
Finding new physics will require a new particle collider - seagullz
https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2020/01/02/finding-new-physics-will-require-a-new-particle-collider
======
hpcjoe
As a (non-practicing) physicist, I've always disliked the penchant of some in
the HEP community to say what this article says. They (the HEP community)
tends to equate physics with HEP physics.

It's not.

When this is pointed out to the people espousing this odd viewpoint, they
usually respond with some passive aggressive comment. I've seen/experienced
much of this during my time in research.

New physics not requiring an accelerator would include quantum computing; the
real stuff of entangled qubits, and the pseudo-quantum stuff of adiabatically
cooled circuits. More generally quantum mechanics interpretation and meaning.
There are some unsettling things within QM, such as non-locality, and how to
understand them.

There are many other examples, just listing 1 for brevity.

Basically, any text that begins with "the set of all physics is HEP physics"
such as this article implies, is, pretty much by definition, incorrect.

I recall while the SSC was being built in Texas, that when the NSF asked for
more money for researchers not involved in SSC, they were told that physics
folks were getting enough. I remember my thesis advisor's grant that I was
funded on, getting cut to help fund other things.

Equating the new physics with new HEP physics is, as Wolfgang Pauli once said,
not even wrong. We don't need accelerators for most new physics.

~~~
dylan604
So, what other types of physics is not well understood and requires funding to
further research. We know F=ma, things in motion stay in motion, blah, and so
on. We know a current flowing down a path will generate a magnetic field. We
electrons moving to a lower energy path will release energy. We know light
bends in a lens, and how to make that useful. Essentially, the funding for
pure research and discovery is going to be more exciting than how to take a
current understanding of physics into a way of making money. Plus, that kind
of research should be undertaken by private investment.

~~~
godelski
Super conductors, semiconductors, cosmology, qm (including computing), and
optics to name a few. There's still significant research to be done in all
these fields, and more.

~~~
agumonkey
> semiconductors

even after decades of massive use ?

~~~
godelski
Oh yeah. In fact, that's exactly where there needs to be more research.

~~~
gerdesj
Get superconductivity working at say 0 deg C and you will be able to pick your
accolade and price. Get it working at 100 deg C and you will have won the
world.

~~~
analog31
I'll take 77 K any day of the week, especially if you can run a magnet with it
at that temperature.

Note for the wider audience: 77 K is liquid nitrogen, vastly easier to produce
and handle than liquid helium.

~~~
gerdesj
Quite right. The day when you can engage Heston Blumenthal to do your super
conductivity experiment, is the day you have won!

(HB is an experimental chef who uses quite a lot of liquid N. Liquid He is
probably not indicated for food prep)

------
djaque
My personal opinion (and I might be biased since I'm not a collider guy) is
that it's time to take a break from the energy frontier and put our efforts
into other kinds of physics. There's a whole world out there besides "fixing"
the standard model.

I'm having a hard time finding it, but there's a quote from a famous physicist
along the lines of "we already have a theory of everything we encounter in
daily life, it's just that we can't apply it to practically anything". For
instance, we still have no idea how unconventional superconductors work. Of
course, they're completely described by plain old quantum mechanics without
even using field theory. However, that still doesn't mean we understand them
because the theory is too complex.

I'm personally interested in the rising complexity frontier of physics where
increased computing power and new methods of approaching problems will help
uncover emergent phenomena. Plus, there's other accelerators besides colliders
that are essential to this field (x-ray light sources for instance).

We should come back to the energy problem experimentally when we can
affordably make a revolutionary accelerator (like x100, not a factor of 2 or
3). That will come when we have mastered advanced acceleration techniques like
plasma and wakefield.

~~~
SiempreViernes
The field of x-ray light sources seems to be pretty well developed,
lightsource.org lists 30 of them world wide, so adding one more doesn't look
like it's going to critically impact anything except maybe the local community
getting the extra jobs.

There was at one point truly a fight about the relative importance of the
various fields, but the condensed matter people won that. Just look at
lightsources.org again, that's _30_ facilities worldwide, with 24000 users in
_Europe alone_ over the last five years. CERN has basically 1 facility for
HEP, with maybe 9000 users _worldwide_.

At this point these call for shutting down particle physics for a few
generations while the technology magically develops feel more like jealousy
that protein structure isn't as sexy for the public as the search for beyond
the standard model physics.

~~~
djaque
> The field of x-ray light sources seems to be pretty well developed,
> lightsource.org lists 30 of them world wide, so adding one more doesn't look
> like it's going to critically impact anything except maybe the local
> community getting the extra jobs.

And that's based on what? The number of lightsources in the world? There's
dozens of research groups studying quantum computing. I guess they should just
pack up and move on to less developed fields.

In reality, there are huge open problems with synchrotron light sources that
people are spending their careers on (and I don't think they're jealous of
HEP). What I'm more interested in, however, are university scale sources of
xrays and matter for atomic scale physics. Even though there are a few dozen
facilities around the world, all of them are oversubscribed. Many times if you
apply for time on a synchrotron you'll be denied because there just isn't
space for you. Even companies that pay for time (and yes these machines don't
just impact local job counts) don't always get a slot. It would be
transformative to take some of these techniques (and more advanced ones) to a
wider audience.

~~~
SiempreViernes
That's based on you calling for HEP to be defunded in favour of X-ray sources,
pretty heavily implying that CERN somehow blocks the x-ray field.

I'm just pointing out they it seems to be doing pretty well for itself, three
dozen international facilities with commercial customers doesn't sound like
particularly lean times.

If mere over-subscription is to be given such weight, then I call for x-ray
sources to be fully commercialized and the public money going to build medium
energy gamma ray satellites! We ain't got even _one_ of those flying at the
moment so we basically don't know what happens in the sky at those energies.
Hows that for reasonable?

In reality the HEP people mostly actively chose that field in competition with
atomic and molecular physics et al, and if you kill HEP for generation most of
the new students will keep choosing something else.

------
_fizz_buzz_
A counter point by Sabine Hossenfelder:
[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/23/opinion/particle-
physics-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/23/opinion/particle-physics-
large-hadron-collider.html)

~~~
Deukhoofd
> I still believe that slamming particles into one another is the most
> promising route to understanding what matter is made of and how it holds
> together. But $10 billion is a hefty price tag. And I’m not sure it’s worth
> it.

When is it worth it? They tested many theories, and many of them were proven
wrong, and some were proven right. What price can you attach to having this
knowledge? Is there a maximum price tag for potentially knowing more about the
universe?

~~~
kd5bjo
> Is there a maximum price tag for potentially knowing more about the
> universe?

Yes. On the extreme end, there’s a finite amount of useful work that can be
done before the heat death of the universe. An energy budget the size of the
combined output of all power stations on the planet is much smaller than that,
but also too much. At a more realistic scale, human knowledge is only valuable
in so far as it improves the human condition in some way, now or in the
future. Other research areas could be more important to progress right now and
we only have so many scientists available to do the work. Allocating those
scientists to research areas is an incredibly hard task, but it’s a necessary
one.

Even if we accept that pure physics knowledge is a worthy goal in itself,
diving straight into another megaproject isn’t necessarily the best way
forward. Maybe it’s more valuable right now to find uses for the great
theoretical leaps we’ve already made, for instance. Or maybe we should be
focussing on training theorists so that we can have a better idea of what the
next piece of giant scientific equipment needs to be. Or maybe we need to
raise the global literacy rate so that we have more scientists available.

~~~
beojan
> Other research areas could be more important to progress right now and we
> only have so many scientists available to do the work. Allocating those
> scientists to research areas is an incredibly hard task, but it’s a
> necessary one.

That's not really how it works. People work on things they're interested in,
not what they get _assigned_ to.

~~~
wolfgke
> That's not really how it works. People work on things they're interested in,
> not what they get _assigned_ to.

You have no idea how management and funding of large-scale research projects
works.

~~~
beojan
At the level of picking a field, people absolutely work on what they are
interested in (and have expertise in). You're not going to get particle
physicists working on organic chemistry just because you've "allocated" them
there (and they wouldn't be trained in it anyway).

~~~
wolfgke
> You're not going to get particle physicists working on organic chemistry
> just because you've "allocated" them there

If I consider what kinds of crappy jobs some excellent physicists who could
not find a position in research had to take, I am not so sure.

The truth in my opinion thus rather is: Because, as you wrote, "they wouldn't
be trained in it anyway", they _won 't_ be allocated for "organic chemistry"
in your example.

On the other hand, if they _were_ , I really believe that they would prefer
this job over the one that they had to take.

------
knzhou
Nima-Arkani Hamed likes to point out that particle colliders _aren 't_ getting
more expensive at all, in relative terms. The price tags are going up for just
the same reason that you can't buy a loaf of bread for a nickel anymore, but
as a fraction of GDP, the next big collider has always been about 0.01%.

In fact, if there's any identifiable trend at all, it's that this fraction has
been _falling_. The LHC, for instance, was slapped together after the last
would-be supercollider was defunded, and reuses the LEP tunnel (built in the
_1980s_ ). If you're wondering why we took so long to find the Higgs boson,
it's because the field has already been shrinking under the pressure of
declining funding for 40 years.

------
jariel
People have failed to mention the fact that the LHC has turned out to be kind
of a failure, at least it hasn't given the populist soundbites needed to
support its' success. Nothing really 'new' came out of it and it was very
expensive.

People seem to be ignorant that everything has a populist aspect, and very
expensive things always do.

The politicians who foot the bill are thinking "We just spent bazillions and
what did we get? Now we have to convince the proles to spend billions more?"

If LHS gave us some really fundamental new insights, the Round B would be
easy. But right now it's like a startup with no 'product market fit' it's
going to be hard.

~~~
l33tman
When you fund a huge project using state money, not just physics projects but
anything, it's as much about all the side-effects. A 10 year $10B project.. I
mean, those $10B will not go into a bank account, they will be used to funnel
work (both in related physics and engineering) down the years. It's amazing
how they pushed some manufacturing methods to build LHC and I'm sure those
methods will be used for some other good, for example.

~~~
perl4ever
You're literally talking about the benefits of employing people to dig holes
in the ground. That could be a larger program; it doesn't have to be limited
to particle accelerators.

------
orbifold
More likely than not the next collider will be build in China, quite a few
particle physicist luminaries have already made their case there. I for one am
glad that I stayed clear of the siren call to join the 3000+ grad student
workforce at CERN. Sifting through the heap of data that was assigned to you
is about as fun as it sounds I think. You get to look for the J/Psi, Pomeron,
Dark Matter how exciting! In reality most of the detectors are barely
functional, Alice for example doesn’t produce useful data for most of the
runs.

~~~
willis936
That’s just the nature of the machines. You spend so much effort to get to the
nuggets, but you still get the nuggets.

Does China have experience making particle colliders? I’ve seen their magnetic
confinement fusion research devices. Even in the design stage, there are
lessons yet to be learned that are well documented in other machines. That
doesn’t mean the people working on them are dumb, or that all fields of large-
magnetic-confinement-machine-building physicists are in the same position, but
I think we should be pretty sure whoever builds the next big particle collider
is actually up to the task.

~~~
rubidium
These don’t get built by countries. They get built in countries. The home
country matters and they’ll need to put up funding, but it’s an international
workforce.

~~~
culturestate
> The home country matters...but it’s an international workforce.

Given the current state of the world and the trajectory of the West's
relationship with the Chinese government, it may _have_ to be built _by_ China
if it's going to be built _in_ China.

~~~
MiroF
China has a lot of STEM expertise, I'm confident they could probably figure it
out.

~~~
culturestate
There's a difference between theoretical and practical expertise.

I don't know much about particle accelerators, but I do know a bit about
advanced manufacturing and I think you might be surprised at the degree to
which Chinese industry is still functionally dependent on foreign machinery
and expertise.

This is a country that, until about two years ago, couldn't successfully
produce an entire ballpoint pen using fully domestic processes.

~~~
perl4ever
If you believe that there is a country that could, seems to me you would be
taking it on faith, and in my opinion, ignoring uncountable foreign inputs.
Unless you wanted to argue North Korea?

~~~
culturestate
There probably is a country that could go from rocks to finished pen entirely
domestically (Germany?) but that wasn't really my point.

I was trying to illustrate the broad chasm between theoretical and practical
expertise. Just because someone "knows a lot of STEM" doesn't mean they can
actually produce a useful _thing._ China already had perhaps the most highly
concentrated amount of manufacturing engineering expertise anywhere in the
world, yet still they needed help with what most people would consider a basic
item.

This is fine! Most countries, as you noted, are in the same position. It's a
desirable outcome of globalization.

It becomes problematic, though, when your goal is to build an incredibly
complex machine that requires expertise beyond your own (like a particle
accelerator, perhaps) and the people and countries whose help you require are
unwilling to work with you.

------
neonate
[https://archive.md/tCzip](https://archive.md/tCzip)

------
graycat
Here is some reasoning for funding -- i.e., US Congress funding -- high energy
physics (HEP), e.g., the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), I didn't see mentioned
here:

(1) The Russians, EU, China, Japan might pursue HEP so the US does not want to
appear to _fall behind_. So in part, the funding is "a matter of national
pride".

(2) The funding has a _constituency_ and keeps it and the university physics
departments going. The US does want healthy university physics departments if
only to teach physics for all the roles all of physics can play in national
security, NASA, the economy, other sciences, e.g., medicine, engineering,
e.g., computing, etc.

For the power of _constituencies_ , notice that a lot of physics laboratories
were started during WWII and are still operating. One way and another, somehow
they keep getting funding.

(3) In the Manhattan Project the world, the _power elite_ , all of
civilization were surprised, shocked, felt blind-sided, afraid. The lesson
they took was: It's a big, complicated universe out there; a good guess is
that not nearly all of it is well understood (true or not); so we must pursue
physics, at least _keep up_ as _insurance_ against another shocking discovery.

(4) The US likes to claim to have the best country, economy, culture, human
rights, standard of living, roads, bridges, public health, Internet, ...,
cars, hamburgers, milk, pizza, etc., basketball, Olympic athletes, pop music,
etc., nearly the best of everything, in particular the best universities. So,
can't have a great university without at least a good physics department, and
very much want a great physics department.

Short version: The US wants to be the best, e.g., be the first to put a human
with a flag on Mars, the Stars and Stripes.

~~~
knzhou
These arguments were indeed used 30 years ago, but shortly after the USSR fell
apart, the American Superconducting Supercollider was defunded midway through
construction. The US was satisfied to become 2nd to Europe in this field then,
I don't see why the US wouldn't be equally satisfied to be 4th to Europe,
Japan, and China a little while later.

------
xvilka
The interplanetary space is probably the best place to build a particle
collider - you won't need compensation fields and giant tube[s].

~~~
Ancalagon
I believe the vacuum inside particle accelerators is actually much higher than
your average cubic meter of solar system space.

~~~
siscia
And the vacuum in LHC is not THAT big as a problem. The real problem are the
magnets.

------
scottlocklin
At some point, elementary particle physics will actually die as a field and
the people who persist in building particle accelerators as if there is some
new electroweak theory right around the corner will have to find something
else to do. Of course, they'll probably continue with their pyramid building
for decades after the subject has actually died.

------
jcims
Complete physics moron here, is there no way to use particle/anti-particle
annihilation to drive collision energy up?

Also, i think if we invested the money for a new collider into an effort to
develop what we've learned so far into a useful technology that inspires the
general public, the funding for the next collider would take care of itself.

~~~
magv
LEP was annihilating electrons with positrons; LHC does not, as it only
accelerates protons. FCC will have the option to do both: the plan includes
two separate pipes in the same tunnel, one for protons, one for electrons.

This however does not increase the collision energy significantly: a single
electron-positron pair has the (rest) energy of ~1MeV -- this is what is
released during the annihilation, but the energies we want to go to at the
next collider go up to 10TeV, so 10^7 times larger.

~~~
magicalhippo
LHC smashes protons together, and for comparison the rest mass (energy) of a
proton[1] is just shy of 1GeV.

So that's still 4 orders of magnitude below the collision energy of the LHC.

[1]:
[http://pdglive.lbl.gov/DataBlock.action?node=S016M&home=BXXX...](http://pdglive.lbl.gov/DataBlock.action?node=S016M&home=BXXX005)

------
QuesnayJr
I was surprised by the possibility (raised by the article) that the Higgs
could turn out to not actually be the Higgs, but just another particle with
the right mass. Is that a real possibility?

~~~
sp332
Sure, it's not like the particle stuck around long enough for us to test any
of its other properties. We just know that its decay products add up to a
plausible energy level. [https://arstechnica.com/science/2011/12/rolling-the-
dice-und...](https://arstechnica.com/science/2011/12/rolling-the-dice-
understanding-how-physicists-hunt-for-the-higgs/)

------
K0SM0S
Finding new physics will require removing a lot of dust on the politics of
that field, and a vast re-evaluation of why and how people get funded. How
important the is science versus everything else in the matter.

It's not going to happen overnight, but it's good that people are opening
their eyes. Let's reevaluate in 2040 and see if we've moved the needle in
fundamental physics even just a little compared to what was achieved in the
first half of the 20th century.

------
mD5pPxMcS6fVWKE
Wait, so fusion, solar panels, semiconductors, and anything practically
important is not considered physics anymore? Well, people in HEP will
necessarily use the definition "Physics=HEP" to get more funding. You can't
have a meaningfull argument if your well being depends on its outcome.

------
DrBazza
Time to resurrect the SSC?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_Super_Collider](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_Super_Collider)

~~~
raverbashing
What physics needs is a revolutionary (not evolutionary like the SSC or the
LHC) particle accelerator.

There are promising works with high-powered lasers, for example:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcGgaa2mFc4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hcGgaa2mFc4)

But it seems the "spin particles really fast in a very long circular tube" is
reaching the end of its life.

------
ajflores1604
Article is paywalled for me so I don't know if it's mentioned, but it's a
shame the one in Texas was never finished. Was supposed to be 3x more powerful
than the LHC.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_Super_Collider](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_Super_Collider)

------
mensetmanusman
Quantum computers, fusion, free electron lasers, or particle accelerators,
where would you put $100 000 000 000?

------
thysultan
Sounds like the particle collider people are having tunnel vision.

"1 after the new particle collider": Guess what? we need an even bigger
particle collider.

What we really need is to build one on the moon.

~~~
djaque
It is not tunnel vision when the problem they're tackling is literally stuck
in a tunnel. Bigger and bigger colliders are the only direct way we have to
study high energy phenomena. It's not that physicists are lazy, it's that the
problems they're studying are hard.

I'm also seeing a lot resentment for the price tag of colliders in this
thread. My personal opinion is that we shouldn't build a new one, but I'll
point out that colliders are incredibly cost efficient.

The whole LHC (which has been running and providing jobs to people for 12
years) costs a similar amount as just two B-2 bombers. The US owns like 20 of
those and that money went somewhere into huge defense contractors profits as
opposed to knowledge and tech which is now accessible to the whole world.

You might not know this, but a lot of the technology developed during the
construction of the LHC is now used to improve medical imaging and power
transmission to name a few applications. These all have a direct impact on the
quality of our every day life. That fancy PET scan you received to diagnose
your cancer was literally funded in part by the LHC.

~~~
btrettel
Comparing the cost against defense spending, which has a reputation for waste,
doesn't convince me. If the cost is similar to two B-2 bombers and one thinks
that the B-2 bomber is overpriced, one would probably also think that the LHC
is overpriced.

To me, bringing up that the WWW, fancy PET scans, etc. came in part from HEP
and therefore we should be grateful is missing one major point. In the WWW
case, in an alternative history it seems likely to me that some other project
would have developed something similar around the same time if the funding
were allocated differently. As for the other benefits, I think if the money
were allocated towards research in those areas it would have been more
effectively spent.

Ultimately I think the worst "cost" for HEP in general (not just colliders) is
that it encourages something like brain drain on other fields. I think that
people interested in certain mostly non-practical areas of physics like HEP
would do the world a lot more good if they instead got a PhD in some field of
engineering or CS, or at the very least a more practical area of "physics".
Here I refer to physics in the descriptive sense which doesn't align well with
the prescriptive definition of physics. E.g., I don't understand why fluid
dynamics is not "physics" in that it's rarely researched in physics
departments (unless studied indirectly in chaos theory or plasma physics).
Must be too Newtonian for people to care. (For what it's worth I'm at the end
of a PhD in mechanical engineering studying fluid dynamics.)

~~~
throwawaylabor
I think GP is saying that the value of LHC is greater than the marginal value
of 2 bombers when you already have 18.

LHC would be one way to use that some of that "waste" in defense spending more
wisely.

Regarding "practical" study-- Where you see value in the output of engineering
work, those guiding the work of engineers see value in the output of
scientific work. If we had more people of the latter type that appreciated the
value of scientific work, we might have more productive engineers and
developers.

~~~
btrettel
Defense spending _is_ inefficient, but why should that money be spent on HEP
rather than something else? I'm not even convinced that projects like the LHC
are a net positive for humanity for the last reason I mentioned.

As for your final paragraph, I'm not really sure what you're getting at. If
you believe I have misunderstood you, I'm interested in learning how. Most
physicists I've met seem to severely underestimate the amount of _scientific_
research conducted by _engineers_. If you get a PhD in engineering, you're
typically doing primarily (if not exclusively) science. The main difference is
that this research keeps in mind the applications. That's what makes it
useful. I think it's a shame that so many very smart people choose to study
HEP rather than engineering where they would do better in the world. And I
don't think people working in HEP (for example) make engineers or programmers
more productive.

------
ngcc_hk
Finding some physics

------
quchen
Is there a non-paywalled link?

~~~
kristianp
[https://outline.com/aVuwpX](https://outline.com/aVuwpX)

------
blargmaster33
Let's step back an perfect the physics we know. Perfect fission and fusion
first! The short and long term benefits of that is more important the
verifying for example the next Higgs boson.

While verifying the Higgs is nice there are no practical applications for the
knowledge.

~~~
peteradio
Yes, let's "just" do that. But I guess we should make some restrictions:

1) Can't use the any of the theorists or experiementalists who had anything to
do with the useless research of the LHC.

2) Can't use any of the hardware research required to make that discovery (all
apparently useless):

    
    
       2a) superconducting magnets
       2b) high performance fpga computing
       2c) particle detectors
    

3) Understanding of background physics (i.e. perfecting understanding of
physics we know)

~~~
hpcjoe
Superconducting magnets were in use well before their use in HEP colliders.

FPGA computing was in use in industry well before it was in use in HEP
colliders.

Particle detectors have existed for more than 100 years. When was the first
collider built?

Seriously, this is one of the issues I take with HEP advocates claiming that
their field yielded all of these advances. Works well with politicians they
have to lobby for funding their stuff. Doesn't work so well with other
physicists.

HEP has utility, as all science does. Investment in it generally turns out
useful items, even if the science is esoteric, and not applicable to problems
in the world now.

However, and this is the crux of the problem, we have many items of
significant priority. Which means we have to triage our expenditures. Is HEP
and collider physics one of these high priorities right now?

In short, no. It shouldn't be.

~~~
peteradio
I never said these were invented by HEP, just that envelope pushing research
was done as a byproduct of collider/detector requirements.

------
mylons
i’m skeptical because that was the promise of the LHC.

~~~
magicalhippo
One of the main goals[1] of the LHC was finding the Higgs, which it has done.
Another goal was to look for the matter-antimatter asymmetry, where it has[2]
and will likely continue to find interesting things.

So as such it has had decent success I think.

Another goal was to look for supersymmetry. While the LHC so far has excluded
large sections of the possible parameter space for supersymmetry, I don't
think it was unreasonable to think at the time LHC was designed that it had a
decent chance of finding evidence for supersymmetry.

However given how things are looking currently, maybe effort should be focused
on the areas where we know there's something weird, such as neutrinos[3], as
well as astronomical searches such as LIGO[4] which can constrain Beyond
Standard Model physics.

[1]: [https://home.cern/resources/faqs/facts-and-figures-about-
lhc](https://home.cern/resources/faqs/facts-and-figures-about-lhc)

[2]: [https://home.cern/news/press-release/physics/lhcb-sees-
new-f...](https://home.cern/news/press-release/physics/lhcb-sees-new-flavour-
matter-antimatter-asymmetry)

[3]: [https://www.quantamagazine.org/neutrino-evidence-could-
expla...](https://www.quantamagazine.org/neutrino-evidence-could-explain-
matter-antimatter-asymmetry-20200415/)

[4]: [https://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/what-
gravitational-...](https://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/what-
gravitational-waves-can-say-about-dark-matter)

------
thrower123
Of course it does. They finished the LHC, it's time for another white elephant
to keep the gravy train rolling.

------
traes
> A minifigure, 3 blocks high, is repesentative of an average American adult,
> at 1.753 meters tall

Shouldn't it be the height of an average adult from Denmark? At 1.672m (edit:
closer to 1.8) it's a big enough difference to matter. The inaccuracies in
this article are disgusting! This is a serious matter that has numerous
implications, and is definitely not a joke.

Edit: I meant to post this somewhere else. Sorry.

~~~
Koshkin
I think you’ve misspelled ‘9’ as ‘6’.

~~~
traes
I accidentally grabbed the number for average female height. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

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yters
Used to be breakthroughs could be made by a lens maker accidentally
discovering micro biology or the president of the treasury thinking through
the mathematics behind his observations and discovering the law of gravity or
a patent clerk resolving contradictions between data and theory in his spare
time to discover relativity or a barely employed artist describing in detail
inventing concepts that would not be created until centuries after his death.

Now we need billions of dollars and all the best minds to even hypothetically
make progress.

Maybe something is wrong in the state of scientific research.

~~~
0xTJ
What you've said makes no sense. Why shouldn't new tech be required? You're
not even comparing similar science topics to modern physics. When you're
pushing the boundaries of our knowledge of the universe, there's no human
perception that can itself detect anything new.

~~~
ellofromoversea
Math and humans modeled the Higgs before technology “found it”

IMO like with space ships this is just not a useful engineering endeavor in
general

We probably could iterate on engineering AI and nanotechnology so future
people could programmatically build specific machines

But let’s go on a whim and prematurely optimize a machine to maybe produce new
insights at scale that, unlike with the Higgs, we’re still trying to find
consensus mathematics to define

We’re putting the cart before the horse this time and the fact the LHC hasn’t
produced much else even with all the mathy theories has shown on paper we’re
so off the mark a giant new machine would be built just to titillate a
generation that is addicted to being titillated

Maybe we could just get our own imaginations back for a bit before we keep
following the imaginings of yesterday

Not sure if you’ve noticed but pandemic life is making building such a thing a
non-starter. How do you design, plan, and assemble such a thing when groups of
people have to work on a basement?

