4 ms·

My personal opinion (and I might be biased since I'm not a collider guy) is that it's time to take a break from the energy frontier and put our efforts into oth

by djaque 6y ago

My personal opinion (and I might be biased since I'm not a collider guy) is that it's time to take a break from the energy frontier and put our efforts into other kinds of physics. There's a whole world out there besides "fixing" the standard model. I'm having a hard time finding it, but there's a quote from a famous physicist along the lines of "we already have a theory of everything we encounter in daily life, it's just that we can't apply it to practically anything". For instance, we still have no idea how unconventional superconductors work. Of course, they're completely described by plain old quantum mechanics without even using field theory. However, that still doesn't mean we understand them because the theory is too complex. I'm personally interested in the rising complexity frontier of physics where increased computing power and new methods of approaching problems will help uncover emergent phenomena. Plus, there's other accelerators besides colliders that are essential to this field (x-ray light sources for instance). We should come back to the energy problem experimentally when we can affordably make a revolutionary accelerator (like x100, not a factor of 2 or 3). That will come when we have mastered advanced acceleration techniques like plasma and wakefield.

FriendlyNormie 6y ago
Another one falls for the pretext. These colliders are created to attempt to create conditions that will call the simulation admins’ attention to this region of space. They believe the strange entities they see while on LSD/DMT are real and outside this universe and are the admins, hence the bizarre satanic rituals at CERN in their honor that you all pretend never took place.
yummypaint 6y ago
My perception is that this is closer to the direction the field has been moving for the last half decade or so. Pushing the "energy frontier" was needed to experimentally find the higs and test supersymmetric theories. The higs was measured, and literally hundreds of proposed theories and particles, including very well-liked theories, have been eliminated. This is a big success. However, it turns out that some of the same physics of extremely high energy scales is also accessible through extremely high precision/low background experiments like the many neutrinoless double beta decay searches, or the rapidly growing field of neutrino experiments. In my oppinion, there is still compelling need for an accelerator specialized in colliding electrons with ions at lower energy than at the LHC. The nuclear physics community has been after this for some time now, and it looks like it will be built at Brookhaven. Now that FRIB is almost finished, this will probably be the big budget nuclear physics project for the next 5 years or so.
- djaque 6y ago
  Oh, that's right. I wasn't really placing the electron ion collider (EIC) under the energy frontier umbrella, because they're moving in a different direction. I'm actually sort of involved with them too, but from a distance. I'm pretty sure it will happen, it's just a question of which of two proposals will succeed (more of a political question to be honest). My own interest isn't in colliders at all, but in building atomic probes like x-ray light sources and fast electron diffraction apparatus, but at a scale accessible to universities instead of large facilities.
  - MiroF 6y ago
    like cheap RHEED?
    - djaque 6y ago
      Not quite... the two main technologies I'm talking about are free electron lasers (FELs) and ultrafast electron diffraction. New technologies that only exist at national labs right now. If we could bring access to them to the university scale, then I think it would be a revolution similar to what the wide access to electron microscopy provided. There's so much unexplored physics in chemistry and biology happening at atomic time and length scales. Electron diffraction and FELs are right now the only good ways to study that, but right now they're locked away behind long waiting lists because they're too expensive to have a lot of them.
  - embwbam 6y ago
    Huge segue, I'm a semi-retired web / data engineer just dipping my toes into research data software. I'm collaborating on a psychology paper, but I love physics. Can I ask you some questions? My email is in my profile.
    - djaque 6y ago
      Sure, I don't see your email though. I'm also only a grad student in one specialized field (accelerator physics) so not sure how much I can help with HEP questions.
MiroF 6y ago
> we still have no idea how unconventional superconductors work. Of course, they're completely described by plain old quantum mechanics without even using field theory News to me - I thought that study of non-conventional superconductors relied heavily on effective field theories. Also, I think this is a bit of a strawman - there's a ton of money and effort going into condensed matter physics right now.
- eigenspace 6y ago
  > News to me - I thought that study of non-conventional superconductors relied heavily on effective field theories. What they meant is that understanding the microscopic degrees of freedom, the electrons and ions in a superconductor, does not require field theory. The plain old particle based Schrodinger equations for N electrons interacting with N ions should be absolutely fine. The problem is that we can't actually do anything with that description, so things like effective field theories help us distill the important parts away. > Also, I think this is a bit of a strawman - there's a ton of money and effort going into condensed matter physics right now. While I agree, and I would love to see more progress in particle physics, I also think that comparing the funding landscape of particle physics to condensed matter physics is a little misleading. New discoveries and incremental improvements in condensed matter physics benefit the world in direct and tangible ways. The frontiers of particle physics left the regime where it can benefit the world long, long ago. The energies are just too high, there's no reason to believe that anything they discover will actually matter to anyone other than satisfying their intellectual curiosity (or spinoff technologies). I don't want to sound dismissive of particle physics, because I really do believe in doing physics for its own sake, but honestly a better understanding of particle physics is unlikely to benefit us any more than a great new piece of literature, and the price tag on the next generation collider is just mind-bogglingly high.
  - djaque 6y ago
    Exactly, I was talking about the full many body Hamiltonian being unsolvable.
  - wbl 6y ago
JKCalhoun 6y ago
Or as Feynman put it, "Dogs are easier to understand, but nobody yet knows how dogs work."
- Koshkin 6y ago
  Well, a more appropriate thing to say, going back to physics, would be, “we know how these things work, but we still do not understand them.”
magicalhippo 6y ago
Yeah, there seems to be a lot of interesting areas in, for example, condensed matter physics[1] such as topological insulators[2] which appear have a lot higher chance of having a measurable impact on our lives. That said, there's a lot of know-how in building the complex parts that make up the accelerators and detectors, reducing the HEP investments could erode that know-how. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condensed_matter_physics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condensed_matter_physics [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topological_insulator#Properties_and_applications https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topological_insulator#Properti...
- djaque 6y ago
  I'd contest that second point. I'm actually one of those people that builds the parts that make accelerators (accelerator physics PhD student). There's a lot more interesting accelerator tech outside of the energy frontier. My specific interests for instance are how we can build university scale light and matter sources for atomic physics. It requires the same types of advances that will power future colliders, but enables different types of research.
  - magicalhippo 6y ago
    Yeah I'm sure there's many areas outside of LHC level accelerators the expertise can be used. I just saw it mentioned a few places as a concern and didn't want to come off as throwing HEP under the bus at any cost.
tpmx 6y ago
If nothing else it's bad timing. What we need right now is a giant global investment in pandemic vaccination factories and distribution systems.
SiempreViernes 6y ago
The field of x-ray light sources seems to be pretty well developed, lightsource.org lists 30 of them world wide, so adding one more doesn't look like it's going to critically impact anything except maybe the local community getting the extra jobs. There was at one point truly a fight about the relative importance of the various fields, but the condensed matter people won that. Just look at lightsources.org again, that's 30 facilities worldwide, with 24000 users in Europe alone over the last five years. CERN has basically 1 facility for HEP, with maybe 9000 users worldwide. At this point these call for shutting down particle physics for a few generations while the technology magically develops feel more like jealousy that protein structure isn't as sexy for the public as the search for beyond the standard model physics.
- xyzzyz 6y ago
  > that protein structure isn't as sexy for the public as the search for beyond the standard model physics. You mean, looking for a cure for cancer isn’t as sexy for the public as some arcane things with strange particles nobody understands?
  - SiempreViernes 6y ago
    Doesn't seem like it, cure for a certain type of cancer is a pretty clear utilitarian goal after all: you either do it or you don't type of thing. Also, lab coats are pretty famously not very flattering for your figure.
- godelski 6y ago
  Considering that x-ray lithography still isn't a thing, I'd say that we have a lot more to do with x-ray research. Also, according to CERN[0] >As of 2017, more than 17 500 people from around the world work together to push the limits of knowledge. CERN’s staff members, numbering around 2500...comprising over 12 200 scientists of 110 nationalities, from institutes in more than 70 countries. [0] https://home.cern/about/who-we-are/our-people https://home.cern/about/who-we-are/our-people
- nurbl 6y ago
  X-ray lightsources are improving too, not just multiplying. They are an important tool for many areas of science, not just physics but chemistry, biology and pharmaceutics to name a few. Whether there's any "new physics" left to discover there I guess depends on your point of view, but there's still plenty to learn about how matter works.
jjtheblunt 6y ago
So well said!
eru 6y ago
People are doing exactly that. Comparatively, only a few physicists work on the particle collider stuff.

by djaque 6y ago

FriendlyNormie 6y ago

Another one falls for the pretext. These colliders are created to attempt to create conditions that will call the simulation admins’ attention to this region of space. They believe the strange entities they see while on LSD/DMT are real and outside this universe and are the admins, hence the bizarre satanic rituals at CERN in their honor that you all pretend never took place.

yummypaint 6y ago

My perception is that this is closer to the direction the field has been moving for the last half decade or so. Pushing the "energy frontier" was needed to experimentally find the higs and test supersymmetric theories. The higs was measured, and literally hundreds of proposed theories and particles, including very well-liked theories, have been eliminated. This is a big success. However, it turns out that some of the same physics of extremely high energy scales is also accessible through extremely high precision/low background experiments like the many neutrinoless double beta decay searches, or the rapidly growing field of neutrino experiments. In my oppinion, there is still compelling need for an accelerator specialized in colliding electrons with ions at lower energy than at the LHC. The nuclear physics community has been after this for some time now, and it looks like it will be built at Brookhaven. Now that FRIB is almost finished, this will probably be the big budget nuclear physics project for the next 5 years or so.

djaque 6y ago
Oh, that's right. I wasn't really placing the electron ion collider (EIC) under the energy frontier umbrella, because they're moving in a different direction. I'm actually sort of involved with them too, but from a distance. I'm pretty sure it will happen, it's just a question of which of two proposals will succeed (more of a political question to be honest). My own interest isn't in colliders at all, but in building atomic probes like x-ray light sources and fast electron diffraction apparatus, but at a scale accessible to universities instead of large facilities.
- MiroF 6y ago
  like cheap RHEED?
  - djaque 6y ago
    Not quite... the two main technologies I'm talking about are free electron lasers (FELs) and ultrafast electron diffraction. New technologies that only exist at national labs right now. If we could bring access to them to the university scale, then I think it would be a revolution similar to what the wide access to electron microscopy provided. There's so much unexplored physics in chemistry and biology happening at atomic time and length scales. Electron diffraction and FELs are right now the only good ways to study that, but right now they're locked away behind long waiting lists because they're too expensive to have a lot of them.
- embwbam 6y ago
  Huge segue, I'm a semi-retired web / data engineer just dipping my toes into research data software. I'm collaborating on a psychology paper, but I love physics. Can I ask you some questions? My email is in my profile.
  - djaque 6y ago
    Sure, I don't see your email though. I'm also only a grad student in one specialized field (accelerator physics) so not sure how much I can help with HEP questions.

MiroF 6y ago

> we still have no idea how unconventional superconductors work. Of course, they're completely described by plain old quantum mechanics without even using field theory News to me - I thought that study of non-conventional superconductors relied heavily on effective field theories. Also, I think this is a bit of a strawman - there's a ton of money and effort going into condensed matter physics right now.

eigenspace 6y ago
> News to me - I thought that study of non-conventional superconductors relied heavily on effective field theories. What they meant is that understanding the microscopic degrees of freedom, the electrons and ions in a superconductor, does not require field theory. The plain old particle based Schrodinger equations for N electrons interacting with N ions should be absolutely fine. The problem is that we can't actually do anything with that description, so things like effective field theories help us distill the important parts away. > Also, I think this is a bit of a strawman - there's a ton of money and effort going into condensed matter physics right now. While I agree, and I would love to see more progress in particle physics, I also think that comparing the funding landscape of particle physics to condensed matter physics is a little misleading. New discoveries and incremental improvements in condensed matter physics benefit the world in direct and tangible ways. The frontiers of particle physics left the regime where it can benefit the world long, long ago. The energies are just too high, there's no reason to believe that anything they discover will actually matter to anyone other than satisfying their intellectual curiosity (or spinoff technologies). I don't want to sound dismissive of particle physics, because I really do believe in doing physics for its own sake, but honestly a better understanding of particle physics is unlikely to benefit us any more than a great new piece of literature, and the price tag on the next generation collider is just mind-bogglingly high.
- djaque 6y ago
  Exactly, I was talking about the full many body Hamiltonian being unsolvable.
- wbl 6y ago

JKCalhoun 6y ago

Or as Feynman put it, "Dogs are easier to understand, but nobody yet knows how dogs work."

Koshkin 6y ago
Well, a more appropriate thing to say, going back to physics, would be, “we know how these things work, but we still do not understand them.”

magicalhippo 6y ago

Yeah, there seems to be a lot of interesting areas in, for example, condensed matter physics[1] such as topological insulators[2] which appear have a lot higher chance of having a measurable impact on our lives. That said, there's a lot of know-how in building the complex parts that make up the accelerators and detectors, reducing the HEP investments could erode that know-how. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condensed_matter_physics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condensed_matter_physics [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topological_insulator#Properties_and_applications https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topological_insulator#Properti...

djaque 6y ago
I'd contest that second point. I'm actually one of those people that builds the parts that make accelerators (accelerator physics PhD student). There's a lot more interesting accelerator tech outside of the energy frontier. My specific interests for instance are how we can build university scale light and matter sources for atomic physics. It requires the same types of advances that will power future colliders, but enables different types of research.
- magicalhippo 6y ago
  Yeah I'm sure there's many areas outside of LHC level accelerators the expertise can be used. I just saw it mentioned a few places as a concern and didn't want to come off as throwing HEP under the bus at any cost.

tpmx 6y ago

If nothing else it's bad timing. What we need right now is a giant global investment in pandemic vaccination factories and distribution systems.

SiempreViernes 6y ago

The field of x-ray light sources seems to be pretty well developed, lightsource.org lists 30 of them world wide, so adding one more doesn't look like it's going to critically impact anything except maybe the local community getting the extra jobs. There was at one point truly a fight about the relative importance of the various fields, but the condensed matter people won that. Just look at lightsources.org again, that's 30 facilities worldwide, with 24000 users in Europe alone over the last five years. CERN has basically 1 facility for HEP, with maybe 9000 users worldwide. At this point these call for shutting down particle physics for a few generations while the technology magically develops feel more like jealousy that protein structure isn't as sexy for the public as the search for beyond the standard model physics.

xyzzyz 6y ago
> that protein structure isn't as sexy for the public as the search for beyond the standard model physics. You mean, looking for a cure for cancer isn’t as sexy for the public as some arcane things with strange particles nobody understands?
- SiempreViernes 6y ago
  Doesn't seem like it, cure for a certain type of cancer is a pretty clear utilitarian goal after all: you either do it or you don't type of thing. Also, lab coats are pretty famously not very flattering for your figure.
godelski 6y ago
Considering that x-ray lithography still isn't a thing, I'd say that we have a lot more to do with x-ray research. Also, according to CERN[0] >As of 2017, more than 17 500 people from around the world work together to push the limits of knowledge. CERN’s staff members, numbering around 2500...comprising over 12 200 scientists of 110 nationalities, from institutes in more than 70 countries. [0] https://home.cern/about/who-we-are/our-people https://home.cern/about/who-we-are/our-people
nurbl 6y ago
X-ray lightsources are improving too, not just multiplying. They are an important tool for many areas of science, not just physics but chemistry, biology and pharmaceutics to name a few. Whether there's any "new physics" left to discover there I guess depends on your point of view, but there's still plenty to learn about how matter works.

jjtheblunt 6y ago

So well said!

eru 6y ago

People are doing exactly that. Comparatively, only a few physicists work on the particle collider stuff.