4 ms·
> 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 LH
by 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 agoI agree that it is highly unlikely but it was deemed far more likely when CERN was founded.
- scottlocklin 8y agoPeople 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).
- orbifold 8y agoFunnily enough even a lot of string theorists such as Edward Witten were funded by the department of energy.