'What CERN Does Next Matters For Science and For International Cooperation' 55
CERN faces a pivotal decision about its future as the Large Hadron Collider approaches the end of its usefulness by the early 2040s. Management proposes building the Future Circular Collider (FCC), a machine with a 90-kilometer circumference that would smash particles at eight times the energy of the LHC. This hugely consequential plan faces significant challenges. Much of the required technology doesn't exist yet, including superconducting magnets strong enough to bend high-energy particle beams.
The project also lacks the clear rationale that the LHC had in finding the Higgs boson. The proposal has divided physicists. Critics worry about the decades-long timeline, potential cost overruns, and the risk of sacrificing other valuable CERN activities. Germany, which provides 20% of the lab's budget, has already indicated it won't increase contributions. A council-appointed group is now gathering input from the physics community before making recommendations in December.
Nature's editorial board adds: Unless some nations step up with a major infusion of cash, the FCC faces an uncertain prospect of being funded. But waiting too long could mean that there will be a large gap between the new facility opening and the closure of the LHC, and precious expertise could end up being lost.
Although physicists might disagree on what CERN should do, they nearly unanimously care about the lab's future. They and their leaders must now make the case for why European taxpayers, who fund most of the lab's yearly budget should care, too. The stakes are beyond science, and even beyond Europe.
The project also lacks the clear rationale that the LHC had in finding the Higgs boson. The proposal has divided physicists. Critics worry about the decades-long timeline, potential cost overruns, and the risk of sacrificing other valuable CERN activities. Germany, which provides 20% of the lab's budget, has already indicated it won't increase contributions. A council-appointed group is now gathering input from the physics community before making recommendations in December.
Nature's editorial board adds: Unless some nations step up with a major infusion of cash, the FCC faces an uncertain prospect of being funded. But waiting too long could mean that there will be a large gap between the new facility opening and the closure of the LHC, and precious expertise could end up being lost.
Although physicists might disagree on what CERN should do, they nearly unanimously care about the lab's future. They and their leaders must now make the case for why European taxpayers, who fund most of the lab's yearly budget should care, too. The stakes are beyond science, and even beyond Europe.
Seems like basic research to me. (Score:3)
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Today science is an art of external experimentation. The future will have science as an art of internal experimentation.
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Once we knew the law of gravity, complex planetary motions were simplified.
Once we knew about protons and neutrons and electron shells, the complicated periodic table was simplified.
Once we knew Maxwell's laws, electromagnetism was simplified.
Nowadays, we don't understand why the (currently) fundamental particles are the complex way they are.
I wonder if we ever will.
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Rebuild needs public, private, univeristy partners (Score:2)
Building the next generation Large Hadron Collider is OK; as long as at least 75% of the construction and operating cost are paid by universities, think tanks, and other researchers who base their academic career off of research from its use.
Some part of the remaining 25% can come from the construction companies, local taxing entities and local businesses who benefit from the project and its use.
In general, facilities like this, should not subsidize the research of academic institutions that did not contri
A Welfare Project for Everyone (Score:5, Interesting)
The men welding steel, cleaning sewers, farming, working oil rigs, driving trucks and all the dirty dangerous jobs should not be funding welfare projects for researchers
Where do you think welding, steel, sewers, modern farming methods, oil rigs and lorries came from? They did not spring fully formed from the ground ready for people to jump into and start using to make our modern world possible. They are all based on knowledge and understanding that we gained by doing fundamental research.
You might be blissfully ignorant of how all the things around you in the modern world work but that GPS system that the farmer uses to monitor and adjust fertlizer spread on his fields requires an understanding of general relativity to work. The computers that control modern machinery and help keep it safe need an understanding of quantum mechanics and the structure of matter to function. Detecting and sometimes treating cancers which can kill those same hardwork people relies on an understanding of nuclear physics (NMR/MRI) and even antimatter (PET scans).
If someone like Rutherford got royalties for every technological use that relied on his discovery of the nucleus, or Maxwell for his explanation of all of electromagnetism etc. then we'd have no problem funding every scientific research proposal that has ever been submitted to any funding agency anywhere. You are even reading this on a website and the web itself was invented at CERN!
Whether you realize it or not fundamental research is what has made our modern world possible. It can take 50-100 years for today's fundamental research to have an impact and that impact will be in completel unpredicatable ways: Rutherford certian never foresaw that his discovery of the nucleus would lead to a way to detect and even cure cancer a century later. So I can't tell you how, or even if, we'll be using the higgs boson in a century's time but the last time we discovered a fundamental field that was everywhere in nature it was the EM field and just look what we do with that today.
Basic science is good, though who is to say that it ranks above building a homeless shelter, staffing a crisis hotline, or drug treatment program.
It's neither above nor below it. You need to provide help to those suffering today. Fundamental science is our investment in the future and that's why, thanks to the foresight of those who funded fundamental science a century or more ago today's homeless are not suffering from TB, typhoid and a whole host of other nasty but now cureable diseases nor are they usually starving to death thanks to modern agriculture making food far more abundant.
So you could indeed think of fundamental science as a "welfare project" because ultimately in improves the welfare of all of us.
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In general, facilities like this, should not subsidize the research of academic institutions that did not contribute money directly to building and operating the facility.
Of course they should.
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> welfare projects for researchers
The mind boggles.
Scientific institutions and governments shouldn't fund research unless some weird quid-quo-pro criteria is followed that makes no sense whatsoever?
Nah. That's bullshit.
Can I post ChatGPT's version of my comment? (Score:2)
CERNâ(TM)s Future Circular Collider (FCC) is precisely the kind of long-term, high-value project that central banks should support. Instead of struggling to secure government contributions from already stretched budgets, the European Central Bank (ECB) should directly fund the FCC using newly issued moneyâ"just as it has done for financial stability measures and deficit spending. The technology developed for the FCC will have spillover benefits across multiple industries, making it a productive us
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Central banks are indeed not commercial banks, but they are far from being passive moderators of financial markets. The ECB, like other central banks, has engaged in large-scale asset purchases, credit programs, and even direct funding mechanisms when economic conditions warranted it. During the COVID-19 crisis, for example, the ECBâ(TM)s Pandemic Emergency Purchase Programme (PEPP) effectively financed government spending without triggering runaway inflation.
An independent investment fund, as you desc
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It looks like Sique is doubling down on their definition of a central bankâ(TM)s role rather than engaging with your broader point. You could respond by steering the conversation back to the idea that central banks already intervene aggressively when political and economic priorities demand it.
Something like this:
Fair enough, but if central banks are tasked with "keeping the peace," that role is defined by political choices. The ECB has already taken aggressive actions beyond just stabilizing markets
Trade off (Score:2)
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But that for my money seems be the 'marketing' problem with the Future Circular Collider. CERN built the Large Hadron Collider to find the Higgs boson. Now we've found it. Then since the LHC is already there and building it was the expensive part we keep it going to do further research. Okay. But now CERN wants to build the FCC and it's going to cost an absolute fortune. Why? What are they building it for? It doesn't seem like CERN can give us a simple answer and yet they want us to give them a lot of money
Justification Tricky (Score:3)
That seems like enough of a justification in order to keep going, to do more research.
It is - the question is whether the FCC is the best way to continue that research. The situation we are in is what a lot of us in particle physics thought of as the nightmare scenario: we find the higgs and absolutely no hint of anything else. The Higgs completes the Standard Model but there is a lot of physics - like Dark Matter, the low mass of the Higgs etc. - that the Standard Model cannot explain. The problem is that there are as many models to explain these phenomena as there are theorists writing th
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LHC was specifically designed to find the then theoretical, now proven Higgs Boson. It was one of if not the most important stated goal of the project. What TFA is saying is that FCC does not have a stated goal, yet.
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Itâ(TM)s a mistake to assume that thereâ(TM)s a fixed pot of money for basic research. Governments and central banks routinely find resources for priorities they deem essentialâ"whether for economic stimulus, military budgets, or financial bailouts. If we accept that fundamental science is critical to long-term progress, we should advocate for expanding its funding rather than treating it as a zero-sum game.
As for the purpose of higher-energy collisions, history suggests that major breakthrou
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"There is never enough to fund everything" is not a law of physics; it's a mood. The resources exist, the labor exists, and the technical expertise exists. The only thing lacking is the decision to prioritize fundamental research.
Nature is somehow "funding" dark energy, fueling the expansion of the universe without concern for budget constraints. The idea that human civilization, with all its ingenuity, is uniquely incapable of finding the resources to explore the fundamental nature of reality is more of a
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"There is only so much money available" is a budgeting choice, not a fundamental constraint. If society can allocate trillions to financial bailouts, military spending, or corporate subsidies, then the idea that we can't fund fundamental physics is more about priorities than actual scarcity.
As for what we hope to learnâ"history suggests that every time we've probed deeper into the structure of reality, we've uncovered new physics that reshaped our understanding of the universe and led to technological
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>"ItÃ(TM)s a mistake to assume that thereÃ(TM)s a fixed pot of money for basic research. Governments and central banks routinely find resources for priorities they deem essentialÃ"whether for economic stimulus, military budgets, or financial bailouts. If we accept that fundamental science is critical to long-term progress, we should advocate for expanding its funding rather than treating it as a zero-sum game."
That is easy to say (especially for ChatGPT). But when the price of such resear
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Itâ(TM)s a mistake to assume that thereâ(TM)s a fixed pot of money for basic research.
It's also a mistake to assume that there's an unlimited amount of money available for basic research. As human productivity increases the amount of money available in total increases which makes more available for basic research, and basic research contributes to increasing that pot... but at any given time there are limits, and there are competing concerns. "How much is reasonable to invest in research and what should we invest it into?" are valid and non-trivial questions.
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What was the opportunity cost of Lincoln's party assuming there were limits on what could be spent on compensated emancipation, then going ahead and smashing right through those limits to fund the Civil War?
What was the opportunity cost of Reagan assuming the national debt could not increase to today's levels without the US becoming a failed state, instead of continuing on with its superpower status?
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There are lots of good reasons to smash particles together harder. The problem is that there aren't really any specifically to smash protons together eight times as hard as the LHC does.
It might be better to spend the near-future money on one of the electron-positron colliders designed to perform precision measurements of the Higgs. Historically that's where the theoretical justifications for bigger proton colliders have come from. It might also be wise to wait a bit since a bunch of new collider-relevant t
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Hello,
In the past, scientists were working on heating things up...
We reached 60 they said!
And what is it to us did the people say....
This year we reached 70 they said!
And what is it to us did the people say....
We reached 80 they said!
And what is it to us did the people say.... And why are we giving you so much money!
We achieved 90 this year said the scientists!
And the people wanted to more of it...
But the scientists pushed on... And they reached 100!
And the people said... We are done with this crap...
But th
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Delay 5 years (Score:2)
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By that time you may have AI superintelligence that can either deduce theories without experiment or help devise a next-level accelerator well beyond FCC (and help chose a better acronym as well)
Or the ASI may tell you that it's not interested in that, and to go away. Or, more likely, just ignore you entirely as it focuses on building the experimental apparatus it needs, apparatus that is beyond human comprehension.
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By that time you may have AI superintelligence that can either deduce theories without experiment [...]
In physics, there is no such think as theory without experimentation. That is called bullshit, or religion, or string theory.
Raises hand (Score:2)
'What CERN Does Next Matters ... as the Large Hadron Collider approaches the end of its usefulness ...
Update the facility to collide small and medium hadrons? :-)
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Is this where all the tech fines go to? (Score:2)
Then we can start on the Dyson Ultra humongous collider, circling the sun in the Oort Cloud. Should be good to confirm at least one particle each.
I've got mixed feelings on this. It is cool, but it seems like the costing is more along the lines of "How much will the latest collider cost?"
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Just FYI, the CERN isn't part of EU. The EU has an observer seat at the CERN council (the USA, Japan and the UNESCO also have one). Full members of the CERN include several non-EU countries: Israel, Switzerland, UK, Norway. Associated members include Pakistan, Brazil, India, Turkey. Not all EU Member States are members of the CERN. The CERN was founded in 1954 (12 members), years before the 1957 Treaty of Rome (kernel of 6 members of what would later be known as the EU).
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Just FYI, the CERN isn't part of EU. The EU has an observer seat at the CERN council (the USA, Japan and the UNESCO also have one). Full members of the CERN include several non-EU countries: Israel, Switzerland, UK, Norway. Associated members include Pakistan, Brazil, India, Turkey. Not all EU Member States are members of the CERN. The CERN was founded in 1954 (12 members), years before the 1957 Treaty of Rome (kernel of 6 members of what would later be known as the EU).
Great! Let's build the thing in Pakistan, as members they have every right to demand it be built there.
I forgot where I mentioned CERN. Oh wait... I'll support any cost including bankrupting the members if they build the FCC in Pakistan. You'd support that, amirite? Why should the thing be built in Europe?
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Europe, just like the USA, operates astronomical observatories in Chile, because it is the best place for them to be located. After we find a location that has technical advantages for a particle accelerator, we might discuss politics. But Pakistan doesn't have technical advantages over Switzerland as both are subject to orogeny, so we don't have to consider this option.
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Europe, just like the USA, operates astronomical observatories in Chile, because it is the best place for them to be located. After we find a location that has technical advantages for a particle accelerator, we might discuss politics. But Pakistan doesn't have technical advantages over Switzerland as both are subject to orogeny, so we don't have to consider this option.
So tell me where you would support the FCC other than in Europe? CERN already has a plan and a location, and is really excited about using the tunnel's excavation debris and the employment opportunities. They speak of using the excess heat from the 1.8 TWh of electricity it will use per hear, indeed apparently their designs tell us that the FCC will make a wonderful benefit to cost ratio - so we'd have to be stupid to not build it. Apparently they plan to use the materials mined to make stuff from it. Tha
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I agree with you that the rational option (and the one that should be the default) is to build the FCC in Geneva (infrastructure and human resources already there). Even elsewhere in Europe would be less ideal. However, the news today is CERN member states are saying they aren't willing to provide the critical funding increase to build a new expensive instrument. In this situation, we should be open to a larger international consortium.
Consider ITER. Europe got the instrument, by agreeing to fund 45% of it;
This time... (Score:2)
we need to build a big science thing (Score:1)
... What should it do?
Well, stuff.
What specifically?
(Science stuff)
You know we literally don't have the tech to do that even in labs yet.?
Yeah we should build it anyway.