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The article says something that is perfectly sensible. Reading it carefully, it seems that the author is doubtful whether building a 100km collider is the corre

The article says something that is perfectly sensible. Reading it carefully, it seems that the author is doubtful whether building a 100km collider is the correct way forward, given its enormous cost. That is a very valid subject and totally worthy of serious discussion. In any case, we should never forget that without advancements in fundamental physics we are going nowhere as a species. We might be able to come up with better refinements, better techniques, slightly better computers, etc. But sooner or later we are going to hit a physical limit, and we are going to need to seriously enlarge our fundamental knowledge corpus of how the universe operates if we are going to keep moving forward.

jacquesm 6y ago
I would favor an argument not rooted in cost but in physics. Whether it is costly or not is not a factor in whether it is the correct way forward, if it gets results it is the way forward, even if it is costly unless a cheaper alternative can be found. If it can't get results then it is wasted money no matter what the cost.
- philwelch 6y ago
  > I would favor an argument not rooted in cost but in physics. Did we read the same article? > New measurements brought up new puzzles, and they built bigger colliders until, in 2012, the picture was complete. The Standard Model still has some loose ends, but experimentally testing those would require energies at least ten billion times higher than what even the FCC could test. The scientific case for a next larger collider is therefore presently slim. > Yes, one can hope. But there is no reason why the particles that make up dark matter or dark energy should show up in the new device’s energy range. And that is assuming they are particles to begin with, for which there no evidence. Even if they are particles, moreover, highly energetic collisions may not be the best way to look for them. Weakly interacting particles with tiny masses, for example, are not something one looks for with large colliders. > And there are entirely different types of experiments that could lead to breakthroughs at far smaller costs, such as high precision measurements at low energies or increasing the masses of objects in quantum states. Going to higher energies is not the only way to make progress in the foundations of physics; it’s just the most expensive one.
  - jacquesm 6y ago
    (1) slim != non-existent, (2) so far every higher energy level has resulted in more insight, I'm all for increasing the size another order of magnitude, if that does not result in new knowledge or insights into the fundamental nature of matter and energy then we can debate whether or not it is still useful to continue. There is no evidence at this point in time that we know all there is to be known at the next level energetic collisions. The whole idea that we are at the end of the line for particle accelerators smacks of huge hubris: we know all there is to be known. A similar sentiment pervaded the physics discipline about a hundred years ago and look where we've gone since then.
    - philwelch 6y ago
      > so far every higher energy level has resulted in more insight There were theoretical reasons to expect new results with previous colliders. I don't know that any similar reasons have been named here. > There is no evidence at this point in time that we know all there is to be known at the next level energetic collisions. The whole idea that we are at the end of the line for particle accelerators smacks of huge hubris: we know all there is to be known. This is a massive strawman argument to use, especially against someone like Dr. Hossenfelder who is a working physicist.
      - jacquesm 6y ago
        All the people back then that thought we knew what there was to be known were working physicists.
        philwelch 6y ago
        But Sabine Hossenfelder pretty explicitly does not think that (and even states the contrary viewpoint in the original article) so you’re still making an unfair strawman argument.
    - imtringued 6y ago
      >The whole idea that we are at the end of the line for particle accelerators smacks of huge hubris The worst part is that the LHC has been a success. You don't stop after a success. You stop because you've hit a dead end. The only way to know if we need a bigger particle accelerator is by building it and then either seeing or not seeing any results. After doing this we can definitively agree on never building another accelerator. Giving up after finding the higgs boson is like winning a bronze medal and quitting instead of going after the silver medal.
- techphys_91 6y ago
  This sounds reasonable, but we don't have the knowledge to be able to make a targeted experiment now, nor do we know whether we'll gain that knowledge within the next 100+ years. If we just stop, then we might not have the infrastructure or the people/ skills to make those experiments when the theory arrives. Even if we didn't get a physics result from a high energy collider, we'd have a few more generations of skillful and motivated scientists/ engineers. Perhaps there are more efficient ways to achieve that, but I think "a waste" is perhaps an overstatement; we lose something either way.
  - aduitsis 6y ago
    +1! We don't know what we don't know, but one way or the other it's money spent on basic research and physics.
- dnautics 6y ago
  Sabine's point is rooted in physics. It's that there are no hypotheses that are tested by the proposed energy levels of these colliders. It's just a fishing expedition. Quite frankly, having seen tons of fishing expeditions in biology (which individually cost way less, on the order of 100k to 1M), not doing it is the correct decision. Come up with a testable hypothesis that the collider will address, then build it. Here's the result of just one of the fishing expeditions I saw (Dr Murray is a saint: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/pro.2339 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/pro.2339)
  - jacquesm 6y ago
    So far the fishing expeditions in physics have been extraordinarily fruitful, both in the discovery of behavior that had not been predicted as well as in confirmation of theoretical results. But we are still far away from a UFT and there is a lot of knowledge that is still to be discovered in this field. On the total budget that humanity spends annually on far less productive things (such as weaponry) this is a small drop in the bucket. Let's see where it leads and if it turns out to be a dead end then we can all it a day. But as long as every new level of energy seems to give more and novel insight I'd much rather continue one step too far than to call it a day and maybe miss out on something crucial that we just had not thought of yet. And even no result is a valid result!
    - dnautics 6y ago
      What fishing expeditions are you talking about? Every major physics construction project to date has been justified by at least one, maybe more specific expected result that is theoretically predicted. There are a handful of we don't know things going on, like keeping a staff on hand for Voyager probes, but the main project was a smashing success.
  - wespiser_2018 6y ago
    former Biologist fisherman, can confirm, a hypothesis helps :)
drekembe 6y ago
Why are we going nowhere as a species without advancements in fundamental physics? That's quite a loaded statement, and not something we can just agree is a given. I mean sure, physics advancements are good and important, but I would say what's holding us back as a species is climate change and human suffering and inequality.
- banads 6y ago
  Carl Sagan, MLK, and many other such thought leaders often talked about the existential threat posed by the fact that our scientific progress has so greatly outpaced out moral progress.
  - mobiledev2014 6y ago
    That’s one of those things I’ve pondered but don’t think I’ve seen it discussed by the two you mention, both of whom I respect deeply- got any good links?
- noch 6y ago
  > I mean sure, physics advancements are good and important, but I would say what's holding us back as a species is climate change and human suffering and inequality. It's unfortunate that most of the general public does not understand how important it is that fundamental physics continues to advance. Advancing fundamental physics is the most important thing humans can do. It is not difficult to argue that the basis for our civilisation, that is, technology, would be impossible without the advances in fundamental physics. Some products of physics: - Electricity (our ability to generate, store, and transmit it) - Lasers - Electron microscope (arguably, the great leap forward in medical research) - Nuclear energy (arguably the cleanest energy available) - WiFi - GPS - The internet (developed by Berners-Lee while at CERN) - The semiconductor (the camera on your phone would not exist without fundamental physics) - X-ray and Magnetic Resonance imaging. - Radiotherapy to treat cancers There are many others that we take for granted every day.[0] Even our understanding of DNA, the most significant discovery in biology, would have been impossible without fundamental physics in the form of X-ray crystallography. (and Francis Crick was a physicist!) (It can also be argued that climate change, human suffering, and inequality can be directly solved if significant advances in fundamental physics are made: new powerful sources of energy like fusion or something else yet unimagined could transform our economic landscape entirely by driving the cost and harms of energy production and use down by large percentages. The Standard Model has revealed the structure of the atom, yet the benefits of this knowledge have yet to be broadly realised and applied to control matter at the sub-atomic level. There might be no practical limit to our ability to control matter! It might be possible to make wars (economic and physical) over resources irrelevant.) [0]: Physics for an advanced world: A look at the vital contribution that physics research has made to a number of major technological developments https://www.iop.org/publications/iop/2009/file_38209.pdf https://www.iop.org/publications/iop/2009/file_38209.pdf
istorical 6y ago
it's a very myopic perspective to act as if progress in physics is the be all end all of human progress. Any kind of social progress or social technologies that could alleviate human suffering, greed, or solve problems of tragedy of the commons would be much more interesting. Technology simply allows us to be more effective at what we already are doing, doesn't make us better people.
- throwaway1313 6y ago
  Sure, and the foundational breakthroughs in physics has allowed us to spend more time thinking about social progress and technology. The two are tightly coupled. I can't even begin to calculate how many hours of humanity has been saved by the breakthroughs and technology that physics has bequeathed us.

jacquesm 6y ago

I would favor an argument not rooted in cost but in physics. Whether it is costly or not is not a factor in whether it is the correct way forward, if it gets results it is the way forward, even if it is costly unless a cheaper alternative can be found. If it can't get results then it is wasted money no matter what the cost.

philwelch 6y ago
> I would favor an argument not rooted in cost but in physics. Did we read the same article? > New measurements brought up new puzzles, and they built bigger colliders until, in 2012, the picture was complete. The Standard Model still has some loose ends, but experimentally testing those would require energies at least ten billion times higher than what even the FCC could test. The scientific case for a next larger collider is therefore presently slim. > Yes, one can hope. But there is no reason why the particles that make up dark matter or dark energy should show up in the new device’s energy range. And that is assuming they are particles to begin with, for which there no evidence. Even if they are particles, moreover, highly energetic collisions may not be the best way to look for them. Weakly interacting particles with tiny masses, for example, are not something one looks for with large colliders. > And there are entirely different types of experiments that could lead to breakthroughs at far smaller costs, such as high precision measurements at low energies or increasing the masses of objects in quantum states. Going to higher energies is not the only way to make progress in the foundations of physics; it’s just the most expensive one.
- jacquesm 6y ago
  (1) slim != non-existent, (2) so far every higher energy level has resulted in more insight, I'm all for increasing the size another order of magnitude, if that does not result in new knowledge or insights into the fundamental nature of matter and energy then we can debate whether or not it is still useful to continue. There is no evidence at this point in time that we know all there is to be known at the next level energetic collisions. The whole idea that we are at the end of the line for particle accelerators smacks of huge hubris: we know all there is to be known. A similar sentiment pervaded the physics discipline about a hundred years ago and look where we've gone since then.
  - philwelch 6y ago
    > so far every higher energy level has resulted in more insight There were theoretical reasons to expect new results with previous colliders. I don't know that any similar reasons have been named here. > There is no evidence at this point in time that we know all there is to be known at the next level energetic collisions. The whole idea that we are at the end of the line for particle accelerators smacks of huge hubris: we know all there is to be known. This is a massive strawman argument to use, especially against someone like Dr. Hossenfelder who is a working physicist.
    - jacquesm 6y ago
      All the people back then that thought we knew what there was to be known were working physicists.
      - philwelch 6y ago
        But Sabine Hossenfelder pretty explicitly does not think that (and even states the contrary viewpoint in the original article) so you’re still making an unfair strawman argument.
  - imtringued 6y ago
    >The whole idea that we are at the end of the line for particle accelerators smacks of huge hubris The worst part is that the LHC has been a success. You don't stop after a success. You stop because you've hit a dead end. The only way to know if we need a bigger particle accelerator is by building it and then either seeing or not seeing any results. After doing this we can definitively agree on never building another accelerator. Giving up after finding the higgs boson is like winning a bronze medal and quitting instead of going after the silver medal.
techphys_91 6y ago
This sounds reasonable, but we don't have the knowledge to be able to make a targeted experiment now, nor do we know whether we'll gain that knowledge within the next 100+ years. If we just stop, then we might not have the infrastructure or the people/ skills to make those experiments when the theory arrives. Even if we didn't get a physics result from a high energy collider, we'd have a few more generations of skillful and motivated scientists/ engineers. Perhaps there are more efficient ways to achieve that, but I think "a waste" is perhaps an overstatement; we lose something either way.
- aduitsis 6y ago
  +1! We don't know what we don't know, but one way or the other it's money spent on basic research and physics.
dnautics 6y ago
Sabine's point is rooted in physics. It's that there are no hypotheses that are tested by the proposed energy levels of these colliders. It's just a fishing expedition. Quite frankly, having seen tons of fishing expeditions in biology (which individually cost way less, on the order of 100k to 1M), not doing it is the correct decision. Come up with a testable hypothesis that the collider will address, then build it. Here's the result of just one of the fishing expeditions I saw (Dr Murray is a saint: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/pro.2339 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/pro.2339)
- jacquesm 6y ago
  So far the fishing expeditions in physics have been extraordinarily fruitful, both in the discovery of behavior that had not been predicted as well as in confirmation of theoretical results. But we are still far away from a UFT and there is a lot of knowledge that is still to be discovered in this field. On the total budget that humanity spends annually on far less productive things (such as weaponry) this is a small drop in the bucket. Let's see where it leads and if it turns out to be a dead end then we can all it a day. But as long as every new level of energy seems to give more and novel insight I'd much rather continue one step too far than to call it a day and maybe miss out on something crucial that we just had not thought of yet. And even no result is a valid result!
  - dnautics 6y ago
    What fishing expeditions are you talking about? Every major physics construction project to date has been justified by at least one, maybe more specific expected result that is theoretically predicted. There are a handful of we don't know things going on, like keeping a staff on hand for Voyager probes, but the main project was a smashing success.
- wespiser_2018 6y ago
  former Biologist fisherman, can confirm, a hypothesis helps :)

drekembe 6y ago

Why are we going nowhere as a species without advancements in fundamental physics? That's quite a loaded statement, and not something we can just agree is a given. I mean sure, physics advancements are good and important, but I would say what's holding us back as a species is climate change and human suffering and inequality.

banads 6y ago
Carl Sagan, MLK, and many other such thought leaders often talked about the existential threat posed by the fact that our scientific progress has so greatly outpaced out moral progress.
- mobiledev2014 6y ago
  That’s one of those things I’ve pondered but don’t think I’ve seen it discussed by the two you mention, both of whom I respect deeply- got any good links?
noch 6y ago
> I mean sure, physics advancements are good and important, but I would say what's holding us back as a species is climate change and human suffering and inequality. It's unfortunate that most of the general public does not understand how important it is that fundamental physics continues to advance. Advancing fundamental physics is the most important thing humans can do. It is not difficult to argue that the basis for our civilisation, that is, technology, would be impossible without the advances in fundamental physics. Some products of physics: - Electricity (our ability to generate, store, and transmit it) - Lasers - Electron microscope (arguably, the great leap forward in medical research) - Nuclear energy (arguably the cleanest energy available) - WiFi - GPS - The internet (developed by Berners-Lee while at CERN) - The semiconductor (the camera on your phone would not exist without fundamental physics) - X-ray and Magnetic Resonance imaging. - Radiotherapy to treat cancers There are many others that we take for granted every day.[0] Even our understanding of DNA, the most significant discovery in biology, would have been impossible without fundamental physics in the form of X-ray crystallography. (and Francis Crick was a physicist!) (It can also be argued that climate change, human suffering, and inequality can be directly solved if significant advances in fundamental physics are made: new powerful sources of energy like fusion or something else yet unimagined could transform our economic landscape entirely by driving the cost and harms of energy production and use down by large percentages. The Standard Model has revealed the structure of the atom, yet the benefits of this knowledge have yet to be broadly realised and applied to control matter at the sub-atomic level. There might be no practical limit to our ability to control matter! It might be possible to make wars (economic and physical) over resources irrelevant.) [0]: Physics for an advanced world: A look at the vital contribution that physics research has made to a number of major technological developments https://www.iop.org/publications/iop/2009/file_38209.pdf https://www.iop.org/publications/iop/2009/file_38209.pdf

istorical 6y ago

it's a very myopic perspective to act as if progress in physics is the be all end all of human progress. Any kind of social progress or social technologies that could alleviate human suffering, greed, or solve problems of tragedy of the commons would be much more interesting. Technology simply allows us to be more effective at what we already are doing, doesn't make us better people.

throwaway1313 6y ago
Sure, and the foundational breakthroughs in physics has allowed us to spend more time thinking about social progress and technology. The two are tightly coupled. I can't even begin to calculate how many hours of humanity has been saved by the breakthroughs and technology that physics has bequeathed us.