6 ms·

Has the LHC produced technological advances that are used outside of particle physics? I am struggling to think of any.

mhh__ 5y ago
Is it not the case that a lot of machine learning research was done to make the data processing at LHC possible? There is literally civilizations worth of knowledge generated by projects like this, not all of it exactly commercially useful but if you bump into it and they've solved your problem or written your tutorial better than you it's very nice to have.
ampdepolymerase 5y ago
It has created a ton of jobs for instrumentation engineers and PhDs. It has also brought many economic benefits to Switzerland.
- LegitShady 5y ago
  creating jobs is not a positive argument in and of itself.
  - mhh__ 5y ago
    Better than selling ads I guess
    - LegitShady 5y ago
      that makes jobs too right?
- noslenwerdna 5y ago
  Yes, building an accelerator would have economic benefits for whatever location is chosen as the site. This could be built in Japan (as the paper mentions, it may build the ILC) or even the US.
MauranKilom 5y ago
I have no direct insight, but from what I gather, the amount of data generated there is staggering (1 petabyte/second raw, 1 petabyte/day after filtering). Storing and processing this much data certainly required immense technological advances (which have been shared with the community at large). Again, my impression from far outside. But fundamental research like this does not have short-term prosperity or technological breakthroughs as main priority anyway, so I'm not sure why you're so concerned about that.
posnet 5y ago
It created White Rabbit[0], a system for sub nanosecond time keeping precision over ethernet. It is now used in many financial exchanges to ensure fairness for market participants. [1] (0): https://white-rabbit.web.cern.ch/ https://white-rabbit.web.cern.ch/ (1): https://www.eurex.com/ex-en/support/initiatives/archive/high-precision-time-white-rabbit-pilot https://www.eurex.com/ex-en/support/initiatives/archive/high...
- Dylan16807 5y ago
  That sounds like it has very marginal value to me. What's the problem it's solving in financial exchanges that you can't do with pedestrian cables and techniques inside a datacenter? Let alone a wild and crazy solution like only processing orders once per second. I'm especially looking at where it says "typical distances of 10 km between network elements"
p_l 5y ago
Yes, it's just that they aren't directly linked with LHC - most of the time you're dealing with second/third or higher degree connection, where part of LHC required support technology that in turn required technology that often can be used in for something else. The most famous example is of course WWW, although it's fairly remote - a bit of the encouragement for building it was help CERN work better, and at the time work on LHC's design already started. Other things are work on grid/cloud technology as well as supercomputing, computer visualisation, research on industrial automation (something I personally used for work, directly related to challenges of building and running LHC), etc. etc.
prof-dr-ir 5y ago
Stating that such a project is worth doing only if it produces other technological advances is not something I would like to be accused of, but fortunately your question does not have to be interpreted in that way. Here is an exchange between physicist Robert Wilson and senator John Pastore in 1969, about establishing Fermilab. Pastore: Is there anything connected with the hopes of this accelerator that in any way involves the security of the country? Wilson: No sir, I don't believe so. P: Nothing at all? W: Nothing at all. P: It has no value in that respect? W: It has only to do with the respect with which we regard one another, the dignity of man, our love of culture. It has to do with: Are we good painters, good sculptors, great poets? I mean all the things we really venerate in our country and are patriotic about. It has nothing to do directly with defending our country except to make it worth defending.
- animal_spirits 5y ago
  Spending four billion dollars to prove (to whom?) that we are really good at building super colliders is not something I personally would like to see my government do. If I want to prove my country is worth defending I want it to be a place where no children go hungry and the citizens have the resources and feel empowered to continue our elimination of human suffering in this world. I personally can't see what a new accelerator would provide to humanity over using that money providing food to the hungry.
  - bettysdiagnose 5y ago
    There are miserably poor people in this world, that's right, but it's not because of the LHC or particle physicists. And assuming you're American (most likely) then your country has far, far, far, far bigger problems than the support it may opt to provide to a fundamental physics search.
  - meepmorp 5y ago
    What if we did both?
  - maweki 5y ago
    What do you think happens with the money? It's not burned. Ideally, the project also employs people that use their money to exchange it for goods and services, which in turn might make some children not go hungry. Consumption is not bad (up to ecological damage). Wealth hoarding and concentration is bad.
analog31 5y ago
Goodhart's Law ensures that if you require technological advances, you will get some. For instance, the SSC was going to bring us flat panel displays. What? Yes, I recall at the time that when news articles talked about the SSC, flat panel displays were mentioned in multiple articles. Now this was certainly a case of one article influencing the others, with the original information source buried in obscurity. We're really bad at projecting the technological outcomes of any specific science research project, and asking scientists or their funding agencies to do so is just an invitation for them to make up some bullshit. I'd prefer that they are just honest with their expectations.
Ralfp 5y ago
LHC does basic research which is opposite of what you are asking (applied research). They seek to increase our understanding on particle physics, not make our lifes directly better. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_research https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_research
entropicgravity 5y ago
There was a time when "Lasers are a solution looking for a problem." Now they are everywhere. Be patient.
z3phyr 5y ago
Are you implying advancing particle physics itself is useless? I believe that today's biggest challenge in engineering is finding applications for the most cutting edge physics, and I think focus on Skunk Works for the same is the need of the hour. If we have not found any applications, its probably because we have not tried enough / invested enough.
lmm 5y ago
The pipeline from fundamental research to practical applications is very long. Relativity or QM seemed pointless 100 years ago.
SiempreViernes 5y ago
Obviously lots of radiation measuring and management technology, but I doubt you would think that is worthwhile until you get proton therapy.

Is it not the case that a lot of machine learning research was done to make the data processing at LHC possible? There is literally civilizations worth of knowledge generated by projects like this, not all of it exactly commercially useful but if you bump into it and they've solved your problem or written your tutorial better than you it's very nice to have.

ampdepolymerase 5y ago

It has created a ton of jobs for instrumentation engineers and PhDs. It has also brought many economic benefits to Switzerland.

LegitShady 5y ago
creating jobs is not a positive argument in and of itself.
- mhh__ 5y ago
  Better than selling ads I guess
  - LegitShady 5y ago
    that makes jobs too right?
noslenwerdna 5y ago
Yes, building an accelerator would have economic benefits for whatever location is chosen as the site. This could be built in Japan (as the paper mentions, it may build the ILC) or even the US.

MauranKilom 5y ago

I have no direct insight, but from what I gather, the amount of data generated there is staggering (1 petabyte/second raw, 1 petabyte/day after filtering). Storing and processing this much data certainly required immense technological advances (which have been shared with the community at large). Again, my impression from far outside. But fundamental research like this does not have short-term prosperity or technological breakthroughs as main priority anyway, so I'm not sure why you're so concerned about that.

posnet 5y ago

It created White Rabbit[0], a system for sub nanosecond time keeping precision over ethernet. It is now used in many financial exchanges to ensure fairness for market participants. [1] (0): https://white-rabbit.web.cern.ch/ https://white-rabbit.web.cern.ch/ (1): https://www.eurex.com/ex-en/support/initiatives/archive/high-precision-time-white-rabbit-pilot https://www.eurex.com/ex-en/support/initiatives/archive/high...

Dylan16807 5y ago
That sounds like it has very marginal value to me. What's the problem it's solving in financial exchanges that you can't do with pedestrian cables and techniques inside a datacenter? Let alone a wild and crazy solution like only processing orders once per second. I'm especially looking at where it says "typical distances of 10 km between network elements"

p_l 5y ago

Yes, it's just that they aren't directly linked with LHC - most of the time you're dealing with second/third or higher degree connection, where part of LHC required support technology that in turn required technology that often can be used in for something else. The most famous example is of course WWW, although it's fairly remote - a bit of the encouragement for building it was help CERN work better, and at the time work on LHC's design already started. Other things are work on grid/cloud technology as well as supercomputing, computer visualisation, research on industrial automation (something I personally used for work, directly related to challenges of building and running LHC), etc. etc.

prof-dr-ir 5y ago

Stating that such a project is worth doing only if it produces other technological advances is not something I would like to be accused of, but fortunately your question does not have to be interpreted in that way. Here is an exchange between physicist Robert Wilson and senator John Pastore in 1969, about establishing Fermilab. Pastore: Is there anything connected with the hopes of this accelerator that in any way involves the security of the country? Wilson: No sir, I don't believe so. P: Nothing at all? W: Nothing at all. P: It has no value in that respect? W: It has only to do with the respect with which we regard one another, the dignity of man, our love of culture. It has to do with: Are we good painters, good sculptors, great poets? I mean all the things we really venerate in our country and are patriotic about. It has nothing to do directly with defending our country except to make it worth defending.

animal_spirits 5y ago
Spending four billion dollars to prove (to whom?) that we are really good at building super colliders is not something I personally would like to see my government do. If I want to prove my country is worth defending I want it to be a place where no children go hungry and the citizens have the resources and feel empowered to continue our elimination of human suffering in this world. I personally can't see what a new accelerator would provide to humanity over using that money providing food to the hungry.
- bettysdiagnose 5y ago
  There are miserably poor people in this world, that's right, but it's not because of the LHC or particle physicists. And assuming you're American (most likely) then your country has far, far, far, far bigger problems than the support it may opt to provide to a fundamental physics search.
- meepmorp 5y ago
  What if we did both?
- maweki 5y ago
  What do you think happens with the money? It's not burned. Ideally, the project also employs people that use their money to exchange it for goods and services, which in turn might make some children not go hungry. Consumption is not bad (up to ecological damage). Wealth hoarding and concentration is bad.

analog31 5y ago

Goodhart's Law ensures that if you require technological advances, you will get some. For instance, the SSC was going to bring us flat panel displays. What? Yes, I recall at the time that when news articles talked about the SSC, flat panel displays were mentioned in multiple articles. Now this was certainly a case of one article influencing the others, with the original information source buried in obscurity. We're really bad at projecting the technological outcomes of any specific science research project, and asking scientists or their funding agencies to do so is just an invitation for them to make up some bullshit. I'd prefer that they are just honest with their expectations.

Ralfp 5y ago

LHC does basic research which is opposite of what you are asking (applied research). They seek to increase our understanding on particle physics, not make our lifes directly better. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_research https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_research

entropicgravity 5y ago

There was a time when "Lasers are a solution looking for a problem." Now they are everywhere. Be patient.

z3phyr 5y ago

Are you implying advancing particle physics itself is useless? I believe that today's biggest challenge in engineering is finding applications for the most cutting edge physics, and I think focus on Skunk Works for the same is the need of the hour. If we have not found any applications, its probably because we have not tried enough / invested enough.

lmm 5y ago

The pipeline from fundamental research to practical applications is very long. Relativity or QM seemed pointless 100 years ago.

SiempreViernes 5y ago

Obviously lots of radiation measuring and management technology, but I doubt you would think that is worthwhile until you get proton therapy.