
CERN makes push to build €21B super-collider - tdhttt
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01866-9
======
geraltofrivia
Sabine Hossenfelder recently wrote a Scientific American article arguing
against this push, which might be an interesting read.
[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-world-
doesnt-...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-world-doesnt-need-
a-new-gigantic-particle-collider/#).

> "When physicists started building colliders in the 1940s, they did not have
> a complete inventory of elementary particles, and they knew it... [] The
> Standard Model still has some loose ends, but experimentally testing those
> would require energies at least ten billion times higher than what even the
> FCC could test."

> "... particle physicists should focus on developing new technologies that
> could bring colliders back in a reasonable price range and hold off digging
> more tunnels."

> "It’s because too much science funding is handed out on the basis of
> inertia. In the past century, particle physics has grown into a large, very
> influential and well-connected community. They will keep on building bigger
> particle colliders as long as they can, simply because that’s what particle
> physicists do, whether that makes sense or not."

~~~
noir_lord
> The Standard Model still has some loose ends, but experimentally testing
> those would require energies at least ten billion times higher than what
> even the FCC could test.

When I see things like that I often remember a quote I came across years ago
when tracking down the origin of the Lord Kelvin "end of science" quote (that
never actually happened)

> While it is never safe to affirm that the future of Physical Science has no
> marvels in store even more astonishing than those of the past, it seems
> probable that most of the grand underlying principles have been firmly
> established and that further advances are to be sought chiefly in the
> rigorous application of these principles to all the phenomena which come
> under our notice. It is here that the science of measurement shows its
> importance — where quantitative work is more to be desired than qualitative
> work. An eminent physicist remarked that the future truths of physical
> science are to be looked for in the sixth place of decimals. - Albert
> Michelson - 1894

It seems like every generation someone claims we've reached the end somehow
and while they are giving that speech some young experimental scientist is in
the background going "hmmm, that's funny" to prove them wrong.

Ironically she repeats the Kelvin myth here in point 16 -
[http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/03/nonsense-
arguments-...](http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/03/nonsense-arguments-
for-building-bigger.html)

~~~
Certhas
This gets rolled out all the time. Except that that is not Hossenfelders
argument. In the very article she is quoted with:

“We do know that the only way to find answers is by experiment and the only
place to find them is where we haven’t been able to look yet.”

Further, it's an utterly superficial analogy. Physics 2020 is completely
different than Physics 1894. We don't just have a complete understanding of
the fundamental principles [1] underlying all terrestrial
observations/experiments ever performed, but also a complete inventory of the
involved matter. And we have had for decades.

[1] It's important to understand this in a strict reductionist way. Of course
knowing the axioms is completely different from understanding their
implications. And when studying their implication you are bound to encounter
many novel principles not anticipated in the axioms. Thus even in the absence
of what is by particle physicists "new physics" there is much to discover.

~~~
btilly
_Physics 2020 is completely different than Physics 1894. We don 't just have a
complete understanding of the fundamental principles [1] underlying all
terrestrial observations/experiments ever performed, but also a complete
inventory of the involved matter. And we have had for decades._

NOT true. The Standard Model does not explain neutrino behavior. See
[https://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/february-2013/neutr...](https://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/february-2013/neutrinos-
the-standard-model-misfits) for a some examples of that.

Unfortunately a large particle accelerator is not designed to tell us much
about neutrinos...

~~~
kelsolaar
XENON1T is relevant here: [https://www.quantamagazine.org/dark-matter-
experiment-finds-...](https://www.quantamagazine.org/dark-matter-experiment-
finds-unexplained-signal-20200617/)

~~~
btilly
That result is cool, but experimental error is still in the list of plausible
explanations. It is too early to say definitely that something outside of the
Standard Model is going on.

------
btrettel
What's more interesting to me than HEP is how HEP became such a big deal. I
asked on HN before why people find HEP interesting and the responses were
enlightening to me as someone who finds HEP boring:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23322857](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23322857)

Personally, I find turbulence much more interesting. The fact that it's orders
of magnitude more important than HEP _and_ also very intellectually
challenging should give pause to those who have dedicated their lives to HEP.
But my impression is that cultural forces have unfortunately convinced many of
our best and brightest to go into HEP or other similarly impractical areas of
physics. I guess that's better than working for Facebook to make people click
on ads, but that's setting the bar low. If you're interested in physics, you
can make a much better choice than HEP. (If you're open to areas outside of
physics you may be able to make an even better choice.)

I can see why someone might view the "building blocks" of the universe as
fundamental or how there are interesting philosophical questions that HEP can
address. But turbulence is fairly ubiquitous; certainly that makes it
"fundamental" in some sense. And there are philosophical implications of chaos
and statistical mechanics; turbulence is part of both.

~~~
thomasahle
I think the scientific questions are just bigger in HEP, even if turbulence
has more interesting engineering questions. Those are just fundementally
differ t to different people.

~~~
piannucci
This! To my understanding, as a dilettante in the science of fluids,
turbulence is an open problem mostly only in subfields pretty far removed from
everyday engineering:

The mathematicians question whether the Navier-Stokes continuum fluid model
can be trusted to remain mathematically well-posed in all scenarios; but
Navier-Stokes is just a second-order approximation to Boltzmann transport, and
higher-order approximations are well known. If N-S were to blow up, it would
merely indicate that the second-order approximation breaks down in some
regime, necessarily involving shocks. But... I don’t think any experts in
transport theory would be surprised by that. It would be more be like solving
the mystery of rogue waves, and less like finding bigfoot.

The other group I’m aware of are those who study large-scale turbulence. The
goal there is to _summarize_ or _coarse-grain_ the turbulence that goes on
within a small computational volume, as a cost-saving measure versus using a
more finely-resolved mesh in space and time. That’s valuable work with true
social impact, such as in atmospheric forecasting and erosion studies. But...
it’s kinda phenomenological. Not as much fun for many scientists.

~~~
btrettel
> To my understanding, as a dilettante in the science of fluids, turbulence is
> an open problem mostly only in subfields pretty far removed from everyday
> engineering:

> The other group I’m aware of are those who study large-scale turbulence. The
> goal there is to summarize or coarse-grain the turbulence that goes on
> within a small computational volume, as a cost-saving measure versus using a
> more finely-resolved mesh in space and time. [...] But... it’s kinda
> phenomenological. Not as much fun for many scientists.

The turbulence "closure" problem you describe here is the main obstacle for
the prediction of _any_ turbulent flow. This is not far removed from everyday
engineering! Practically speaking, the computational complexity of turbulence
is far too high, so approximations become necessary.

You've described the basic idea behind large-eddy simulation, but I think you
underestimate how interesting the theory could be there. Look into spectral
theories of turbulence. I find this sort of research rather interesting,
though it's formidable. My understanding is that some of the techniques
Kraichnan applied to turbulence in the late 1950s were later independently
redeveloped by quantum field theorists in the 1970s. (Note that I'm no expert
in these models, but learning about them is on my TODO list.)

> The mathematicians question whether the Navier-Stokes continuum fluid model
> can be trusted to remain mathematically well-posed in all scenarios

The media unfortunately gives the wrong impression about the Navier-Stokes
existence and uniqueness problem. This problem doesn't have much to do with
turbulence in the computational complexity sense. I honestly don't see how
proving that the Navier-Stokes equations do or do not have unique solutions is
going to help turbulence. They've already proved that for 2D turbulence, but
that didn't help solve 2D turbulence.

Anyway, your understanding of the problem is basically correct if not focused
on the best examples. It's already known that the solutions aren't unique in
inviscid compressible flows, but that doesn't stop people from using the
compressible Euler equations as a model. They just add an extra condition to
make the solutions unique (arguing that the other solutions won't appear in
reality). My impression is that many people working on the NS existence
problem believe that in certain circumstances the dissipation can become
unbounded, and would be limited by different physical mechanisms that should
be used instead. Practically speaking this might solved by simply using a
different viscosity model, for instance.

------
chmod775
For comparison, the budget of the Department of Defen(ding US interests) is
$721.5 billion, which is to say one could instead do something useful with all
those billions instead of spending them killing people who made the mistake of
being born near natural resources.

~~~
bufferoverflow
$721.5 billion per year, to be more specific.

While the collider cost is one-time.

~~~
ssully
While I still agree on wanting to direct money from military to science, it
isn't a one time cost. In 2012, the yearly budget for the LHC was 1 billion
[1].

[1]: [https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2012/07/05/how-
much-d...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2012/07/05/how-much-does-it-
cost-to-find-a-higgs-boson/#3d629aac3948)

~~~
lgl
That's still pocket change and pretty irrelevant in context since merely half
of 1 year's budget of the US military would still be able to power the LHC for
over 350 years.

------
BrandoElFollito
This is such a loss of money. The practical aspects will never be used.

This will move some technologies a bit ahead but so would work on biology and
medical areas. I would be much more happy to see people cured or otherwise
helped than to know that a partcle is this or that.

This is in strong opposition to what happened in these areas of physics in the
previous century. Things which were directives had a conceivable practical
application.

What can you make out of events which happen at such energies, the kind we
will never reach outside of such research centers.

~~~
calcifer
Science for its own sake is a noble pursuit. Not everything has to have
commercial applications or to be "practical".

~~~
qwobit
Agree. But another thing I must point out is that pure mathematics is an
example of ‘doing stuff for the sake of doing stuff’ and it has had an
incredibly long lasting influence, with physicists turning to pure mathematics
research to aid with their own problems.

The solution just has to be a perfect fit with the problem to become practical
in industry. We often do not see the practicality of such abstract ideas until
they are abundant in use.

~~~
BrandoElFollito
With mathematics you have at least hope to use it someday. Indeed, research on
elliptic equations may not have been seen as important until widespread crypto
hit.

Moreover, the cost is small. This is also the rational by which we can agree
that philosophy is worth spending money on (because "general culture").

Here we have 20B€ so that some people discover the structure of a particle,
knowing that it is exactly impossible to have a real life use because of the
required energies.

~~~
pg-gadfly
It isn't "exactly impossible" though, it never is. You can find out a more
efficient way to create it, or you might have more power available in the
future.

All manmade elements have been extremely expensive to make the first ti-me,
and that hasn't stopped them from being constantly used.

~~~
BrandoElFollito
There is no efficiency - juste pure energy needs. You cannot probe a quark
with lower energy.

Then there is nothing to use from such experiments. The research is purely
academic, it is not like the cure for cancer is hidden behind a gluon.

I can understand dumping even 20B€ in research which brings something
tangible. Making sure that the structure of a quark is what we think it is is
not one of these.

~~~
pg-gadfly
>There is no efficiency

There is certainly efficiency to consider when making energy. We can't tap
into the full potential of any source, there are "hard limits" to many of our
current methods, but that doesen't stop a paradigm shift from happening and
making it so.

Many things studied before had no "tangible" use then, it doesen't come like
that. It's iteration upon iteration, using previous work to achieve a little
bit of something new. You cannot foresee the future beforehand.

~~~
BrandoElFollito
At some point in physics there is no "paradigm shift". In order to probe such
structures you need an enormous energy. An energy you have to build an
accelerator to have.

What do you get in return? The confirmation or not of a theory which can be
confirmed only at these energies. It is not as a non-confirmation would turn
around physics, it would be just some strange thing happening at these
energies.

Compare this with experiments from the late 1800 and early 1900. You had
obvious holes in the theory (Michelson-Morley, the ultraviolet catastrophe,
...) - these experiments were showing that something in our everyday theory is
wrong. Not some fluctuations at 20B€.

There are branches of physics where the research is really cool (notably solid
state physics) and which you can make a real life use of. Particle physics is
not one of them.

~~~
pg-gadfly
As I've been saying, you don't know the point at which there is no more to
learn. Even minor things can have major impact when combined with further
research.

Things like "enormous" are subjective, and it's indeed not impossible to get
such amounts cheaply in the future, even if you can't at the time reduce it's
need.

It's easy to look in the past and point out the obvious when you already have
all the answers, but trying to divine something that changes the way you think
about current physics is not as simple.

~~~
BrandoElFollito
Things like "enormous" are not subjective in physics. We know that we need a
certain density of energy to probe a particle. There are no miracles: it has
to come from somewhere and it is not like there are sources of such energy
that can pop up from nowhere. We simply do not have a place to harvest such
energy on the global scale, and we know we won't have anytime soon. There are
simply no sources for that.

> Even minor things can have major impact when combined with further research

We are talking about things happening at energies which are way beyond normal
interactions. Let's imagine we pick a simple artificial signal from the sky,
from a place that is 5000 light years away.

People will get crazy about aliens and loose their shit on how we are not
alone. And so what - from a practical perspective there is exactly zero
interest in this. We cannot use that information at all because whatever is
there is unreachable.

There are however plenty of place in physics which are worth the effort (I
mentioned solid state physics as one of the most promising ones). Not to
mention biology where we are only right at the beginning and there are plenty
of outcomes.

If we had infinite resources then fine. We do not have them. And putting 20B€
in some fancy research with zero practical interest (such as this one, or
middle-ages French literature, or Platon philosophy, ...) is a tremendous
waste of opportunities.

I understand that we need to fund research with no practical interest - this
is part of what makes us human. Just not 20B€ when people are starving, dying,
etc.

------
ardit33
eh, do they expect to find anything new?

To me, fusion research need more $$ and a higher priority as it has extremely
practical applications for all humanity, from energy independence to global
warming.

21b Euros is a lot of money, and apart the ongoing ITER effort, fusion
research can be tackled from different angles with just half of that money.

~~~
andrepd
The difference is that particle research doesn't stand to displace a multi
trillion dollar industry with the world's biggest militaries to back it...

~~~
leephillips
I don’t think the energy companies are exactly quaking in terror:

[http://progressive.org/op-eds/let-cut-our-losses-on-
fusion-e...](http://progressive.org/op-eds/let-cut-our-losses-on-fusion-
energy-180313/)

------
dschuetz
Two things: 1) The article is amazingly low on specifics besides "to uncover
the Higgs Boson's secrets" 2) The only thing to agree with is what Sabine
Hossenfelder says (as always): it costs way too much without any significant
scientific potential. Meaning, there are not enough viable theories to prove
on that thing.

Sure, people who will be getting paid from those $21B of public money are
saying: "Another one! Even bigger and faster! That project will be definitely
worthwhile!"

------
supernova87a
In the current climate of inequity making the front pages of the news and
dominating the public discourse, I would think such huge expenditures would be
anathema to the populist agenda?

Because the beneficiaries of the jobs of this project are definitely not the
disadvantaged in society (research-wise, or construction-wise). And I have to
say, HEP's huge experiments seem to produce one-time headline discoveries (of
a few hundred authors, yes), but then quickly become obsolete pieces of
equipment.

And the science or industrial benefits themselves, of hitting the next tier
beyond 13 TeV for such a collider? What is, and where does that benefit go?
Does anyone have even an inkling of what results it will produce? Or is this
just HEP on autopilot, "we need the next big one"?

Please don't trot out the usual "science for its own sake", as if that
justifies _any arbitrary_ amount of $ being spent without question.

At least astronomy produces pretty pictures for its funding.

~~~
ralusek
Infrastructure spending is in many ways just a large social safety net that
happens to produce very useful things as a side effect.

The cost to build these things doesn't just go into an abyss, it gives an
enormous amount of workers jobs in building it, and then employs tons of
scientists for running it.

The west really needs to take a page from the CCP's book; you can raise people
out of poverty by educating them and putting them to work on ambitious, far
reaching infrastructure projects for the good of everyone. Much more desirable
to most welfare solutions.

~~~
supernova87a
Well, I appreciate that point. But the question is also whether the underlying
activity or thing being produced gives benefit to how many people.

Because, as has been pointed out in the past, you could pay people to simply
dig holes in the ground and have others fill them in, which would equally
create work and productivity. But was it more worthwhile and beneficial than
other ways the money could be spent?

------
_Microft
_Money printer should go brrr?_

Would it really be bad to simply print the money for CERN, ITER or other
scientific projects? New money without anything in return is bad but here? In
these cases we would get an actual collider/reactor/rocket/whatever - built by
actual companies that employ actual people, run by actual scientists,
maintained by actual engineers, ...

~~~
ImprobableTruth
What is the actual return of the project itself though? You could also print
money to build a tower of babel and it seems like the same general benefits
would apply.

~~~
ceejayoz
> What is the actual return of the project itself though?

A better understanding of the universe we live in?

~~~
Barrin92
that's true for almost all human scientific or inventive activity, so the case
for this has to be made in the face of opportunity costs.

21 billion could be spent on two hundred thousand(!) 100k grants to
scientists. Building a giant machine to perform experiments that will likely
merely confirm the existing models of particle physics while revealing very
little of interest to society at large is pretty much indefensible.

~~~
Gibbon1
> 21 billion could be spent on two hundred thousand

The $1T F35 program has entered the chat.

~~~
Barrin92
I agree with you. But then again the corruption/waste in military
procurement/development is a well-known issue. I think paying strong attention
to return per bucks is a mindset we need to reintroduce in every sector.

~~~
Gibbon1
C21 Billion for a super collider can be considered perhaps to be a form of
Nerd UBI. At least there isn't much in the way of negative externalizes with
that vs building weapons. Consider US defense companies have been lobbying
against congressional efforts to stop Saudi Arabia from bombing Yemen.

------
RedShift1
Machines like this really show off the best we humans can do. I'm happy my tax
money goes to the LHC and hopefully to this project too.

~~~
holoduke
I agree. my only concern is that certain companies try to entangle themselfs
in these public funded projects and gain large benefits in essence from tax
money. I think it would be good (in Europe at least) that bigger tech
companies donate much more to these projects.

------
magicalhippo
While I've been very interested in HEP as a teen and up, even as a "fanboy"
the science potential seems very dubious.

When they approved the LHC, they were almost entirely certain they'd find the
Higgs and there was solid arguments for why they should find more.

Now it seems much less clear that they stand to find anything groundbreaking
by simply doing more of the same.

Personally I'd like to see more money being put towards condensed matter
physics, quantum information science and similar areas which seems to have
potential for much more practical applications.

~~~
spekcular
Finding new particles isn't even the primary reason to build a new collider.
Don't be fooled into thinking it's a new particle or bust.

~~~
magicalhippo
I'm not.

Considering the vast amounts of money needed for these huge colliders, for me
it's about diminishing returns. I just don't think anything we learn "down
there" will have as much impact compared to other areas.

Instead I think now is a good time to slow down a bit, fund other interesting
areas more, until we have a better handle on where to look. Then we can come
back, if possible.

------
jmount
Just imagine that €21B spent on biological/medical programs.

~~~
andrepd
You should be more angry about 700B on defense spending in the US, or >2000B
in bank/corporate bailouts. Rather than being upset that money is being spent
on a good thing instead of an (in your eyes) better thing.

~~~
Anon84
Those $700 Billion will be spent on defense anyway. But we can actually put
these $21B to good use instead of wasting them to fund another hole in the
ground.

------
zests
I support super-colliders for the same reason I support space research. If we
aren't on earth to discover something greater than ourselves, what purpose do
we have?

I could see the creation of a utopia or an equitable state as another purpose.
I suppose some people don't support super-colliders because they want money to
go to this goal instead.

~~~
leephillips
Some people don’t support supercolliders because they want us to “discover
something greater than ourselves”, but they think there are better ways to do
that, and money spent on huge HEP projects takes funding away from what could
be more fruitful and interesting projects.

------
nickik
I think building a assemble in space, space telescope would be the best use
for a mega project in science. I admit I don't know enough about colliders to
evaluate the scientific impact.

But I think once we figure out how to assemble gigantic telescopes in space,
the options for astronomy and maybe physics are huge.

With the ability to launch cheaply now, and with Starship maybe even cheaper
in the future. You can build something truly gigantic in space.

What I think is more practically pressing is a commercial competition for next
generation of fission reactors, but that was pressing since the 1970s and
politics has ignore it. So that's not gone happen.

------
babbledabbler
If they make a bigger super collider they should call it the super duper
collider.

~~~
ceejayoz
That's pretty much how telescopes are named.

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

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

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

------
beezle
New is old....SSC was about the same size though only 40TeV but by now would
have had a magnet upgrade to surely push close to 100TeV

------
aaron695
In choosing the lockdown we have ruled this out.

Along with support of minorities, disabilities and the environment and all
such things.

The next half a decade isn't going to be much fun.

------
tengbretson
Maybe they could sell their old one to help finance the new one. I'd go in for
a few shares of a particle collider.

~~~
csomar
Collider as a Service. You pay per collision.

~~~
mhh__
They do sort of exist in a sense

[https://www.diamond.ac.uk](https://www.diamond.ac.uk)

------
bricss
What if I'll tell you Higgs boson’s doesn't exist? ╰( _°▽°_ )╯

------
z3t4
I think they should better explain how this thing works... It accelerate an
electron!? And then there is some sensitive equipment to measure the charge!?
Get a curve on a oscilloscope and if the curve is different it have discovered
a new particle!? I'm very curious about the so called gravity particle aka
Higgs boson, but Cern would need to explain this in layman terms in order to
get funded.

~~~
delfinom
[https://www.iop.org/resources/topic/archive/cern/index.html](https://www.iop.org/resources/topic/archive/cern/index.html)
[https://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/lhc-data-how-its-
ma...](https://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/lhc-data-how-its-made)

There are tons of resources written by them and others that explains how it
all works. None of it is secret.

