guardian reports: The Large Hadron Collider, built inside a 27km circular tunnel beneath the Swiss-French countryside, smashes together protons and other subatomic particles at close to the speed of light to recreate the conditions that existed fractions of a second after the big bang. The machine, the world's largest collider, was used in the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012, nearly 50 years after the particle was proposed by Peter Higgs, the theoretical physicist at the University of Edinburgh, and several other researchers. The feat was honored with the Nobel prize in physics the following year.
But since the discovery of the Higgs boson, the collider has not revealed any significant new physics that might shed light on some of the deepest mysteries of the universe, such as the nature of dark matter or dark energy, why matter dominates over antimatter, and whether reality is permeated with hidden extra dimensions. Cern drew up plans for the next machine, the Future Circular Collider (FCC), in 2019. The $21.5 billion (20 billion euro) machine would have a 91km circumference and aim to smash subatomic particles together at a maximum energy of 100 teraelectronvolts (TeV). The Large Hadron Collider achieves maximum energies of 14TeV.
On Friday, the Cern council discussed a midterm review of a feasibility study for the FCC. If the plans go ahead, the organization would ask for approval in the next five years and hope to have the machine built and ready for operations in the 2040s when the LHC has completed its runs. Prof Fabiola Gianotti, the director general of Cern, said: "If approved, the FCC would be the most powerful microscope ever built to study the laws of nature at the smallest scales and highest energies, with the goal of addressing some of the outstanding questions in today's fundamental physics and our understanding of the universe."
But since the discovery of the Higgs boson, the collider has not revealed any significant new physics that might shed light on some of the deepest mysteries of the universe, such as the nature of dark matter or dark energy, why matter dominates over antimatter, and whether reality is permeated with hidden extra dimensions. Cern drew up plans for the next machine, the Future Circular Collider (FCC), in 2019. The $21.5 billion (20 billion euro) machine would have a 91km circumference and aim to smash subatomic particles together at a maximum energy of 100 teraelectronvolts (TeV). The Large Hadron Collider achieves maximum energies of 14TeV.
On Friday, the Cern council discussed a midterm review of a feasibility study for the FCC. If the plans go ahead, the organization would ask for approval in the next five years and hope to have the machine built and ready for operations in the 2040s when the LHC has completed its runs. Prof Fabiola Gianotti, the director general of Cern, said: "If approved, the FCC would be the most powerful microscope ever built to study the laws of nature at the smallest scales and highest energies, with the goal of addressing some of the outstanding questions in today's fundamental physics and our understanding of the universe."
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42
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And how exactly would you protect it from cosmic radiation of all kinds, as well as fast-moving meteoroids?
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Deal with meteoroids and other debris same way you manage any satellite constellation: deorbit and replace.
Cosmic radiation shouldn't be much of a problem except at the detector(s). You'd have to filter out the noise.
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Deal with meteoroids and other debris same way you manage any satellite constellation: deorbit and replace.
"Given an infinite number of people available, can they pick up a cubic meter of gold using just the force of their hands, no other tools involved?"
You can only extrapolate so much from small to large.
Furthermore, I am not sure how would you avoid grain-sized particles moving at 20K km/h, for example.
Cosmic radiation shouldn't be much of a problem except at the detector(s). You'd have to filter out the noise.
It would be like trying to filter out a whole concert noise to figure out how many mosquitos are flying in the area.
These are just two largest issues, there are many others, but I see you found a few explanatio
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And how exactly would you protect it from cosmic radiation of all kinds, as well as fast-moving meteoroids?
Shh, don't disturb him, he's having a Muskgasm.
Where the technologically and science illiterate have no boundaries.
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Re: Pave The Roads, Assholes. (Score:2)
I like moneyâ¦
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Weren't the prior colliders also (Score:3)
...supposed to "unlock the secrets of the universe"? I smell turtles.
Re:Weren't the prior colliders also (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, the prior ones did unlock some of the secrets, eg. the Higgs Boson. Just turns out there're probably even more secrets.
Re:Weren't the prior colliders also (Score:4, Insightful)
When you've dug down and found 6 layers of physics abstraction, you gotta figure the chance that layer 7 will be the final and last level is probably small.
Re:Weren't the prior colliders also (Score:5, Interesting)
It seems highly unlikely there's absolutely nothing there, but the kind of equipment we'd need to explore that far down into the foundations of the universe is way, way, beyond anything we might even dream of today. While this proposed collider might get us a few more orders of magnitude down from the LHC, there is still clearly a *looong* way down still to go beyond it's capabilities. You've got to start somewhere though, and that knowledge can then drive the designs for the next generation. Or maybe we could just cut to the chase and sub-contract the construction job out to the Magratheans?
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The famous 1977 Powers of Ten [youtube.com] video has had a few "versions" over the years:
* The Scale of the Universe [newgrounds.com] - Maybe you were thinking of this one?
* UNIVERSCALE [nikon.com] - craps out at the fm scale
* The Super Zoom [vimeo.com] - CG animation but still a nice quantum perspective
--
Wake me up when Scientists discover the 6 fundamental forces.
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Thank you. I saw the first one a while back, and perhaps the second.
There is also this simpler, lay person, one from 1968. No quantum stuff, no galaxy clusters, ...etc.
Cosmic Zoom [youtube.com].
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To be fair, though, there is nothing that says there there have to be structures down there. We just don't know. The gap could mean that there just isn't anything to find in there. Or there could be a steady stream of things to find in there. The Planck Length just indicates that any structure we do find will be larger than that, but most likely we will never be able to torture spacetime sufficiently to see anything within many orders of magnitude of the Planck Length because it would take too much ener
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When you've dug down and found 6 layers of physics abstraction, you gotta figure the chance that layer 7 will be the final and last level is probably small.
Besides the yet "unknown unknowns", there is a big existing unknown (which might be quite useful to know) - i.e. what is the quantum nature of gravity, if there is one?
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We've good reason to think that one of (classical || quantised) is a better description of reality than the other. Which one is a different question.
We've also ruled out (Bell Inequalities) that the simple "hidden variables" way of trisecting that angle. Of course, just like trisecting the angle, it's possible that changing the rules might lead to a solution that is more interesting than the original question. (IIRC, the angle can be trisected using compasses
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"Checking sources" referred to the Committee on Un-Slashdot Activities? [SIGH]
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I remember a short story in (probably) Analog about a physics major who was tired of memorizing all the subatomic particles and petitioned to have the field reclassified on the assumption that there was no "bottom layer". It wound up getting classified into Religion...
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Re:Weren't the prior colliders also (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, the prior ones did unlock some of the secrets, eg. the Higgs Boson. Just turns out there're probably even more secrets.
The Higgs boson was unambiguously predicted theoretically, and the energy levels at which it was expected to be found were well within the capabilities of LHC. The current theoretical models do not predict anything specific at the energy levels that the new accelerator is expected to attain. Some of their most fundamental predictions - most notably supersymmetry - have borne out no experimental dividends, and asking for a $20+B machine to see if something is out there, without any theoretical guidance, is a slap on the face of many other disciplines in physics, both fundamental and applied, that could use a fraction of those funds to carry out tasks far more promising in their outcome.
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Well, the prior ones did unlock some of the secrets, eg. the Higgs Boson. Just turns out there're probably even more secrets.
The Higgs boson was unambiguously predicted theoretically, and the energy levels at which it was expected to be found were well within the capabilities of LHC. The current theoretical models do not predict anything specific at the energy levels that the new accelerator is expected to attain. Some of their most fundamental predictions - most notably supersymmetry - have borne out no experimental dividends, and asking for a $20+B machine to see if something is out there, without any theoretical guidance, is a slap on the face of many other disciplines in physics, both fundamental and applied, that could use a fraction of those funds to carry out tasks far more promising in their outcome.
This needs to be at plus 5 insightful. 20 plus billion euros (more like 40 after the inevitable overruns) is a slap in the face to most other science. So they discovered a predicted particle - that's a big price for that. And now the collider is too tiny, we must have a much bigger one!.
I think that there is a whole lot of other science that is a better use of the available money. I'd sooner see ITER funding be increased. And I don't even think that practical fusion power will ever be practical - but as
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And as the actress said to the bishop, "a microgramme of measurement out weighs a megatonne of theoretical maunderings".
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Well, the prior ones did unlock some of the secrets, eg. the Higgs Boson. Just turns out there're probably even more secrets.
I'm not against this in principle, but damn, seems like a money sink.
My guess is there will always be more secrets. I'not all that conCERNed, (sorry, couldn't resist) but I'm beginning to think that we have entered far into the diminishing returns phase of these colliders.
So the LHC Discovered the Higgs boson, and per the article, not much since then. We are treated to more of how this new one will unlock the secrets of the so called Dark matter, and the beginning of the Universe, and even extra dimens
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The particle physicists always think up some new cockamamie theory that fixes something, like detecting dark matter, but guess what? It always requires an even bigger machine and billions more dollars.
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...supposed to "unlock the secrets of the universe"? I smell turtles.
Because the only way you can advance or rule out theories of how reality works is by experiment, I hated how Sabine suggested that we shouldn't spend money on a super collider because it won't produce any near term economic benefit, not realizing the only way to test how the universe works is to have probes that can proble the fine structure of the universe to help eliminate theories and hypothesis.
She's not getting that there is a culture of engineering that took decades to build that goes away if you shut
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Sabines video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Sorry the cut and paste pasted some other link.
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Not only is that video four years old, but you're also misrepresenting the argument she's making.
The argument isn't that "it won't produce any near term economic benefit" - it's that there are other, more promising areas of research that could probably make better use of that funding to advance our understanding.
Specifically she mentions how particle physics is lacking theoretical groundwork to really make big advancements. Here's a newer video that articulates her issue with particle physics a bit better;
h [youtube.com]
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Meanwhile there are entire fields of research that have plenty of theoretical foundation and could lead to major breakthroughs, but lack funding for experiments, so maybe let's use our limited funding for that instead. THAT is her argument.
=Smidge=
Sigh you missed the point, 21 billion dollars is less than 2% of america's gdp, aka 1% of 25 trillion dollar economy is 250 billion dollars.
AKA 21 billion dollars is peanuts for a super collider. It doesn't even scratch 1% of gdp. So no sabines argument is nonsense squared.
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I'm pretty sure you missed the point.
21 billion might be "peanuts" but it's peanuts that could be better spend on scientific efforts that could do more with that money. The fact that it's single-digit-percentage of America's GDP is completely immaterial when there is plenty of un- and underfunded research out there.
Also the whole idea of stating it in relation to GDP is insane. It's like arguing it's fine to give the fat kid a large pizza all for himself when there's a dozen other kids in the room going hun
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I'm pretty sure you missed the point.
21 billion might be "peanuts" but it's peanuts that could be better spend on scientific efforts that could do more with that money. The fact that it's single-digit-percentage of America's GDP is completely immaterial
=Smidge=
No that's exactly it when we're talking about a devise by which we can test theories and rule out hypothesis of how the universe works, a supercollider is the only way we're going to get info on things we don't know about physics. We're using it to rule out theories and hypothesis, you can't do that without one. Not to mention the huge tech and engineering culture built up around it that took years to develop.
So yes when 21 billion is less than 1% of gdp that's peanuts buddy, her argument is that "it's to
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> her argument is that "it's too expensive"
No, it isn't. You keep trying to compare the cost of a collider to unrelated things to make it seem inexpensive by comparison, but the fundamental flaw in your argument is the price of the collider the not the objection.
Let me quote the video you posted directly, since you clearly didn't watch it. Emphasis mine.
"So now that I have covered why particle colliders are a good way to probe short distances, let me explain why I'm currently not in favor of building a l
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Not only is that video four years old, but you're also misrepresenting the argument she's making.
The argument isn't that "it won't produce any near term economic benefit" - it's that there are other, more promising areas of research that could probably make better use of that funding to advance our understanding.
Specifically she mentions how particle physics is lacking theoretical groundwork to really make big advancements. Here's a newer video that articulates her issue with particle physics a bit better;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
TL;DW: Particle physicists seem to just be throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks, rather than really trying to build a solid theory that would justify spending the billions on experiments.
Meanwhile there are entire fields of research that have plenty of theoretical foundation and could lead to major breakthroughs, but lack funding for experiments, so maybe let's use our limited funding for that instead. THAT is her argument. =Smidge=
Yes, I watched the video long ago, and agree with her. Because aside from verifying the existence of Higgs Boson, it is otherwise mostly crickets. So we have to build a bigger, and better one. Will this bigger and better one find out what dark matter is? Will it verify string theory, ands show how any inconsistencies are solved by inventing new dimensions, and how we have to build an even larger collider in order to verify that, and move string theory from a just so theory more akin to religion, taking it i
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I lack the required education to counter her arguments, but a lot of them come off like "this is obvious and there is a conspiracy of physicists to fool you". With a hint of "I am trying desperately to have a common touch and get famous".
Specifically, her one on c not being an actual speed limit - and I know just enough about that to say she focused on one thing that isn't quite correct - and she was right to pick it apart - but ignored the giant heaping piles of other reasoning telling us you can't breach
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I lack the required education to counter her arguments, but a lot of them come off like "this is obvious and there is a conspiracy of physicists to fool you". With a hint of "I am trying desperately to have a common touch and get famous".
Too late, my friend. Among people who pay attention to this stuff, she's already quite famous. Not Taylor Swift famous, Sabina isn't a part of pop culture. But she's an Icon for many of us.
But really, since in the real world, the amount of money required to do science is not infinite. What science should not be done in the world of building ever larger colliders? 20, more likely 40 billion is perhaps a really large chunk of money, so a huge amount of other research must be considered unimportant.
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...supposed to "unlock the secrets of the universe"? I smell turtles.
Because the only way you can advance or rule out theories of how reality works is by experiment, I hated how Sabine suggested that we shouldn't spend money on a super collider because it won't produce any near term economic benefit, not realizing the only way to test how the universe works is to have probes that can proble the fine structure of the universe to help eliminate theories and hypothesis.
She's not getting that there is a culture of engineering that took decades to build that goes away if you shut off the money. So no not quite turtles, super colliders are the only tool we have to refine and test and gather data about how nature works at the very small.
Sabines video:
ised-isde.canada.ca
How much money is to be spent? All of the EU's available money? Everything else cut off so the more gooder collider be built because it is the most important?
Money supply is not infinite. And Collider technology is not necessarily the most important. Demands that we must support the culture is interesting. I mean 20 + billion here, 20 + billion there, and to support a culture? The culture it is supporting is one that gets a boatload of money, may or may not discover something, but demands more money fo
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...supposed to "unlock the secrets of the universe"? I smell turtles.
They did. Turns out the universe was hiding more than just a couple of secrets.
The answer is 42. Anyway... (Score:5, Interesting)
Look at the map of the proposed collider. Imagine the challenges of actually building such a thing. The tunnels must be extremely stable. 91km of them, partially under the lake of Geneva. Honestly, it looks like a crazy project.
Dr Sabine Hossenfelder at the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy, said there was no evidence the FCC would reveal anything about dark matter or dark energy and was critical of the proposals.
That might be because there is no indication that they are tied in any way to normal matter.
For that matter (pun intended), it is entirely likely that dark matter and dark energy don't exist at all. They are the modern "ether", used only because we don't actually know how to explain certain observations.
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For that matter (pun intended), it is entirely likely that dark matter and dark energy don't exist at all. They are the modern "ether", used only because we don't actually know how to explain certain observations.
Dark matter is such an unfortunate name. It is a placeholder only. It is just something saying "We're not sure what is going on here."
You are right - it is probably not matter
Remember the Superconducting Super Collider! (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Remember the Superconducting Super Collider! (Score:4, Insightful)
Whilst I've no doubt that lots of good work is being done at Fermilab, you really do feel that the home of particle physics research is very much at CERN these days.
And this has gotten them... what?
The prestige of one discovery? And that discovery impacted us.... how?
At some point, as much as you may want the knowledge, you have to look at practicalities. What are these projects getting you for the money spent? As long as there are fewer resources to go around than people wanting those resources, then cost is going to have to be a factor.
The Texas Supercollider would have been neat in a gee-whiz kind of sci-fi novel way, but there's a good reason that killing it was a bipartisan effort: both sides asked "What are we getting for our money?", and the answer wasn't good enough.
How much is life going to be impacted if we find the next particle? Or don't find it? The answer is probably "Zilch" on both counts, and that's why government don't want to fund these things anymore.
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Whilst I've no doubt that lots of good work is being done at Fermilab, you really do feel that the home of particle physics research is very much at CERN these days.
And this has gotten them... what?
The prestige of one discovery? And that discovery impacted us.... how?
I guess they have done also other discoveries in the academic world, as the World Wide Web itself was born in CERN for exchanging and sharing information on those. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Funny how most of the people who talk like you don't ever consider whether humanity is really getting a benefit from a few more fighter planes. Anyone making a comment like yours can go fuck yourself until we're not spending 36 Future Circular Colliders, per year on the fucking military. That of course includes every politician who votes for increased military spending and against scientific research spending.
I think we spend too much on the military, that the US military has become an imperial enforcement mechanism, and that $15 billion for an aircraft carrier is a crime.
It still doesn't change the fact that $21 billion for a project to find a particle still isn't worth it.
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It's not even clear there are any further particles to discover. All of the partlcles predicted by the Standard Model have been discovered. At this point we're looking at, "let's bang a bunch of particles together and see if anything interesting happens".
This would be all good and fine, but that's a lot of money to spend when you don't know what you're looking for, or if there's even anything there to find.
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I'm torn (Score:4, Insightful)
That is one heck of a lot of money, and the only thing it is *guaranteed* to find is that they need an even bigger collider still, $100 billion I'm guessing for the generation after. While I'm sure lots of good science will come out of it if it is built, I'm also sure there is a lot of other ways that $21.5 billion could advance science, and I'm not sure this is the best one.
Re:I'm torn (Score:5, Informative)
21 billion is essentially a rounding error. The US alone could fund it completely and not even blink. World-wide, it is a pittance.
And even with the slippery-slope of ever increasing science spending, what of it? If there are better things to pursue, write your proposal.
Need I remind you about the technological marvel you are making your argument from?
Re:I'm torn (Score:5, Insightful)
Need I remind you about the technological marvel you are making your argument from?
You mean the electronics technologies that were largely funded by private sources, seeking targeted goals in the pursuit of large profits?
Microchips, software, networking, were all developed at companies like Texas Instruments, IBM, AT&T, HP... all in search of profits. Not from general science research funded by public spending. Occasionally you had government funding for a research project that would end up with commercial applications... DARPA's pre-Internet research contracts to BBN come to mind... but the vast majority of our technology advances came from private investment for profit motivations, not "for the sake of knowing" public funded projects.
As you surely know, at the end of WWII, there was debate in the government about where research funding should go: general science spending with no direction, for knowledge's sake, or practical, targeted spending designed to achieve specific technology goals. General research won out at the time, but in the long run, specific goals seem to have won out . The Space Race signaled the end of non-targeted large research spending... the public likes a goal and a finish line . And every single politician in office lives by Lyndon Johnson's test on research spending: "What's it gonna do for grandma?"
If your answer is "knowledge for the sake of knowledge", you're not getting the money.
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Government-funded basic research has created breakthrough technologies like the Internet, microchips, supercomputers, the flu shot, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), commercial aviation, GPS, and vaccines to name a few.[1] According the World Economic Forum’s 2018 Global Competitive Index, technology-driven innovation has given the U.S. competitive edge to dominate the global economy.[2] Most key technologies used by all major technology, industrial, and services companies are based on the decades of [linkedin.com]
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Microchips, software, networking, were all developed at companies like Texas Instruments, IBM, AT&T, HP... all in search of profits.
Gee golly gee Beaver, how did they get the foundational knowledge to look in such directions for profit? Where did the people come from who did all of this? The caves in Afghanistan?
If your answer is "knowledge for the sake of knowledge", you're not getting the money.
If that is the perspective you will take, then scientific advancement is effectively dead with you at the helm. Enjoy living in the present and trying to exploit current levels of knowledge for the next million years.
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I'm also sure there is a lot of other ways that $21.5 billion could advance science, and I'm not sure this is the best one.
Maybe they'll invent time travel and we can use that to direct funds better in the future. That's the problem with science. You never know when you will discover something that fundamentally changes the world.
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I'm also sure there is a lot of other ways that $21.5 billion could advance science, and I'm not sure this is the best one.
Maybe they'll invent time travel and we can use that to direct funds better in the future. That's the problem with science. You never know when you will discover something that fundamentally changes the world.
Sure - but do you have an upper limit of spending, and which science should not be researched? Some people are claiming that this 21 billion is a rounding error, that it is inconsequential.
Having worked in Scientific research most of my adult life, I can assure everyone that 21.5 billion isa huge amount for research. Even moreso, who are we trying to kid - It will be closer to 40 billion by the time it is finished. ITER was supposed to be 6.3 Billion, and at this point is at 20 billion, and is going to b
Re:Should be postponed due to war and climate (Score:4, Interesting)
The war and the climate HAVE our attention. But since we can not agree on what needs to be done globally, you could throw a trillion at the problem and get not one step ahead.
I mean let's be honest, instead of trickling money and equipment inti Ukraine, we could just cough up the dough all at once, arm them so hard the Russians piss their pants... but that might trigger extremists in Russia who might escalate to nuclear and then what?
So we're scared to go all out.
As for the environment, there have been many projects that turned out fraudulent or a net negative for the environment. So if we coughed up a handful of trillions, we run the danger of yet again feeding money into projects that make things worse.
Humans are cautious with good reason: There's morally decrepit people everywhere and they are certainly not above abusing your good intentions for their own gain, everything else be damned.
That's why we diversify. What's good for finances... well, this is finances so there you go ;).
I swear bro (Score:3, Funny)
Sure, that's a lot of money, (Score:5, Informative)
*And that's a very conservative estimate using the EU for approximation. In actual fact, since CERN comprises a different set of member states than the EU and has associated members outside of Europe, their combined GDP is probably even larger.
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But really just peanuts in the greater scheme of things. 20B€ is roughly 0.1% of the EU's annual GDP*. Stretched out over two decades, it becomes a rounding error.
*And that's a very conservative estimate using the EU for approximation. In actual fact, since CERN comprises a different set of member states than the EU and has associated members outside of Europe, their combined GDP is probably even larger.
It's always amusing the way evidence of vast, impenetrable bloat in a budget magically becomes an argument in favor of more spending.
And yes, nobody should be fooled by the rhetorical trick of stating something "as a percentage of GDP" - an utterly useless and manipulative number. May as well stating how many Libraries Of Congress it is. GDP is a tool for debt. Yes, of course GDP itself is not debt, but every time I've ever seen someone use the size of GDP, it's always a way of sidestepping the debt questio
Supercollider? I just met her. (Score:2)
And then they built the supercollider.
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And then they built the supercollider.
Pikers. We need the ludicrous collider, come back when we can build a collider that is a bit more than global GDP.
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Is this why we don't see aliens? They destroy themselves by trying to discover the universe's secrets?
We're unwilling to spend a tiny fraction of GDP on discovering more about particle physics. The aliens are probably unwilling to spend 25% of GDP on a 50-year unmanned (unaliened?) mission to fly by their nearest star at high speed, let alone a thousand year mission to distant Sol.
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Is this why we don't see aliens? They destroy themselves by trying to discover the universe's secrets?
Nah. They take one look at our local junkyard of a planet and turn away in disgust. Go here, pull back a bit, imagine being a passing alien specie looking at the planets and going, "The fuck happened to that shithole?" [utexas.edu]
"The local tribes are very messy."
"Messy? That looks like the remains of a failed civilization to me!"
"Failed, or failing. No difference. Let's see what's happening over in the next system?"
"Definitely. This is creeping me the fuck out. Maximum thrust. Get us out of here before we get infected
That name won't age well (Score:2)
Future Circular Collider
Hossenfelder will have some thing to say on this (Score:1)
Spoiler: She will not like it.
Opening new dimensions (Score:4, Informative)
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And then there was just one +1 moderation making it 3. Now there are even two +1 moderations so it is 4.
And the moderation is there IMO because everyone has memories of this astounding Another World [wikipedia.org] movie intro from their childhood when we were using just 720K floppy disks [github.io] and all the games were just some poor 2D moving sprites [google.com].
Russia Defeating Collider (Score:2)
They'll never get $21B for a collider to examine new physics, or a least not for years.
But $21B for a collider that will lead to the Defeat of Russia?
"Son, when can we break ground?"
And then when we all have free energy devices the Germans can turn their thermostats back up to 15C.
Dead against this (Score:4, Interesting)
Much as I am biased in favor of physics, in general, and HEP in particular, if I had a vote on this my vote be an unambiguous NO, for two reasons.
First, for the first time in decades, there are not theoretical guidelines as to what one may found. $20B is a lot of money just for "let's if anything is there". No convincing case has been made that such an accelerator would find evidence of dark matter, higher dimensions or supersymmetric particles - in fact, as far as the latter are concerned, the truth is that they should realistically have been detected already by LHC: at this point, absence of evidence is compelling evidence of absence - and with it evidence that the most plausible versions of string theories are not realized in nature.
Second, as mentioned above, $20B is a lot of dough and there are many undertakings in physics, both at the fundamental and applied level, which are far more promising in their returns, and that could really use a fraction of those funds.
Thus, until HEP theorists come up with new ideas that lead to specific predictions at the energy levels that the new machine is meant to attain, the funds should be made available to other experiments.
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I mostly agree with you, except for your aside about string theory. No branch of string theory that I'm aware of has ever made a prediction that would be testable within several orders of magnitude of our current experimental capability, and string theory is not related to supersymmetry in any way.
There *are* many successors to vanilla supersymmetry that make predictions that would be testable at the proposed FFC energies. Many also predict dark matter candidates observable with the next generation of those
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I mostly agree with you, except for your aside about string theory. No branch of string theory that I'm aware of has ever made a prediction that would be testable within several orders of magnitude of our current experimental capability, and string theory is not related to supersymmetry in any way.
OK. However, without supersymmetry string theory goes back to needing 26 spatial dimensions to be viable. If 10 or 11, for which there isn't a shred of evidence, are ridiculous...
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I can save them some time (Score:2)
Have you seen papers from cern? (Score:2)
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This is becoming a problem in science everywhere and because of funding priorities, you fund large teams with 'diverse' people and hope that throwing a lot of money at them will get you results. However you end up with a lot of administrative overhead in managing 10, 20 or 50+ people on a team.
The problem they are really trying to solve is that many teams of 3-5 people, without supervision, end up just being a waste of money while others are really serious and get you tons of results. This leads to a discre
All you naysayers will change tune with one word: (Score:2)
Pity we can't do science for science sake so guess we can actually be thankful for China pushing things along, same as with space - returning to the moon & going to mars.
China is building a particle collider almost four times bigger than the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) https://www.newsweek.com/china... [newsweek.com]
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China ... science ... oxymoron.
I like it. Go for it! (Score:2)
Considering all of the stupid, wasteful things humanity has blown more on, and achieved less with, this one is fine by me. I appreciate the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake.
Plus, we failed to destroy the world when we turned on the LHC. Up the stakes! We can do better. If the luddites aren't shaking in their boots fearing death by microscopic black hole, we aren't doing science right.
Multiply by 5 (Score:2)
Take any proposal's amount and multiply by 5 to get the actual cost if/when built. Oh, and queue the black hole creation alarmists again. That was fun.
"why matter dominates over antimatter" (Score:2)
I'm betting there's another reality where antimatter dominates over matter and the whole situation is reversed. Everything stays that way on either side until one or the other of them produces a civilization able to punch a hole through whatever it is that separates them. When that happens the two sides equalize but when they hit perfect balance the whole thing explodes in the next big bang where the amounts of matter and antimatter on each of the sides gets knocked out of balance again.
It's peanuts (Score:1)
Compared to how much money is pumped into a futile war in Ukraine, 21 billion is more than affordable. Even if it grows to 40-50 (it will).
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I don't see what's so futile about funding Ukraine to spill its citizens blood while greatly weakening the threat that required forming NATO.
Are you on Team Putin or something?
$21B is peanuts (Score:2)
Australia could build almost 10 of these things if they just stopped their stupid plan to rent nuclear submarines from the USA and UK: https://www.abc.net.au/news/20... [abc.net.au]
While we're at it, how many F35s are equivalent to this collider?
Humanity's priorities are crazy.
Zvi Bar-Yam (Score:2)