6 ms·

Higgs on the Moon

29 points by panic 9y ago

jessriedel 9y ago
With a cryptic title, no byline or abstract, and a supremely generic introduction, how is anyone supposed to determine whether it's worth reading this article?
- geuis 9y ago
  Yep. Just read it. Basically, the author is proposing the question of whether or not it makes sense to spend vast amounts of money to build an even larger collider than the LHC, currently being planned by CERN to be built in about 20 years. An analogy is made to the US space program, wherein rather than the Apollo missions being the first step in manned expansion into the solar system it was the apex. Since then we've spent hundreds of billions of dollars on the ISS and shuttles for little practical benefit, while generations of scientists and engineers have wasted their careers on these projects that seemingly have gone nowhere. The author likens the clearly defined need for the next larger collider as an ISS type of project, fearing it will absorb the careers of many physicists and ultimately lead to nowhere. Can't say I agree with the position, but it is well written and makes some good points.
nategri 9y ago
I know the author is legit because he got the order of magnitude factor between LHC energy and the highest energy cosmic ray correct. A lot of otherwise clever people forget to correct for center of mass energy.
wilder 9y ago
Inference Review is quite simply the most undeservedly under the radar journal online. And I hope it is not alway so.
madaxe_again 9y ago
As a physicist, I find the treatment of gravity as a "force" rather bizarre. It's not a force per se, rather a perceived force as a result of the curvature of spacetime - it's no more a force than centripetal acceleration, which is a perceived force brought about by a rotating frame of reference. Gravity similarly is a perceived force as a result of a moving frame of reference in a dimension we aren't built to directly perceive, other than as an acceleration towards mass. But that's physics for you - the particle physicists want particles everywhere. The quantum physicists want collapsing waveforms everywhere. The cosmologists just see warped space. If anything, the thing preventing resolution of any variety of GUT is culture.
- terminado 9y ago
  as a result of the curvature of spacetime So... why does this curvature, or slope have any affect on systems of bodies at all? An abstract gradation of some property alone doesn't necessarily provoke further side effects, so why would gravity (this curvature of spacetime) set objects in motion? If you have an undisturbed system of cold stones suspended in a void, that are otherwise motionless over time, and then place a strong, cold, static gravity well in proximity, what impels the stones into the curvature? Why does an otherwise motionless stone move into the curvature of said given gravity well at all?
  - whatshisface 9y ago
    >"otherwise motionless" There's the trick to it - in any context where you are talking about space's curvature, those "motionless" rocks are going to be moving through time. The geodesics that they will follow are parametric curves of the form f:(s)->(x,y,z,t). While there are many possible choices of parameter s (as with any parametric curve), one that physicists particularly like is proper time: the time as shown on the watch of the walking man. So, the only "truly" motionless object would be one that for every second of time it experienced, it would find itself zero seconds in the future. Quite impossible - which is why you can't "pause" yourself along gravitational geodesics and float.
    - terminado 9y ago
      Ah, see, but this is where the communication breakdown emerges. Most people do not intuitively consider a body suspended in space as a constituency of atoms, with subatomic particles operating in static, yet relativistic motion about a nucleus of protons and the like, subject to such curvatures. This is where the fundamental shift in teaching the conceptual principles of gravitation and motion need to occur. Whether it's intuitive or not, one needs to lift away from the concept of the stone moving from point A to point B, and instead, think in terms of a collective glob of photons and other particles being subjected to the same warping of paths that affects the paths of photons, when they transit too close to the sun's gravity well.

29 points by panic 9y ago

With a cryptic title, no byline or abstract, and a supremely generic introduction, how is anyone supposed to determine whether it's worth reading this article?

geuis 9y ago
Yep. Just read it. Basically, the author is proposing the question of whether or not it makes sense to spend vast amounts of money to build an even larger collider than the LHC, currently being planned by CERN to be built in about 20 years. An analogy is made to the US space program, wherein rather than the Apollo missions being the first step in manned expansion into the solar system it was the apex. Since then we've spent hundreds of billions of dollars on the ISS and shuttles for little practical benefit, while generations of scientists and engineers have wasted their careers on these projects that seemingly have gone nowhere. The author likens the clearly defined need for the next larger collider as an ISS type of project, fearing it will absorb the careers of many physicists and ultimately lead to nowhere. Can't say I agree with the position, but it is well written and makes some good points.

nategri 9y ago

I know the author is legit because he got the order of magnitude factor between LHC energy and the highest energy cosmic ray correct. A lot of otherwise clever people forget to correct for center of mass energy.

wilder 9y ago

Inference Review is quite simply the most undeservedly under the radar journal online. And I hope it is not alway so.

madaxe_again 9y ago

As a physicist, I find the treatment of gravity as a "force" rather bizarre. It's not a force per se, rather a perceived force as a result of the curvature of spacetime - it's no more a force than centripetal acceleration, which is a perceived force brought about by a rotating frame of reference. Gravity similarly is a perceived force as a result of a moving frame of reference in a dimension we aren't built to directly perceive, other than as an acceleration towards mass. But that's physics for you - the particle physicists want particles everywhere. The quantum physicists want collapsing waveforms everywhere. The cosmologists just see warped space. If anything, the thing preventing resolution of any variety of GUT is culture.

terminado 9y ago
as a result of the curvature of spacetime So... why does this curvature, or slope have any affect on systems of bodies at all? An abstract gradation of some property alone doesn't necessarily provoke further side effects, so why would gravity (this curvature of spacetime) set objects in motion? If you have an undisturbed system of cold stones suspended in a void, that are otherwise motionless over time, and then place a strong, cold, static gravity well in proximity, what impels the stones into the curvature? Why does an otherwise motionless stone move into the curvature of said given gravity well at all?
- whatshisface 9y ago
  >"otherwise motionless" There's the trick to it - in any context where you are talking about space's curvature, those "motionless" rocks are going to be moving through time. The geodesics that they will follow are parametric curves of the form f:(s)->(x,y,z,t). While there are many possible choices of parameter s (as with any parametric curve), one that physicists particularly like is proper time: the time as shown on the watch of the walking man. So, the only "truly" motionless object would be one that for every second of time it experienced, it would find itself zero seconds in the future. Quite impossible - which is why you can't "pause" yourself along gravitational geodesics and float.
  - terminado 9y ago
    Ah, see, but this is where the communication breakdown emerges. Most people do not intuitively consider a body suspended in space as a constituency of atoms, with subatomic particles operating in static, yet relativistic motion about a nucleus of protons and the like, subject to such curvatures. This is where the fundamental shift in teaching the conceptual principles of gravitation and motion need to occur. Whether it's intuitive or not, one needs to lift away from the concept of the stone moving from point A to point B, and instead, think in terms of a collective glob of photons and other particles being subjected to the same warping of paths that affects the paths of photons, when they transit too close to the sun's gravity well.