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Particle physics may have reached the end of the line
- arcanus 8y ago'There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement.' --Albert Michelson 1894
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Voloskaya 8y agoAnd he was very wrong.
- chrisweekly 8y agoI took that as GP's point.
- sidcool 8y agoTo better my understanding, what new discoveries were made post 1984? Few I can recollect: 1. Higgs 2. Gravitational Waves 3. ???
- andyjohnson0 8y ago1894, not 1984.
- qwerty456127 8y ago> 2. Gravitational Waves You probably mean Narendra Modi Waves[1] :-) [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-46778879 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-46778879
- krastanov 8y agoA lot of stuff in cosmology about the curvature of the universe, dark energy, expansion. Some of the quarks were not observed until after. Observation with high beam neutrinos. Controllable quantum systems were barely imagined in 84, and now they are "common" and we might even be able to scale them to sizes necessary for quantum computing in the next decade.
- Iwan-Zotow 8y ago3. Neutrino mass (NP 2015) 4. Accelerated expansion of the Universe (NP 2011)
- throwawaymath 8y agoThis quote has nothing to do with the article's point. The article is not making a claim that there are no open questions remaining in particle physics.
- eitland 8y agoHe was a bit more nuanced it seems: https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Albert_A._Michelson https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Albert_A._Michelson
- jschwartzi 8y agoYeah, the context of the quote is that he's making the argument that more exact measurements are enabling us to measure deviations between physical theory and reality, and that these deviations are where new science lies. In other words, having already determined in broad strokes how the mechanics of the world work(conservation of mass, conservation of energy, thermodynamics, etc.) it now falls to us to make increasingly precise measurements of physical systems. Assuming that these laws always apply, we then need to figure out why our precise measurements do not match up with the predictions of our science. He's not talking about the end of science at all, and it's pretty uncharitable to think Michelson would ever say such a thing.
- ForHackernews 8y agoCollider physics is not the whole of particle physics. There are in fact known inconsistencies in the standard model (for example, experimental evidence shows neutrinos have mass[0]) that remain unexplained and need further study. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrino#Mass https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutrino#Mass
- FreeFull 8y agoThere's also the whole issue of figuring out what dark matter is made out of. Neutrinos account for a small part of it, but the rest is completely unknown.
- mpc755 8y agoDark matter is a supersolid that fills 'empty' space, strongly interacts with ordinary matter and is displaced by ordinary matter. What is referred to geometrically as curved spacetime physically exists in nature as the state of displacement of the supersolid dark matter. The state of displacement of the supersolid dark matter is gravity. The supersolid dark matter displaced by a galaxy pushes back, causing the stars in the outer arms of the galaxy to orbit the galactic center at the rate in which they do. Displaced supersolid dark matter is curved spacetime.
- FreeFull 8y agoI have a few questions: 1) What exactly do you mean by a supersolid? 2) How would this be described mathematically? What predictions would your theory make? 3) How does this account for some galaxies seeming to have large amounts of dark matter, and others seeming to have less? 4) What predictions does your theory make with regards to the expansion of the universe? 5) What predictions does this theory have with regards to places with extreme gravity, such as neutron stars and black holes?
- T-A 8y agoIt takes a truly reactionary definition of "standard model" to claim that it's inconsistent with neutrino masses. The extension is straightforward and was not part of the original formulation simply because there was no experimental data requiring it when Weinberg first wrote down his model of leptons. He also didn't include quarks, so by the same logic, the "standard model" is inconsistent with those too.
- jgoodknight 8y agoI do think it's worthwhile to question building an incredibly expensive particle collider without a specific purpose in mind, when the money could go towards fields like fusion energy, quantum computing, or cancer research
- Filligree 8y agoWe have more than enough money to do all of the above. Science is a sideshow; it absorbs a nearly infinitesimal part of the economy, and could be easily funded by a military funding decrease small enough that it'd scarcely be noticed. Yes, a larger collider is unlikely to find much, but it's cheap enough that we should do it anyway. As bets go, it's a good one.
- titzer 8y ago> it absorbs a nearly infinitesimal part of the economy In 2018 the NSF requested $6.653 billion. (More than the stupid wall--don't tell Trump.) That's some real money, and it should be well-spent. A new collider is probably not well-spent.
- Voloskaya 8y agoOr 1% of the budget of the department of defense. In other words, a sideshow.
- raverbashing 8y agoThe trick is to make the military finance your science project by finding a military justification for it.
- aaronblohowiak 8y agoI don’t know why you were downvoted, a lot of CompSci research is funded this way, including some of the things a few of us enjoy today (internet.)
- dboreham 8y agoFrom : http://chaosbook.org/extras/CNYang.html http://chaosbook.org/extras/CNYang.html "In the next ten years, the most important discovery in high-energy physics is that `the party's over'." Frank Yang, 1980
- pbhjpbhj 8y agoI'm pretty sure someone said everything in physics has been discovered just before the start of the 20th Century boom in theoretical physics too. Michelson (of Michelson-Morley fame), apparently, IIRC. I'd warrant that despite his credentials Yang (of Yang-Mills fame) is making a similar mistake. But I do think we're likely to see a retarding of the pace of change in fundamental physics (I think we're on to a reflective phase, where science consolidates, and social change progresses; leading to more focus on higher-order sciences - biology and such).
- Anon84 8y agoThe difference is that back then there were experimental observations that couldn't be explained and that led to completely new branches of physics like general relativity and quantum theory. Right now that is nothing than can point the way. General Relativity, Quantum Mechanics and Electromagnetism are extremely successful with no obvious flaws (other than not always working well with one another) and the few things about which we have no clue (dark energy, dark matter, etc) are so removed from our capabilities that they're intractable.
- davrosthedalek 8y agoThere are a lot of dark matter searches out there which would disagree with your last statement. But further than that, we still have a lot of puzzles to solve. Proton radius, muon g-2, proton spin, ...
- Anon84 8y agoAnd they'll keep searching... and finding nothing. :o) And is solving those puzzles worth the tens of billions of dollars needed to build the next generation of accelerators? How much further would that same amount of money go if invested elsewhere? Hell, invest a few billion in building a true quantum computer or working towards true AI (just to name two areas where there are many more puzzles and obvious directions to explore) and see how much more impact that has and how much faster you can solve those same physics puzzles.
- cageface 8y agoThis is reminiscent of the plot of Cixin Liu’s “Three Body Problem” trilogy of science fiction novels, where an alien race actively interferes with particle physics experiments on earth in order to limit the progress of physics research. Highly recommended for fans of hard sci-fi.
- Simon_says 8y ago(Possible spoilers, but not really) But they also stretch out an elementary particle to gargantuan proportions in order to write out a circuit board on the surface, so I don't know if its really a bastion of hard science fiction. It's closer to fantasy about sciencey stuff.
- T-A 8y ago> Highly recommended for fans of hard sci-fi. Only if they are willing to believe that entanglement enables superluminal communication and that protons can be "unfolded" to macroscopic branes.
- mr_luc 8y agoAha! This is the perfect place to ask this! I've dipped back into reading SF after a long time of only reading the classics (Heinlein et al), and the Three-Body Problem, which I read a few days ago, did seem to me to fit into that mould. But what are some other modern "hard SF" books you've enjoyed?
- ghaff 8y agoPerhaps most obviously The Martian.
- SonOfLilit 8y agoGreg Egan is my favorite, start perhaps with "Permutation City".
- hindsightbias 8y agoRecent - James Corey (what the Expanse is based off of). Daniel Suarez would be popular in these circles, but more Crichton-y science than next 100 years. Some of Stephenson's books (Seveneves, etc). Others Stephen Baxter, Richard Morgan (Altered Carbon). All great, but I'm more old-school, William Gibson, James P. Hogan, Greg Bear (Eon series), Mary Doria Russell (The Sparrow).
- fhood 8y agoThis is unfair. Obviously our knowledge is incomplete. We have yet to make that all important connection between general relativity and qft and as far as I can tell, next steps towards that process are not clear. So banging shit together even harder to see if it can produce some anomalies doesn't seem like the worst possible idea, and at the very least it might rule out more possibilities.
- danharaj 8y agoThe author's point is that you wouldn't expect to see quantum gravity at any scale we could feasibly probe for the next few centuries. If one can't come up with a theoretical justification for such an anomaly then perhaps that money should be put towards a more promising project. It's all about opportunity cost.
- macintux 8y agoOpportunity cost plus future budgeting. If we build a bigger collider and find nothing useful, it’ll be that much harder to persuade lawmakers to fund an even bigger one later.
- magicalhippo 8y ago> The author's point is that you wouldn't expect to see quantum gravity at any scale we could feasibly probe for the next few centuries. However the next-gen gravitational wave observatories should be able to start poking at quantum gravity, from what I understand.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- raverbashing 8y agoMaybe the real way of progressing is not by building bigger accelerators with the same technology (and of course a LHC successor would need several new evolutionary developments), but finding out ways of producing higher energy collisions without resorting to accelerating particles in a tube. We're not even sure if there's anything in those higher energy ranges, there are certainly knowledge gaps, but maybe a bigger collider is not the answer. At least not until we have some other hints and new theoretical ideas.
- quantumwoke 8y agoWhile I do believe our knowledge of particle physics is still incomplete, the money spent plumbing its depths seems disproportionately high. When was fusion energy meant to be produced again?
- PavlikPaja 8y agoNuclear fusion won't work, because stars are not powered by fusion. What happens in the stars is that heavier elements capture protons, until they eventually reach lead, where it keeps cycling - lead 206 captures proton, turns into bismuth 207, which decays into lead 207, captures another proton, turns into bismuth 208, captures yet another proton, turns into polonium 209, which either decays into lead 205 (releasing a helium core), or captures another proton and the resulting astatine 210 decays into polonium 210, and the polonium 210 decays back into lead 206 + a helium atom. Which is why direct fusion of hydrogen/deuterium will never work at expected temperatures and controllable speed, it can only work in explosions, if at all.
- jerf 8y agoIf what you say was true, the bombs wouldn't work either. The bombs are based on the same math as stellar physics.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- PavlikPaja 8y agoThey're explosions though, they can't be controlled. And they contain heavy elements as the trigger.
- jerf 8y agoNeither of those sentences is relevant to, or contradicts, what I said.
- ivalm 8y ago
- dwaltrip 8y agoIt seems very strange to say that "particle physics may be done", given that are several enormous mysteries and problems in physics that clearly indicate our knowledge is incomplete. A few examples: QFT and GR are not integrated, dark matter, dark energy, the vacuum catastrophe, and so on... One could make the argument that a larger collider is not the best way to attack these (I have no idea), but that is a different statement.
- archgoon 8y agoThe author's argument is not that there are not questions that still need to be answered; but there is no reason at all to believe that a larger collider, that we are capable of building with today's technology, will answer any of them. (This point is made explicit in the comments). If the funding for your field is predicated on building a larger collider to discover new particles; then you're in trouble. That is the sense 'Particle Physics may be done' is meant in this context.
- dwaltrip 8y agoOk, I see where the argument is coming from, thanks. I am having trouble buying the idea that without new colliders, there is nothing left to do in the field of particle physics or even with the Standard Model. But I could off base here, or perhaps my interpretation of the article is overly literal.
- peterlk 8y agoSeveral years ago, shortly after the Higgs discovery, I sat down with a couple CERN people, and their comment was that the current problem is that we need more theoretical physicists coming up with measurable predictions. As many of the other posters state, obviously there is more to learn, but we could learn faster if we had better (and more) predictions about what we might find.
- czbond 8y agoAs a layman, from your statement, what do we have now? [meaning if we don't have enough theoretical physicists]. Is it that we have enough theoretical scientist, but the predictions are not testable? Or not enough talent?
- dtech 8y ago> Is it that we have enough theoretical scientist, but the predictions are not testable? Yes, much research goes into string theory, but its predictions are "not even wrong", they cannot be proven false by experiment [1]. Disclaimer: I'm a layman on the topic, this is just repeating what I've heard. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Not-Even-Wrong-Failure-Physical/dp/0465092764 https://www.amazon.com/Not-Even-Wrong-Failure-Physical/dp/04...
- Steuard 8y agoDisclaimer: I'm a string theorist. Please try to be at least a little bit skeptical when a handful of naysayers claim that an entire field's worth of very smart people are all spending their careers on pointless work. Those naysayers could be right, obviously! (Even as experts we have to recognize the possibility, and to the many laymen looking on from outside it's even harder to judge.) But if you read Peter Woit's dismissive rants and accept them as gospel truth, just remember that in doing that you're choosing to believe that hundreds (thousands?) of dedicated, passionate, deeply knowledgeable physicists are either painfully deluded or deliberately running some sort of collective scam. You're choosing to believe that either none of us have bothered to read Woit's objections or that we've all failed to accept them even though they're right. I'm not sure what our motivation for that is supposed to be. I promise you: people who go into fundamental physics aren't in it because it's an easy road to a steady paycheck! We do this because we're driven to understand the building blocks of the universe. If I were to become convinced that my current approach to trying to understand the universe was fundamentally a dead end, I'd be wasting my life if I continued to study it! I'd be throwing away everything I've trained for, everything in science that I care about. And I have no idea what Woit thinks I'm getting in return. So your call. Either Woit's right and we're all knowingly wasting our lives, or the situation isn't as cut and dried as Woit claims it is.
- Abishek_Muthian 8y ago"There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement." - Kelvin, 1900 Prof. Stephen Hawking mentions this in general context that, 'they thought physics was a closed subject in early 20th century' & proceeds to state how the universe was unfolded in theoretical physics in 'Brief Answers to the Big Questions'.
- throwawaymath 8y agoYes, we get it. You're the second person to cite that quote in this thread. But the article is not saying there is nothing new to be discovered in (particle) physics.
- Abishek_Muthian 8y agoMy bad that I didn't see the earlier comment, interesting that it was attributed to Albert Michelson; seems a similar statement was made by him as well. As far the article is concerned, I didn't quote to suggest they say it is end of particle physics. I just didn't agree with, > But with the Higgs found, the next larger collider has no good motivation Theoretical physicists were in consensus that to find precise answers w.r.t what happened during Big Bang we need high energy collider of the size of our solar system, that didn't deter them from creating LHC.
- eitland 8y agoSeems this is misattributed: https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Albert_A._Michelson https://en.m.wikiquote.org/wiki/Albert_A._Michelson
- Abishek_Muthian 8y agoIt is said that Albert Michelson made similar quote, but the quote I stated has been attributed to Kelvin.[1] [1] : http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/biography/Kelvin.html http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/biography/Kelvin.html
- unreal37 8y agoParticle Physicists are going nuts in the comments.
- qwerty456127 8y agoPerhaps it's time to stop building colliders bigger and bigger, start building the ultimate big one (like around the whole planet) and concentrate on doing math and other kinds of experiments until it's finished.
- maxander 8y agoI find it fascinating that the prevalent comment on this are variations of "that can't be right, we still don't understand [things, such as dark energy, etc]." It demonstrates one of the most pernicious biases in science. Particle accelerators have been the mainstay and principle tool for particle physics, and have produced amazing results. Further, there are obvious questions in fundamental physics that the Standard Model revealed by these experiments does not answer. But, it does not follow these further questions can be answered via accelerators that us humans can construct. The universe has made no promise to us that its mysteries are accessible, least of all through some particular method. We had a particular reason to believe the LHC would reveal new physics (the Higgs boson prediction) and we have no such reason for the proposed future accelerator; our evaluation should change as a result. My guess would be that astrophysics is a better route to understanding the mysteries of fundamental physics; astronomers can measure distant phenomena with surprising accuracy already, and objects such as black holes are one of the few cases where exotic phenomena are currently widely expected to occur. Perhaps the money is better spent on a truly gigantic space telescope?
- eutropia 8y agothe James Webb space telescope was originally supposed to only cost 1 billion, but now is around 10 billion USD. Still, we could build two more of those for the price of a new LHC. And the JWST is going to give us insights about galaxy formation, exoplanets, and more!
- pbhjpbhj 8y agoYes, detectors have also produced new results in [particle] physics, like with neutrinos, cosmic ray showers, and - if you count them - gravity waves.
- smallnamespace 8y agoI think a little context here is in order: from a 10000-foot high level, the particles that can be seen depend on the amount of energy present in the system, which is why we spend billions of dollars accelerating basic particles (protons in the case of the LHC) to high energies and literally SMASH them together, so we can see what flies out. We see four distinct, different forces in the universe: strong and weak nuclear forces, electromagnetism, and gravity. Our Standard Model predicts that these forces become more unified at higher energy levels: 1. Electromagnetism merges with weak nuclear force at 246 GeV 2. Electroweak force merges with strong nuclear force at around ~10^16 GeV ('grand unification') 3. Finally, quantum mechanics predicts these forces become unified, which is to say indistinguishable, at the Planck energy, around 10^19 GeV. As we get closer to predicted unification energies, we see different mixes of particles, and the Higgs boson is in fact the particle responsible for electroweak symmetry breaking, with a mass of around 126 GeV. The problem is that the LHC produces collisions of around 10^4 GeV, so from our current energy scale up to the next unification, with the strong force, we're off by a factor of 10^12. Back of the envelope estimate is that a supercollider that can reach grand unification energies with our current technology would be around the size of the solar system. Hence the article: particle smashing is a brute-force approach to investigating new physics, but now there is an extremely wide gulf between what we have discovered, and what we think lies next, hence we need to be more clever than using brute force.
- dkersten 8y agoInteresting. Thanks for posting this, it really helped me understand what the issue is.
- high_derivative 8y agoThanks for these insights! Do experimental (!) particle physicists have any other way of doing research on this than colliders?
- Balgair 8y agoOne possibility is in using space based detectors. Essentially, you put the detectors up above the atmosphere in a relatively 'neutral' area of space to avoid background from other sources [0]. Then, using this floating detector, you use other sources in the universe to do the colliding for you. Something like an astrophysical jet[1] coming out of a black hole, some neutron stars colliding, some super novae collapsing, etc. Taking all these detectors together, you can then get the results you want. The major issue is that you have nearly no idea when/where these events will occur, and they are really rare to begin with. Add the distances that these things occur at and your error bars go through the roof[2]. Still, over a VERY long time and with a LOT of these detectors spread about the Sol system (and likely a bit further out), you can get the results you'd need. It's not cheap or easy or timely. But with 12 orders of magnitude to go, it's a lot cheaper, easier, and more timely than trying to build an accelerator with Jupiter in the way :) [0] as in, not next to the Sun, Earth, Moon, near gravitational perturbers, etc. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrophysical_jet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astrophysical_jet [2] http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/geoopt/lenseq.html http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/geoopt/lenseq.htm...
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 8y agoWell there is good news: The Universe contains structures capable of accelerating particles to the energies we want to observe and blasts them in our direction occasionally. It may take a lot longer, but we can observe those.
- Mugwort 8y agoThat simply isn't true. Not discovering a new particle outside of the standard model, not discovering supersymmetry, or bumping against an energy desert does NOT spell the end of the line for particle physics any more than GR isn't over just because they discovered gravity waves. What you guys don't understand is that model building is not a hard activity at all. SU(5), SO(10), E6 whatever. Graduate students do those calculations all the time. What is hard is understanding concepts and there are more than a few surprises hidden away inside the standard model. Strange matter is poorly understood. There may be ways to pretty up the standard model that haven't been discovered yet. People like to go around complaining how "ugly" it is. It's not. It's prettier and smarter than they are, they're just jealous. Particle physics is doing just great and the only thing wrong with it is that it is dramatically underfunded.
- sprash 8y agoI could not disagree more with the general statement of the author. Actually, we are now going from a boring phase of particle physics where the theory was able to predict anything we were able to measure afterwards to a phase where no theorists has a clue what might happen. This phase is called "exploration". It consists of many "blue shots" of which many will probably have zero results but have to be done in order to find out what is really going on. Theorists had a good run with prediction, now it's the experimentalists turn to lead the way with exploration by producing new data. When the Muon (basically a heavy version of the electron) was first discovered it 'seemed so incongruous and surprising at the time, that Nobel laureate I. I. Rabi famously quipped, "Who ordered that?"'[Wikipedia] The new CERN collider has got to be build. To risk to miss the next great "Who ordered that?" moment would be grossly inconsequential.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Anon84 8y agoUsually, when we reach the limits of theoretical physics we have unexplained experimental results or when the experimental side starts getting boring, we have theories that can be used to make new predictions. Right now, the problem is that there is no clear direction in which to proceed. No new theory predicts anything that can be feasibly tested and there's nothing experimentally surprising that can't be explained theoretically. Until there's a breakthrough, a theoretical framework with testable experimental predictions, there is no point in wasting a few more billion to build bigger holes on the ground in Switzerland. While I am a theoretical physicist by training, I have no doubt that those same billions could be much better used by many other fields such as biology, chemistry, computer science, ai, etc...
- sprash 8y agoThis is the classic theorist talking who apparently knows nothing about the real world. It takes a lot of expertise to build a particle accelerator. This expertise will literally die off, if we stop building accelerators for say the next 50 years. The next generation will have to start at zero again and it will take 80+ years to build the following one instead of 20. In my phd thesis I had to partly rebuild an experiment that was done 35 years ago. (We were not able to improve the systematical errors. The statistics was vastly improved due to modern electronics though). All people who were involved in the old experiment were either retired or dead. The practical problems we encountered were "theoretical trivial" but plenty and time consuming (e.g. finding the right glue with has the right optical density and which does not dissolve the radiation hardened wavelength shifters). If we had just one person to talk to who had done the old experiment we could have done it in 1/4th time or better.
- Mugwort 8y agoStephen Hawking said something to the effect that since the Higgs was discovered particle physics was less interesting. To him but not to me. Particle physics is better off than ever. Experimentally, things are going to change immensely. Deep learning revolutionize particle physics and it's only going to get better. Technology gets better. Regarding theory, I personally think particle physics is in that same awkward stage as calculus before Weierstrass, Dedekind and Cauchy made their pioneering discoveries in analysis. Even after that there was still much to do. That was just the beginning Lebesgue, Danielle integral, Moore-Smith convergence. We're at the very beginning stages of particle physics theory. Nobody even knows what the Feynman integral really IS. Most of the mathematics we currently use is sophisticated but in another sense, quite dippy. Even superstring theory is suffused with what we'll likely look back on as broken maths. All the easier discoveries have been made and now the game is going to be different. That's a great place to be.
- blancheneige 8y ago> Particle physics is better off than ever. yeah but at what cost? how many more billions of taxpayer money need to be poured into this only to further push the theoretical constraints of our parameter space?
- X6S1x6Okd1st 8y agoWhat has particle physics given us after it gave us fusion and fission?
- aeternus 8y agoFaster computers, modern transistor design takes quantum effects into account. Better microscopes. A priceless sense of wonder.
- monochromatic 8y agoQuantum mechanics sure. Particle physics no.
- maxnoe 8y agoThere is no difference. Quantum Mechanics is the current theory of particle physics.
- monochromatic 8y agoQuantum mechanics is not the same as QFT.
- effie 8y agoScientifically, discoveries of new kinds of particles and their strange behaviour. On the practical side, accelerators and generators of those particles for imaging and radiation treatment.
- empath75 8y agoA detailed explanation of how the universe functions at the smallest scales?
- Iwan-Zotow 8y agoWorld Wide Web (thank you, CERN and TBL)
- ajuc 8y agoSaying particle physics is dead because we discovered all basic particles that we could with our resources - is a lot like saying biology is dead because we discovered DNA.
- OscarCunningham 8y agoPerhaps quantum computers will help break the deadlock? They'll make it possible to extrapolate the consequences of theories that were previously intractable. This might mean that a large number of candidate theories could be tested wholesale to see of they match existing evidence. In particular I know that it's currently very hard to get predictions from quantum chromodynamics, which means that the standard model hasn't yet been fully tested.
- vertline3 8y agoBefore we throw huge money, we have to make sure we are really using it the best way. These ever larger colliders are big investments. The Higgs was an obvious hole missing in the puzzle, let's find another obvious hole in the puzzle.
- _cs2017_ 8y agoCan someone please help me understand why anyone outside of a small circle of curious science buffs should care about particle physics? It seems the field has advanced so far that EVEN IF new discoveries emerge, they would be of no practical value. I'm not saying it's not interesting (I like reading about it FWIW), and I'm not saying it will never ever prove useful. But from resource allocation perspective, tens of billions of dollars required for high energy experiments seem to be much better spent on other areas of physics. That is, until the civilization advances far enough that understanding the depths of particle physics or cosmology becomes relevant.
- hashkb 8y ago> It seems the field has advanced so far that EVEN IF new discoveries emerge, they would be of no practical value Particle physicists would disagree. A complete understanding of quantum mechanics, squared with general relativity, is very likely to have practical applications. Cliche analogy: if you thought the world was flat and ships were falling off the end of the ocean, you might be investing your money in world-edge-detection; and you might say there's no point in studying the edge of the world itself because no practical value can come of it. You wouldn't have any idea that circumnavigation was (relatively) easy once you understood more about the nature of the world.
- _cs2017_ 8y ago> A complete understanding of quantum mechanics, squared with general relativity, is very likely to have practical applications. But anything observable in the world of reasonable energies (up to whatever modern colliders achieve) can be predicted with existing theories. If we discover something that only happens at astronomically high energies, would it really be that useful?
- hashkb 8y ago> But anything observable in the world of reasonable energies (up to whatever modern colliders achieve) can be predicted with existing theories. This is classic "world is flat" / geocentric argument. Breakthroughs are impossible to predict but can't happen if we give up. Edit: > If we discover something that only happens at astronomically high energies, would it really be that useful? We don't know. World being round turned out to be pretty useful.
- mnl 8y agoWell, as far as I know (I might be wrong) she hasn't done any HEP phenomenology, so maybe at this moment she can't get that electroweak precision tests at a Higgs factory aren't a question of if, but when. She has enough training to understand why, so it'd be an interesting exercise for her to explain why that'd be futile, leaving aside the blogging standards.
- mnl 8y agoI'm surprised this has been downvoted. I just can't understand how can be relevant the opinion of a physicist about something they've not worked on just because they have a blog. Sabine is on some kind of crusade nowadays, that's not science, it's something else. You can't dismiss the whole field of particle physics just because, get into the details you're supposed to be aware of and then you'll be adding something more than noise. And I'm sorry she thinks there's nothing worthwhile to be found with upcoming feasible experiments, that's incredibly disappointing, to say the least. The SM is an effective theory, the details of any underlying physics are coded into observables that we aren't done measuring yet, how's that not important?
- kakarot 8y agoI still think we have a lot to learn from Bose-Einstein condensates. If we're hitting a wall with respect to increasing energy in a system as much as possible, maybe we should make sure we've picked all of the low-hanging fruit from decreasing energy in a system as much as possible.
- zwaps 8y agoDamn the sophons :<
- giardini 8y agoI can only hope we've reached "the end of the line." I believe little additional monies should be directed to more powerful particle accelerators until compelling evidence of something worth pursuing comes from theoretical physics. Meanwhile there are many problems where the investment will provide a predictable and useful return.
- maxnoe 8y agoThe thing is, theory can never provide evidence for anything. This is what experiments do.
- giardini 8y agoYou misunderstand: I am not critical of physics experimentation in general; I am critical of the never-ending pursuit of evermore powerful particle accelerators. At this time I oppose further pursuit of ever-bigger accelerators which draw interest and money away from other more productive areas of science.
- Sniffnoy 8y agoNon-mobile link: http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/01/particle-physics-may-have-reached-end.html http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2019/01/particle-physics-ma...