4 ms·

If the western particle physics community goes along with that it would be pretty disappointing.

by orbifold 8y ago

rlv-dan 8y ago
Care to elaborate?
- ahje 8y ago
  From the article: > But Cheng asked that scientists worldwide don’t just allow the machine to be built and use it without exercising their political power to help address the country’s issues. “International scientists have leverage and power,” that they can wield without being complicit. She also said that Chinese scientists should be more aware about their potential complicity.
  - iofiiiiiiiii 8y ago
    I do not see why scientists should be expected to play politics if they do not want to. It is great if China is willing to fund and host such a project. Yes, perhaps there are some issues in China but there are issues in every country.
    - ahje 8y ago
      For what it's worth, I agree. Still, you did ask for an elaboration. :)
colordrops 8y ago
why?
- vixen99 8y ago
  CERN is run by 22 member states. Is it not likely that the Chinese center would be run and major decisions entirely made, by the Chinese. Many might suspect that is the case. No problems with that?
  - SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
    Not really. If they want to build something in their own country and run it how they choose then that's up to them. Why is it a problem? Even if they refuse the share any science with the rest of the world we're no worse off than we were before.
    - lpellis 8y ago
      Hopefully they do share though, we might be slightly worse off if they lure away scientists that otherwise would have working in a more open system. But it seems unlikely to be an issue, I'm sure the people working on the cutting edge would like to publish and get the results known everywhere.
    - moccachino 8y ago
      When the world went from no country having nuclear weapons to one country having nuclear weapons, was the rest of the world not worse off than before?
      - stevenjohns 8y ago
        Probably not. We're doing a lot better than we were 100 years ago, and nuclear weapons have been a great deterrent to stop many countries from engaging in wars that they might have been more tempted to if at least one of the parties didn't have nuclear weapons.
        TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
        We've had almost constant small-scale proxy wars instead, and the arms industry isn't exactly going through hard times. More realistically, we got lucky and barely dodged the armageddon bullet on a number of occasions.
      - craftyguy 8y ago
        Are you implying that a particle accelerator can be weaponized?
- T-A 8y ago
  http://www.chinafile.com/reporting-opinion/viewpoint/future-of-particle-physics-will-live-and-die-china http://www.chinafile.com/reporting-opinion/viewpoint/future-... https://newrepublic.com/article/150476/american-elite-universities-selfcensorship-china https://newrepublic.com/article/150476/american-elite-univer...
- orbifold 8y ago
  CERN is a international cooperation of many countries on neutral (Swiss) territory. While maybe not emphasized in recent years one real danger of high energy particle physics is the discovery of an effect that can be weaponized. Right now that seems highly unlikely, but it was a motivation for setting the CERN up in the way it is. Then there is the obvious problem of technology transfer. A lot of detector technology can also be used for high resolution surveillance and missile guidance, I’ve met at least one person who did his doctorate in physics at our institute, worked for Raytheon and now owns a company in the defense sector that contributes parts to the successor of the Hubble telescope. In case you didn’t know there exist 7 nearly identical copies of the Hubble space telescope with different sensors (he worked on those), https://arstechnica.com/science/2012/06/nasa-gets-two-unneeded-hubble-sized-spy-telescopes/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2012/06/nasa-gets-two-unneed.... The same will be true for the next generation version of the telescope and is also one of the reasons for the “cost overruns”.
  - T-A 8y ago
    > one real danger of high energy particle physics is the discovery of an effect that can be weaponized In Dan Brown novels, maybe. The fact that you need an LHC-sized machine to just barely manage to prove the existence of the Higgs boson, and that it has failed to see anything at all beyond the Standard Model, should tell you something. In short, the requirements for a physical phenomenon to be technologically useful are stronger than the requirements for it to be at all observable. Basic conditions like "needs to interact with ordinary matter and have a decent half-life" are sufficient to rule out the existence of still undiscovered particles with technological potential. If they existed, we would already have found them.
    - orbifold 8y ago
      I agree that it is highly unlikely but it was deemed far more likely when CERN was founded.
      - scottlocklin 8y ago
        People totally forget about this: if you simply look at where the accelerator physics funding comes from in the US, that ought to tell the story. Dept of Energy used to be the atomic energy commission, and is still in charge of bomb research. Heck it wasn't that long ago that plain old particle accelerators were contenders for directed energy systems. Yeah, it looks like there is no new physics there which could make devilish new weapons, and frankly the state of modern physics is such I don't know as anyone would notice if there was, but nobody knew this in, say, the 1960s. Serious people thought, for example, one might be able to build a weak field ray gun which causes matter to decay into subatomic particles (source 'towards the year 2018' by the Foreign Policy Association).

If the western particle physics community goes along with that it would be pretty disappointing.

rlv-dan 8y ago

Care to elaborate?

ahje 8y ago
From the article: > But Cheng asked that scientists worldwide don’t just allow the machine to be built and use it without exercising their political power to help address the country’s issues. “International scientists have leverage and power,” that they can wield without being complicit. She also said that Chinese scientists should be more aware about their potential complicity.
- iofiiiiiiiii 8y ago
  I do not see why scientists should be expected to play politics if they do not want to. It is great if China is willing to fund and host such a project. Yes, perhaps there are some issues in China but there are issues in every country.
  - ahje 8y ago
    For what it's worth, I agree. Still, you did ask for an elaboration. :)

colordrops 8y ago

why?

vixen99 8y ago
CERN is run by 22 member states. Is it not likely that the Chinese center would be run and major decisions entirely made, by the Chinese. Many might suspect that is the case. No problems with that?
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
  Not really. If they want to build something in their own country and run it how they choose then that's up to them. Why is it a problem? Even if they refuse the share any science with the rest of the world we're no worse off than we were before.
  - lpellis 8y ago
    Hopefully they do share though, we might be slightly worse off if they lure away scientists that otherwise would have working in a more open system. But it seems unlikely to be an issue, I'm sure the people working on the cutting edge would like to publish and get the results known everywhere.
  - moccachino 8y ago
    When the world went from no country having nuclear weapons to one country having nuclear weapons, was the rest of the world not worse off than before?
    - stevenjohns 8y ago
      Probably not. We're doing a lot better than we were 100 years ago, and nuclear weapons have been a great deterrent to stop many countries from engaging in wars that they might have been more tempted to if at least one of the parties didn't have nuclear weapons.
      - TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
        We've had almost constant small-scale proxy wars instead, and the arms industry isn't exactly going through hard times. More realistically, we got lucky and barely dodged the armageddon bullet on a number of occasions.
    - craftyguy 8y ago
      Are you implying that a particle accelerator can be weaponized?
T-A 8y ago
http://www.chinafile.com/reporting-opinion/viewpoint/future-of-particle-physics-will-live-and-die-china http://www.chinafile.com/reporting-opinion/viewpoint/future-... https://newrepublic.com/article/150476/american-elite-universities-selfcensorship-china https://newrepublic.com/article/150476/american-elite-univer...
orbifold 8y ago
CERN is a international cooperation of many countries on neutral (Swiss) territory. While maybe not emphasized in recent years one real danger of high energy particle physics is the discovery of an effect that can be weaponized. Right now that seems highly unlikely, but it was a motivation for setting the CERN up in the way it is. Then there is the obvious problem of technology transfer. A lot of detector technology can also be used for high resolution surveillance and missile guidance, I’ve met at least one person who did his doctorate in physics at our institute, worked for Raytheon and now owns a company in the defense sector that contributes parts to the successor of the Hubble telescope. In case you didn’t know there exist 7 nearly identical copies of the Hubble space telescope with different sensors (he worked on those), https://arstechnica.com/science/2012/06/nasa-gets-two-unneeded-hubble-sized-spy-telescopes/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2012/06/nasa-gets-two-unneed.... The same will be true for the next generation version of the telescope and is also one of the reasons for the “cost overruns”.
- T-A 8y ago
  > one real danger of high energy particle physics is the discovery of an effect that can be weaponized In Dan Brown novels, maybe. The fact that you need an LHC-sized machine to just barely manage to prove the existence of the Higgs boson, and that it has failed to see anything at all beyond the Standard Model, should tell you something. In short, the requirements for a physical phenomenon to be technologically useful are stronger than the requirements for it to be at all observable. Basic conditions like "needs to interact with ordinary matter and have a decent half-life" are sufficient to rule out the existence of still undiscovered particles with technological potential. If they existed, we would already have found them.
  - orbifold 8y ago
    I agree that it is highly unlikely but it was deemed far more likely when CERN was founded.
    - scottlocklin 8y ago
      People totally forget about this: if you simply look at where the accelerator physics funding comes from in the US, that ought to tell the story. Dept of Energy used to be the atomic energy commission, and is still in charge of bomb research. Heck it wasn't that long ago that plain old particle accelerators were contenders for directed energy systems. Yeah, it looks like there is no new physics there which could make devilish new weapons, and frankly the state of modern physics is such I don't know as anyone would notice if there was, but nobody knew this in, say, the 1960s. Serious people thought, for example, one might be able to build a weak field ray gun which causes matter to decay into subatomic particles (source 'towards the year 2018' by the Foreign Policy Association).