
The LHC “nightmare scenario” has come true - another
http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2016/08/the-lhc-nightmare-scenario-has-come-true.html
======
tomp
I always thought that the LHC "nightmare scenario" referred to accidential
creation of a black hole... Well, looks like different people have different
ideas of what a "catastrophe" means :)

~~~
superswordfish
Clickbait is clickbait.

~~~
archgoon
This isn't clickbait. Do you see any ads on this page?

This is an accurate characterization of the worst outcome (that doesn't
involve space aliens) that scientists were worried about when the LHC
launched.

~~~
csydas
Well, more so, they have a pretty clear definition of what they mean by
"nightmare scenario"; it would have nice to have their claim much earlier in
the article followed by the rest of the history, but I really wouldn't call it
clickbait. But I can really see why it's considered a "nightmare" given what
the article is suggesting. Like, clickbait is shitty, but this case really
isn't. It is eyecatching though.

~~~
mcbits
I'd say "see what happens next!" is clickbait even if the page has no ads and
actually does show what happens next. When "nightmare scenario" turns out to
mean "not much has happened", that's at least borderline clickbait. But at
least the article was substantive. I don't think people would hate sensational
headlines so much if the content lived up to expectations.

~~~
csydas
I do understand what you're saying, in that overt eye-catching and curiosity
tweaking headlines that are intentionally misleading are bad and certainly
clickbait.

In this instance, however, I think it's more of a question of there being a
big question as to "what is the nightmare scenario"; each part of the article
is relevant to this question, explaining the state of the particle physics and
the build up towards the apparent disappointment with the results from the LHC
research.

Nightmare scenario is being fairly specific here; it's not really in the same
field as "See what happens next" or "You won't believe what happens" in my
mind since those have no substance or real connection to their content. This
article headline is very attention grabbing, since we're not sure what the LHC
Nightmare Scenario is. However, the article substantiates the title. It
provides the author's reasons specifically why the current status of LHC
research is in a nightmare scenario.

The title is provocative, yes, but I feel that conflating provocative with
"Clickbait" is disingenuous. Some of the most famous headlines in history have
arguably been clickbait by that metric, yet they're not held to the same
scrutiny.

~~~
archgoon
> since we're not sure what the LHC Nightmare Scenario is.

I disagree. I believe that the intended audience of this article, people
familiar with what the LHC has been up to, what it's goals were, who are
keeping up with current events, like knowing that the diphoton bump has
vanished, would immediately recognize what the article would be about. I did
at least. It seems completely unfair to say "This article doesn't cater to HN"
and then accuse the author of engaging in sensationalistic clickbait,
especially when HN doesn't trust submitters to provide more context in
headlines.

This lack of context is because, it appears, most HN readers are more familiar
with the actual clickbait headlines from media outlets proclaiming "Mini
Blackholes may destroy the earth!", "Strangelets could destroy the earth!",
"The LHC will start the Zombie Apocalypse!", than the actual concerns of
scientists. Again, this seems monstrously unfair that actual clickbait has set
the conversation, and people who actually are talking about the actual
'nightmare scenario' are now accused of clickbait.

Not all nightmares are about monsters chasing you. A lot of them are showing
up to class in your underwear, or trying to find that report that you _know_
should be on the table. I would not be surprised that several physicists have
in fact had actual nightmares of this exact scenario.

~~~
csydas
I'm a little confused as to whom specifically you're responding to.

I'm not sure where the idea of "this article doesn't cater to HN" and the
following accusation comes from in relation to the thread that was being
discussed.

I do agree with you that it's unfair to call it clickbait, that there's a
large difference between a provocative headline and a clickbait headline.
Personally I'm not familiar enough with the going-ons of the LHC to really
comment intelligently on the research, so I have and will hold off on that.

~~~
archgoon
I was responding, perhaps my misinterpretation, to your assertion that it was
unclear what the 'nightmare scenario' was. I asserted that if you had been
following the recent developments of the LHC (or had some idea as to what the
worst case scenario was), there would be no ambiguity as to what this article
was about. The reason why this is the case is that this article was not
written with the HN crowd in mind.

The primary response to this article, given the comments, is "what do you mean
you're not talking about black holes" rather than an actual discussion of the
ideas of the article (the failure of "naturalness" and "beauty" to make
predictions for the LHC). Which leads me to conclude that HN is not a good
place to talk about this (since most people are complaining that the , as
we're arguing about the most boring, superficial part of the article.

My statement that people are complaining about "This article doesn't cater to
HN", is my summary of the idea that 'I am not familiar with the context
associated with the headline, and to me it sounds sensationalistic, and
therefore it is clickbait, and the author should have picked a better title'.
You obviously, are not advocating that position.

~~~
csydas
Ah, yes, I was projecting my own ignorance out to the general audience when I
said that it was "unclear what the nightmare scenario was", as I think a lot
of people really didn't follow LHC news well enough to know what the nightmare
scenario would be. This is the source of the confusion, and I should have been
more clear.

The rest I believe you and I are in agreement over. :)

------
akiselev
TL;DR: All the hype and rumours about a new discovery at the LHC [1][2][3][4]
that looked like a particle outside of the standard model was for naught. As
the LHC detectors gathered and processed more data, the "diphoton bumps"
turned from interesting anomalies to statistically insignificant noise [5].

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11893164](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11893164)

[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11250931](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11250931)

[3]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9420043](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9420043)

[4] [http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/potential-new-
part...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/potential-new-particle-
shows-up-at-the-lhc-thrilling-and-confounding-physicists1/)

[5] [http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/hope-for-new-
parti...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/hope-for-new-particle-
fizzles-at-the-lhc1/)

~~~
beezle
No that is not really the TL;DR of her post (which on her site is a condensed
version of what she put on Starts with a Bang).

Her main point is that the HEP community has been racing down a road for many
years and probably missed the "dead end" sign some years back. In particular,
she takes issue with what is called 'naturalness' and its often used
justification for PBTSM. She concluded with:

"I hope that this latest null result will send a clear message that you can’t
trust the judgement of scientists whose future funding depends on their
continued optimism."

------
nabla9
My favorite non-serious pet theory is that we live in simulation created by
intelligent beings. It's supposed to be cool and mathematically beautiful only
little below atom level and up. When we dig into deeper energy levels we start
do detect artifacts that make no sense because they are implementation details
revealed where model breaks down.

We would be virtual scientist detecting features in physics simulation
software that builds the world he is living in.

~~~
joeyspn
Also my fav. The nightmare scenario would be when particle physicist discover
that we are living in a computer simulation built by AIs, and they realise
that instead of building the LHC they should have studied quantum computing
architectures and the docker repo on GitHub.

The most entertaining "simulation theory" (among Elon Musk's, Nick Bostrom's,
etc) is Stephen Wolfram's one, who argues that "we could be the videogame (WoW
of the future) of a teenager AI"...

[https://youtu.be/giuVfY-I-p4?t=17m16s](https://youtu.be/giuVfY-I-p4?t=17m16s)

~~~
akiselev
In that situation, wouldn't we be the artificial intelligence? Kinda doesn't
make sense to call our overlord an AI if we're the simulated beings.

------
erdevs
Some commenters on the article discussed condensed matter physics as a
potentially more viable path of inquiry for understanding underlying physics
theory than high energy particle collision experiments.

I'm no expert here and don't understand the dichotomy, such as it were, here.
Also, how are condensed matter physics contributing to fundamental theories of
the universe today? I've heard a lot more of condensed matter physics in
specific areas (eg superconductivity), but not often heard it discussed in
relation to fundamental physics. But I'm pretty uninformed here, overall.

Does anyone with more expertise here have a quick breakdown of what these
commenters mean?

~~~
ealloc
Probably it is referring to the overlap in mathematics between condensed
matter and particle physics. Both fields can be seen as explorations of the
mathematical framework known as Quantum Field Theory (with somewhat different
interpretation) - many discoveries of QFT in one field also turn out to apply
in the other, such as the renormalization group. For example, the Higgs
mechanism was first discovered by a condensed matter physicist (Phil
Anderson).

~~~
guitarbill
I think the experiments in the different field highlight this. Particle
physics experiments keep getting bigger and more expensive (LHC, Kamiokande,
etc). For condensed matter, you can give an undergrad liquid helium for
experiments with superconductors, which will show QFT phenomena like quasi-
particles. Even looking at symmetry breaking in condensed matter doesn't
require (comparatively) huge experimental setups.

I don't think it's a stretch to say that if more people are actively
experimenting and thinking about problems in a field, the more likely new
results are going to be found. (That's not to say particle physics experiments
aren't useful.)

------
hacker42
I've never understood the desire for beauty in a theory of everything. Reality
clearly _isn 't_ beautiful through and through, but at its corners it is
awfully complex and arbitrary. If anything, reality is much like the outcomes
of an evolutionary process, a mere hack of various mechanisms that happen to
give rise to the relatively stable patterns we experience. Of course,
fundamental research needs the optimism that we can compress all of that in
ever smaller formulae, but I think there is no unambiguous evidence that we
should actually expect that to be possible. The most striking piece of counter
evidence is actually the kind of reality we experience in the first place.
Imagine a universe in which its inhabitants would be able to figure out its
fundamental principles. These inhabitants would likely immediately conquer all
available space and use it to maximize the reward signals that evolution has
equipped them with and thus transform everything into something completely
different from the world we are experiencing. A universe with a reality like
ours and that is fully understandable at the same time is thus (together with
various other assumptions) a logical impossibility.

~~~
Animats
_" I've never understood the desire for beauty in a theory of everything."_

It comes from the history of physics. A few equations define classical
dynamics. Maxwell's four equations describe electromagnetism. A few short
equations define quantum electrodynamics. High-energy physicists have been
looking for something equally terse. It just isn't happening.

~~~
jleahy
Once we properly understood it we realized Maxwell's equations could be
reduced to one equation (the d'Alembert operator applied to the
electromagnetic tensor gives 4-current scaled by a constant).

I'm sure whatever turns up for quantum gravity will be hideous to begin with,
but then eventually we'll understand it.

------
noobermin
About 3 years ago, I had the chance to continue in particle physics for my
Ph.D. specifically working for a CMS group. However, I felt SUSY had no real
evidence then, and looking specifically at the "ground breaking" search that
the group was undertaking, amongst others, and the pitiful results they had, I
betted against SUSY and switched groups.

It looks like my bet was right. I miss the math in HEP but I feel somewhat
justified. I'm not sure what this means for HEP going forward. May be
scientists can move the goalposts but will funders be as sympathetic?

~~~
orbifold
Actually some creative destruction might be good for physics as a whole. High
energy physics amounts to glorified bean counting. Particle phenomenologists
are expected to produce ~6 papers a year, what you write about is mostly
fashion driven and what is fashionable is determined by a few thought leaders.

------
timinman
The OP made a side-comment about 'idea of naturalness' being a philosophical
tenet. That's a problem because science claims to be philosophically neutral,
which is impossible.

Science looks for a system which can exist without supernatural intervention,
but the creation of time/space/matter doesn't fit within those constraints.

Admittedly that is a philosophical or even theological take, but at least it's
honest.

~~~
oliwaw
>Science looks for a system which can exist without supernatural intervention,
but the creation of time/space/matter doesn't fit within those constraints.

So our universe must _fundamentally_ be a supernatural creation?

That's an extraordinary claim, what is your evidence? We currently have
insufficient data and incomplete theories to fully describe the origins of the
universe, sure. But how is this different from someone 500 years ago saying:

"Science looks for a system which can exist without supernatural intervention,
but the creation of the Earth and humanity doesn't fit within those
constraints."

~~~
timinman
>So our universe must fundamentally be a supernatural creation?

In my comment I wasn't making the argument that our universe must
fundamentally be a supernatural creation. I was trying to show that
presupposing it is a natural creation is not philosophically neutral,
especially when what we have observed naturally seems to oppose the idea of
energy or matter coming out of nowhere.

>What is your evidence? From my perspective, accepting the probability of a
transcendent creator is a reasonable conclusion to draw based on the existence
of the universe. I realize that will be judged to be a 'faith position', but
from my perspective so is supposing it could exist on it's own.

------
nercht12
Professor Matt Strassler has had excellent coverage of the events at LHC,
including detailed explanations. For anyone interested in reading:
[https://profmattstrassler.com/](https://profmattstrassler.com/)

------
spullara
I reached this level of disillusionment 2 years into my theoretical particle
physics Ph.D. program and dropped out to do software engineering... when this
guy was graduating from High School in 1995. To me it has been obvious for a
very long time that the standard model is pretty damn close which means we are
in a pretty shitty energy regime for discovering anything new. I agree that
astronomical observations are really the only way forward.

~~~
bjt
"This guy" is a woman named Sabine.

~~~
spullara
Oops! Can't correct it now but I am embarrassed I made that assumption and
apologize.

------
GavinMcG
All these comments about click bait vs. not and how the nightmare scenario
isn't what the commenter expected, yet no one mentions what it actually is!

The answer: confirming the Higgs boson, but no other new physics that would
narrow things beyond what we've been exploring for the past fifty years.

~~~
onion2k
It's the LHC failing to discover anything that we hadn't predicted decades
ago. There's no new physics, so nothing to base new theories on, and, rather
importantly if you're a physicist, _nowhere clues about where to look next_.

~~~
cheez
Is this the same as saying there are no unexplained observations?

~~~
vanattab
No not at all. In fact we know we a missing the piece of the puzzle that
explains how quantum physics and gravity interact but we don't know where to
look. We can try building a bigger accelerator but it would be very expensive.

------
Double_Cast
[https://xkcd.com/1489/](https://xkcd.com/1489/)

------
goldfeld
It's not so hard to think about fitness and reproduction on a metaverse. When
a Universe succeeds in creating one black hole, its singularity creates a new
universe inheriting physical laws from parent but maybe distortions can happen
in space giving rise to mutated memetic material. String theory research shows
how distortion happens in six-dimensional circular Calabi-Yau shapes that
might augment our three-dimensional extended space dimensions. Universes
explode, grow and die, but the laws of those universes able to generate black
holes live on in their offpring.

Presumably the capacity of a universe's laws to cluster matter lead both to
black holes and to enough planets that life is more likely, so that our
existence correlates with good universe fitness. Other universes might do
pretty badly with getting stuff to stick together.

------
l0b0
Several of the most successful theories of the last century were the result of
serendipity (in addition to a lot of hard work): The two examples that spring
to mind are Michelson and Morley sharing their negative results with the
community; Penzias and Wilson not taking noise for an answer. Is it possible
that there are fundamental discoveries hidden in decades of high-energy
physics data records, simply waiting for the right interpretation, or are the
statistic properties of this data sets so well understood that their analysis
is "done"?

------
guscost
I can sympathize with people hoping for a more "useful" result in light of
what avenues this closes down, but c'mon, any reliable scientific result is a
good thing. We don't get to pick what the results are going to be but they are
the only way forward.

As a curious bystander, it seems like some folks may have gotten a false sense
of how difficult these next steps will be, after the recent and astounding
success of mechanics and relativity. We could see another "extended" period
where new observations are insufficient to support a better theory, and if so
we have to be OK with that (but keep looking to make progress if at all
possible).

------
tim333
The "nightmare" seems to be that the LHC only confirms the standard model
without giving clues on how to extend physics further. I've got a hunch that a
future breakthrough may come from AI, that combining general relativity and
quantum mechanics is a bit much for unaided human brains and deep mind style
computer systems may do better at spin-2 stuff in odd numbers of dimensions
than us lot.

~~~
soberhoff
Suppose that you set a computer to work and it learns a fantastically accurate
model that no human is able to understand. Do you then declare victory and
move on?

~~~
mjevans
I think that depends on if it's garbage (noise) or an actual understanding
(signal).

'AI' solutions don't always solve the problem you're trying to train them on,
sometimes they solve the problem of giving you the expected answer from the
samples you give them.

------
btw1234
This isn't a failure. It's just the result of a bunch of experiments. What
would be worse is if the scientific community was unable to raise funds for
such large experiments due to fear of failure. It's ok, we tried something,
now we know to try something else.

------
manarth
Only 3 years between conclusive evidence for the Higgs Boson - a Nobel Prize-
winning discovery, and the culmination of a 40 year search - and the nightmare
scenario that _all they 've discovered is the Higgs Boson_.

Oh well, perhaps they'll build an Even Larger Hadron Collider?

~~~
Jweb_Guru
The point is that it would have been more interesting either _not_ to find it
(because there were theoretical limits on how massive it could be) or to find
it along with something new, that we couldn't predict. This really was the
worst-case scenario.

------
robg
The physics is insufficient. We're asking the wrong question because there
isn't one grand theory. In a multiverse we'll just see our place as we always
have, the right set of answers to be asking the questions.

------
dexwiz
It's strange that physicist are so unwilling to explore radically different
theories. Our understanding of particle physics is less than a century old.
The theory of phlogiston, which was unequivocally wrong, last longer.

Naturalness probably spawns from mathematical constants, most of which are
around 1. [1] This also assumes the dimensional analysis is correct, or that
certain values are not derived.

Also, have all of the easy physic experiments been done? Seems like physics is
only being explored at high energies in expensive set-ups. Some of the biggest
discoveries of 100 years ago were done with relatively cheap set-ups, see the
Gold Foil Experiment.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_constants_and_fun...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_constants_and_functions)

~~~
epistasis
I'm not sure that they're unwilling at all. String theory, etc, is radically
different and perhaps so radically different that its not even pursuing.

If you have any ideas for easy, novel physics experiments, please dive in. But
after 100 years of lots and lots and lots of people playing around, most of
what people can imagine has been done. If there's going to be something new,
it's going to be radically different, most likely, with entirely new areas of
physics, not some refinement of existing theory.

If "physics" were a newly discovered continent, there's a good chance that
we've discovered most of what's on the surface.

There's still exploration, I think. I'm not a physicist by any means, but it
seems that things like condensed matter physics are plowing ahead in new
areas, away from the "surface of the continent," if you will allow me to
continue the metaphor.

But if you're starting with the physics that you learn as an undergrad taking
engineering and what you get from newspapers, those branches seem pretty well
capped off for the foreseeable future. Better to go to new areas that still
have millions of discoveries waiting, like biology or other complex systems.

~~~
selimthegrim
Dynamical systems (and by extension classical mechanics) is far from a
completely understood field - especially nonlinear dynamics.

------
dboreham
Interesting personal note for me is that C.N. (Frank) Yang told me over dinner
15 years ago about his "The Party's Over" prediction. Only now do I know what
he meant! (And I guess he was right)

------
almog
Since I'm now reading The Wheel of Osheim by Mark Lawrence, I was expecting to
something completely different from this article.

------
themgt
I am more and more on board with the Lee Smolin "singular universe" concept.
To me it's very analogous to the Darwinian revolution in biology. Physicists
are still pre-Darwin, unable to understand why the universe looks so "un-
natural". It's the watchmaker analogy for physical laws and constants, and the
answer is the laws look so well-tuned because the laws and particles
themselves "evolved" and tuned themselves into the stable universe we see.

~~~
justinpombrio
Evolution depends on a means of variation (in biology, random mutation), and
on a measure of fitness (in biology, number of children). What would the means
of variation and the measure of fitness be for laws of physics?

~~~
TeMPOraL
I think more accurately, a measure of fitness includes a fitness filter (in
biology, death). This raises another question - what would be the fitness
filter for the universe?

~~~
adrianN
Entities capable of asking this question?

~~~
TeMPOraL
Does lack of such entities _kill_ a universe? If not, then we're just reducing
the problem to anthropic principle here.

~~~
ivoras
It's very likely that there's no higher purpose in any universe's existence -
a/the universe could just be a set of random "rules and laws" which happen to
not die out as soon as they are randomly created.

Of course verifying this probably requires that we inspect most of our
universe directly...

------
lucb1e
Title: LHC nightmare

First paragraph: "I finished highschool in ..."

Second paragraph: "Little did I realize"

Third paragraph: "Since I entered physics"

Fourth paragraph: "During my professional career"

Fifth paragraph: "When I look at"

Sixth paragraph: "For the last ten years you’ve been told that the LHC must
see some new physics besides the Higgs because otherwise nature isn’t
“natural” - [...]. I’ve been laughed at when I explained that I don’t buy into
naturalness"

Seventh paragraph: "The idea of naturalness"

Eighth paragraph: "we’ve entered what has become known as the “nightmare
scenario” for the LHC: The Higgs and nothing else."

Ah, the article starts in the eighth paragraph. Summary: read paragraphs 8 and
the last, 9.

~~~
noobermin
Some of us enjoy reading and writing like this. Writing especially in non-
expository formats is more than just communicating the thesis of an article.
Background and personal touch are often entertaining.

Take your comment for example. Your comment's thesis is the last sentence
"Summary: read paragraphs 8 and the last, 9", but delaying that to the end
yields a different effect for the reader than if you began with the thesis and
then supplied examples.

~~~
lucb1e
I understand your viewpoint completely, I used to enjoy these articles too.
Thousands of words on a single topic, no problem.

But time went on and I got tired of it. I discovered time is not infinite even
when I have about sixty years ahead of me. I don't read mainstream news
because knowing about the latest terror attack (or even positive news, like
the latest rare animal being born in a zoo) doesn't help me in any way. Most
of the time it just makes me feel bad for or angry about something that I can
do nothing about nor affects me in any way.

I still read fiction as a past time activity and as I said, I used to enjoy
these articles too, so I understand your point. It's just not the format I
like to read for news.

(As for my own comment, burying the main thing, in my defense: it has
structure that you can skip past very easily until the last sentence. But
again, I see your point.)

~~~
xenophonf
This isn't a news article. It's the electronic equivalent of some person's
diary. If you want something more formal, you'll probably be better served by
skimming arXiv or subscribing to _Nature_.

------
meeper16
The more we know the more we know how much we do not know...

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIlWDljtlN4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIlWDljtlN4)

------
datadata
Arrival of sophons confirmed.

------
dghughes
I was expecting a large scale coolant leak of helium flooding the work areas,
a quench.

------
sopooneo
"It has left them without guidance, lost in a thicket of rapidly multiplying
models" I can't help but think if JavaScript fatigue.

------
markbnj
I don't know about everyone else, but when I read 'The LHC "nightmare
scenario" has come true' I expected a black hole, or reality being sucked down
a pinpoint wormhole. Maybe those are the same thing.

------
lostgame
Wow. Really have to agree with the click bait thing here.

Also, this article takes forever to get to the point - I was able to skip most
of the content until like 75% the way through the thing.

~~~
lostgame
Why is this down voted? Wanna understand how people could disagree on this
point, especially when it's the most common comment on this page

~~~
yoha
My best guess: the article is 726 words; That's pretty short by HN's
standards.

~~~
mcguire
The modern education system is failing pretty hard if a 700-word article about
an existential crisis in theoretical physics (or at least a physicist) is
considered "too long" and taking "forever to get to the point".

------
sudhirj
If it had created a black hole, I doubt we'd read about it. Wouldn't it
oscillate about the earths centre, and swallow it within a few seconds?

~~~
adrianN
It would probably evaporate before doing any harm. If Hawking radiation
exists, then tiny black holes produce massive amounts of it.

