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Honest question, what are some engineering spin-offs that could come out of this? I'm asking because I'm reminded of a Peter Thiel interview where it's mentione

by f00zz 6y ago

Honest question, what are some engineering spin-offs that could come out of this? I'm asking because I'm reminded of a Peter Thiel interview where it's mentioned that, despite changing our view of the universe, no "real world" applications came out of the quark model discovered in the 1960s. This is different from a project like ITER, which is also hugely expensive but could be a game changer.

jively 6y ago
Ultimately the end goal is a grand unified theory of everything, all the forces and how they work together. Maxwell's equations were completely theoretical (read: useless) and ahead of their time - but are fundamental to the invention of radio. Foundational research creates opportunity, it cant really be targeted. For something like particle research, the fallout (pun not intended!) will take their time to shape anything our engineering cap availity can take advantage of.
noobermin 6y ago
You're not going to want to hear this but I think deep down a lot of these scientists who are so desperate for physics beyond the standard model, theoretical and experimental particle physicists don't view fusion or plasma science as a hard science as is their search for new physics.
benjaminva 6y ago
Well, given that the world wide web was developed at CERN and they have driven a lot of big-data topics in the past I would say that the collateral developments are non-negligible. In the software field, CERN and particle physics in general, have driven quite some open source projects (both scientific and general ones).
cosmic_quanta 6y ago
Here's a concrete example. Some of CERN detector technology has been spun-off as Quantum Detectors [https://quantumdetectors.com/ https://quantumdetectors.com/], which makes detectors for electron microscopy, x-ray scattering , and neutron detection I think. I've personally beta-tested their MerlinEM and it's pretty damn cool. It's very different from other technologies that already exist (e.g. Gatan detectors). You can read out images at extremely fast rates (compared to traditional electron microscopy detectors anyway). I'm guessing that this comes from the need for CERN to read-out detectors fully for every collision. Who would have known that this would have been useful for unrelated ultrafast electron scattering experiments?
- BurnGpuBurn 6y ago
  Understandably if you build a 15B$ machine, your engineers will come up with some clever stuff. The tech you mention is likewise tech that was developed to build the detector. I think he means to ask about actual physics we learned doing LHC experiments, that actually have a tangible real world application.
peteradio 6y ago
This is kind of a bullshit answer, but basic atom level understanding and experimentation leads to atomic bomb level outcomes. Now imagine you understand a few levels deeper. Do you think these types of engineering spin-offs are going to be widely known, or instead would they be kept very guarded?
at_a_remove 6y ago
I recently posted a link to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_particle_discoveries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_particle_discoveri... in another thread. Go on and look at it. Cross off composite particles like Antihelium-4 and antihydrogen, just look for the timeline of newly verified particles by decade. Note that each was predicted far in advance of the actual verification. (As a side question, ask "What newly predicted fundamental particles are we attempting to verify the existence of here?" You will largely hear crickets.) Now, examine each particle and ask if we use them in industry. We have had forty-five years for the tau lepton, just as an example. We're not using it. We're not going to use it. I majored in physics. I say this not by way of lending authority to my argument, but to highlight that I "ought" to be one of the very people slavering for more high-energy physics. But I am not. I just do not think we are going to get more interesting physics out of slamming particles together at ever nearer approaches to c. We might get some interesting engineering out of it, but we can get that by doing other things that have more application. We cannot spend a dollar twice; let's pursue multiple approaches to fusion. Or, if one is of a pure research bent, we ought to be looking for more clever ways to break our known models, rather than just scaling our current methods up into Bigger Baryon Bashers.
- pas 6y ago
  Isn't the best way to try to see if the Standard Model breaks is by pumping more energy into it? (And watching for the decay channel anomalies and whatnot?) What are other ways to check its predictions?
  - at_a_remove 6y ago
    No, not really. Diminishing returns. I've pointed it out elsewhere, but there's no stopping point for that approach. Make an accelerator that goes around the world. Dismantle the Solar system to make an even larger accelerator. Continue onward and use self-replicating probes to slowly convert, over millions of years, the Milky Way into another accelerator ring. Where do you stop? You can always do more until you paperclip replicator the observable universe into one big accelerator. Like I said, I advocate for looking for more clever ways to look for new physics, rather than bigger ways. And you must accept the concept that at some point we may have discovered all fundamental particles that can be found in the Big Baryon Bashers and that all accelerators after that are completely wasted effort, but we'd never know that, because we would say, "Well, we didn't find anything there. Gotta build a bigger one!"
tobinfricke 6y ago
I generally believe that looking for "spin-offs" is a poor way to justify experimental physics, the space program, etc. However, it does seem apropos to mention that the web itself was a spin-off of work at CERN.
- f00zz 6y ago
  Right, others have mentioned the WWW. But it doesn't look obvious to me how the existence of a high energy physics research facility was a necessary precondition for the development of the web. The idea of hypertext had already been floating around for some time (SGML, Xanadu, etc). I was curious about things more directly related to the actual research done at CERN.

by f00zz 6y ago

jively 6y ago

Ultimately the end goal is a grand unified theory of everything, all the forces and how they work together. Maxwell's equations were completely theoretical (read: useless) and ahead of their time - but are fundamental to the invention of radio. Foundational research creates opportunity, it cant really be targeted. For something like particle research, the fallout (pun not intended!) will take their time to shape anything our engineering cap availity can take advantage of.

noobermin 6y ago

You're not going to want to hear this but I think deep down a lot of these scientists who are so desperate for physics beyond the standard model, theoretical and experimental particle physicists don't view fusion or plasma science as a hard science as is their search for new physics.

benjaminva 6y ago

Well, given that the world wide web was developed at CERN and they have driven a lot of big-data topics in the past I would say that the collateral developments are non-negligible. In the software field, CERN and particle physics in general, have driven quite some open source projects (both scientific and general ones).

cosmic_quanta 6y ago

Here's a concrete example. Some of CERN detector technology has been spun-off as Quantum Detectors [https://quantumdetectors.com/ https://quantumdetectors.com/], which makes detectors for electron microscopy, x-ray scattering , and neutron detection I think. I've personally beta-tested their MerlinEM and it's pretty damn cool. It's very different from other technologies that already exist (e.g. Gatan detectors). You can read out images at extremely fast rates (compared to traditional electron microscopy detectors anyway). I'm guessing that this comes from the need for CERN to read-out detectors fully for every collision. Who would have known that this would have been useful for unrelated ultrafast electron scattering experiments?

BurnGpuBurn 6y ago
Understandably if you build a 15B$ machine, your engineers will come up with some clever stuff. The tech you mention is likewise tech that was developed to build the detector. I think he means to ask about actual physics we learned doing LHC experiments, that actually have a tangible real world application.

peteradio 6y ago

This is kind of a bullshit answer, but basic atom level understanding and experimentation leads to atomic bomb level outcomes. Now imagine you understand a few levels deeper. Do you think these types of engineering spin-offs are going to be widely known, or instead would they be kept very guarded?

at_a_remove 6y ago

I recently posted a link to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_particle_discoveries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_particle_discoveri... in another thread. Go on and look at it. Cross off composite particles like Antihelium-4 and antihydrogen, just look for the timeline of newly verified particles by decade. Note that each was predicted far in advance of the actual verification. (As a side question, ask "What newly predicted fundamental particles are we attempting to verify the existence of here?" You will largely hear crickets.) Now, examine each particle and ask if we use them in industry. We have had forty-five years for the tau lepton, just as an example. We're not using it. We're not going to use it. I majored in physics. I say this not by way of lending authority to my argument, but to highlight that I "ought" to be one of the very people slavering for more high-energy physics. But I am not. I just do not think we are going to get more interesting physics out of slamming particles together at ever nearer approaches to c. We might get some interesting engineering out of it, but we can get that by doing other things that have more application. We cannot spend a dollar twice; let's pursue multiple approaches to fusion. Or, if one is of a pure research bent, we ought to be looking for more clever ways to break our known models, rather than just scaling our current methods up into Bigger Baryon Bashers.

pas 6y ago
Isn't the best way to try to see if the Standard Model breaks is by pumping more energy into it? (And watching for the decay channel anomalies and whatnot?) What are other ways to check its predictions?
- at_a_remove 6y ago
  No, not really. Diminishing returns. I've pointed it out elsewhere, but there's no stopping point for that approach. Make an accelerator that goes around the world. Dismantle the Solar system to make an even larger accelerator. Continue onward and use self-replicating probes to slowly convert, over millions of years, the Milky Way into another accelerator ring. Where do you stop? You can always do more until you paperclip replicator the observable universe into one big accelerator. Like I said, I advocate for looking for more clever ways to look for new physics, rather than bigger ways. And you must accept the concept that at some point we may have discovered all fundamental particles that can be found in the Big Baryon Bashers and that all accelerators after that are completely wasted effort, but we'd never know that, because we would say, "Well, we didn't find anything there. Gotta build a bigger one!"

tobinfricke 6y ago

I generally believe that looking for "spin-offs" is a poor way to justify experimental physics, the space program, etc. However, it does seem apropos to mention that the web itself was a spin-off of work at CERN.

f00zz 6y ago
Right, others have mentioned the WWW. But it doesn't look obvious to me how the existence of a high energy physics research facility was a necessary precondition for the development of the web. The idea of hypertext had already been floating around for some time (SGML, Xanadu, etc). I was curious about things more directly related to the actual research done at CERN.