4 ms·

It is not tunnel vision when the problem they're tackling is literally stuck in a tunnel. Bigger and bigger colliders are the only direct way we have to study

by djaque 6y ago

It is not tunnel vision when the problem they're tackling is literally stuck in a tunnel. Bigger and bigger colliders are the only direct way we have to study high energy phenomena. It's not that physicists are lazy, it's that the problems they're studying are hard. I'm also seeing a lot resentment for the price tag of colliders in this thread. My personal opinion is that we shouldn't build a new one, but I'll point out that colliders are incredibly cost efficient. The whole LHC (which has been running and providing jobs to people for 12 years) costs a similar amount as just two B-2 bombers. The US owns like 20 of those and that money went somewhere into huge defense contractors profits as opposed to knowledge and tech which is now accessible to the whole world. You might not know this, but a lot of the technology developed during the construction of the LHC is now used to improve medical imaging and power transmission to name a few applications. These all have a direct impact on the quality of our every day life. That fancy PET scan you received to diagnose your cancer was literally funded in part by the LHC.

thysultan 6y ago
I'm all for building particle colliders, it'll just be a bit more exciting sell if they ventured into building one in the vaccum of space – like the moon. It solves two issues with one stone*, and it'll provide leaps of advancement more than the minutiae incremental development cycle we're stuck in. Particle colliders seem to have reached a moore's law threshold on earth, thus the connotation of tunnel vision.
btrettel 6y ago
Comparing the cost against defense spending, which has a reputation for waste, doesn't convince me. If the cost is similar to two B-2 bombers and one thinks that the B-2 bomber is overpriced, one would probably also think that the LHC is overpriced. To me, bringing up that the WWW, fancy PET scans, etc. came in part from HEP and therefore we should be grateful is missing one major point. In the WWW case, in an alternative history it seems likely to me that some other project would have developed something similar around the same time if the funding were allocated differently. As for the other benefits, I think if the money were allocated towards research in those areas it would have been more effectively spent. Ultimately I think the worst "cost" for HEP in general (not just colliders) is that it encourages something like brain drain on other fields. I think that people interested in certain mostly non-practical areas of physics like HEP would do the world a lot more good if they instead got a PhD in some field of engineering or CS, or at the very least a more practical area of "physics". Here I refer to physics in the descriptive sense which doesn't align well with the prescriptive definition of physics. E.g., I don't understand why fluid dynamics is not "physics" in that it's rarely researched in physics departments (unless studied indirectly in chaos theory or plasma physics). Must be too Newtonian for people to care. (For what it's worth I'm at the end of a PhD in mechanical engineering studying fluid dynamics.)
- throwawaylabor 6y ago
  I think GP is saying that the value of LHC is greater than the marginal value of 2 bombers when you already have 18. LHC would be one way to use that some of that "waste" in defense spending more wisely. Regarding "practical" study-- Where you see value in the output of engineering work, those guiding the work of engineers see value in the output of scientific work. If we had more people of the latter type that appreciated the value of scientific work, we might have more productive engineers and developers.
  - btrettel 6y ago
    Defense spending is inefficient, but why should that money be spent on HEP rather than something else? I'm not even convinced that projects like the LHC are a net positive for humanity for the last reason I mentioned. As for your final paragraph, I'm not really sure what you're getting at. If you believe I have misunderstood you, I'm interested in learning how. Most physicists I've met seem to severely underestimate the amount of scientific research conducted by engineers. If you get a PhD in engineering, you're typically doing primarily (if not exclusively) science. The main difference is that this research keeps in mind the applications. That's what makes it useful. I think it's a shame that so many very smart people choose to study HEP rather than engineering where they would do better in the world. And I don't think people working in HEP (for example) make engineers or programmers more productive.
horsawlarway 6y ago
I'd love it if we'd re-allocate some defense spending, but I find this argument pretty disingenuous. The LHC cost about 4.75 billion during construction, and requires a yearly operating budget of around 1 billion dollars. The total cost estimate for finding the Higgs was about 13.25 billion. The B-2 bomber program cost 44 Billion (or an average cost of 2.1 billion per unit), but it resulted in considerably MORE jobs over a much longer time span, also led to several innovations in manufacturing/radar/ECS/Material science, and it costs LESS to maintain per year at ~850 million a year for all 21 units. This all for a program that had immediate and obvious applicability (we got a physical object out the other side with clear purpose), and it was STILL the object of intense budgetary concerns. Basically - It was a costs DISASTER and it was only 4 times the cost. Not saying I'd rather have more bombers than another collider, but this is not the argument I would make...

by djaque 6y ago

thysultan 6y ago

I'm all for building particle colliders, it'll just be a bit more exciting sell if they ventured into building one in the vaccum of space – like the moon. It solves two issues with one stone*, and it'll provide leaps of advancement more than the minutiae incremental development cycle we're stuck in. Particle colliders seem to have reached a moore's law threshold on earth, thus the connotation of tunnel vision.

btrettel 6y ago

Comparing the cost against defense spending, which has a reputation for waste, doesn't convince me. If the cost is similar to two B-2 bombers and one thinks that the B-2 bomber is overpriced, one would probably also think that the LHC is overpriced. To me, bringing up that the WWW, fancy PET scans, etc. came in part from HEP and therefore we should be grateful is missing one major point. In the WWW case, in an alternative history it seems likely to me that some other project would have developed something similar around the same time if the funding were allocated differently. As for the other benefits, I think if the money were allocated towards research in those areas it would have been more effectively spent. Ultimately I think the worst "cost" for HEP in general (not just colliders) is that it encourages something like brain drain on other fields. I think that people interested in certain mostly non-practical areas of physics like HEP would do the world a lot more good if they instead got a PhD in some field of engineering or CS, or at the very least a more practical area of "physics". Here I refer to physics in the descriptive sense which doesn't align well with the prescriptive definition of physics. E.g., I don't understand why fluid dynamics is not "physics" in that it's rarely researched in physics departments (unless studied indirectly in chaos theory or plasma physics). Must be too Newtonian for people to care. (For what it's worth I'm at the end of a PhD in mechanical engineering studying fluid dynamics.)

throwawaylabor 6y ago
I think GP is saying that the value of LHC is greater than the marginal value of 2 bombers when you already have 18. LHC would be one way to use that some of that "waste" in defense spending more wisely. Regarding "practical" study-- Where you see value in the output of engineering work, those guiding the work of engineers see value in the output of scientific work. If we had more people of the latter type that appreciated the value of scientific work, we might have more productive engineers and developers.
- btrettel 6y ago
  Defense spending is inefficient, but why should that money be spent on HEP rather than something else? I'm not even convinced that projects like the LHC are a net positive for humanity for the last reason I mentioned. As for your final paragraph, I'm not really sure what you're getting at. If you believe I have misunderstood you, I'm interested in learning how. Most physicists I've met seem to severely underestimate the amount of scientific research conducted by engineers. If you get a PhD in engineering, you're typically doing primarily (if not exclusively) science. The main difference is that this research keeps in mind the applications. That's what makes it useful. I think it's a shame that so many very smart people choose to study HEP rather than engineering where they would do better in the world. And I don't think people working in HEP (for example) make engineers or programmers more productive.

horsawlarway 6y ago

I'd love it if we'd re-allocate some defense spending, but I find this argument pretty disingenuous. The LHC cost about 4.75 billion during construction, and requires a yearly operating budget of around 1 billion dollars. The total cost estimate for finding the Higgs was about 13.25 billion. The B-2 bomber program cost 44 Billion (or an average cost of 2.1 billion per unit), but it resulted in considerably MORE jobs over a much longer time span, also led to several innovations in manufacturing/radar/ECS/Material science, and it costs LESS to maintain per year at ~850 million a year for all 21 units. This all for a program that had immediate and obvious applicability (we got a physical object out the other side with clear purpose), and it was STILL the object of intense budgetary concerns. Basically - It was a costs DISASTER and it was only 4 times the cost. Not saying I'd rather have more bombers than another collider, but this is not the argument I would make...