7 ms·

As someone who did their PhD at CERN - I agree. The place is fantastic, you get to meet great people and life is cool. But what you are working on is complete

As someone who did their PhD at CERN - I agree. The place is fantastic, you get to meet great people and life is cool. But what you are working on is completely useless for humanity. Knowing that there is a quantum foam is knowledge that brings us nowhere. If someone could answer to this "and so what?" in a meaningful way I would be glad to change my mind. For the time being, the energy scale we are making these discoveries is not useful. "yes, but this is fundamental science..." → yes it is, but where does this fundamental science helps in everyday problems? Have we had a case where the Higgs boson changed anything in our life? The quantum mechanics of the 1920's changed our everyday world. We could build a whole technology on it, and understand things that changes our everyday life. Is there a comparable impact on knowing that the Higgs boson is +/- 10^-9 (or whatever) aligned with the theoretical model? We have so many problems where physics is needed (energy production to start with, and then exploring biology), the money should go there instead. Even if it means having less particle physicists the same way we have less philosophes.

orangesite 4y ago
There's a point at which theory needs to catch up to observations before it makes sense to gather more observations.
- louissan 4y ago
  what about trying to see such advanced fields of studies as (extremely?) long-term investments (for the species?). I'm sure that 20,000 years ago some crazy shaman was frowned upon for trying to "melt rocks and see what happened", or "ate some weird/unknown/sacred plants" or "what if I push this seed into this little corner of land and look after it (water, sun, defend if against herbivores)"? etc, etc, etc?
- philipov 4y ago
  My understanding is that theory has blasted way past observations and what we need now are more precise observations. And developing the technology capable of making such precise observations has immense utility outside of the particular experiment that drives their invention. Even if superparters are useless, more powerful magnets are useful. Better sensors are useful. Better data processing technology is useful. And that stuff gets invented by the people probing to find superpartners.
kensai 4y ago
It's ironic that you write this comment on the World Wide Web. An invention made in the "useless for humanity" CERN... :-/ https://home.cern/science/computing/birth-web https://home.cern/science/computing/birth-web
- orhmeh09 4y ago
  I have no doubt we’d have gotten basically the same thing within five years from elsewhere if CERN didn’t exist.
  - dehrmann 4y ago
    Gopher came slightly after WWW, so I'm not sure how much influence WWW had on it, but it makes me think you're right. Other people were working in the problem space.
    - kensai 4y ago
      It came because it was somewhere inspired. WWW was the initial spark. And it could have only come in some big time, blue sky lab.
    - lupire 4y ago
      Gopher came first. Berners-Lee used gopher while we was developing WWW. https://www.minnpost.com/business/2016/08/rise-and-fall-gopher-protocol/ https://www.minnpost.com/business/2016/08/rise-and-fall-goph... But it doesn't matter. Lots of people all over the world were collaborating to build new Internet protocols.
- dehrmann 4y ago
  It's not, though. > There are many known problems in physics right now. $100 billion could fund (quite literally) 100,000 smaller physics experiments. $1M is a reasonable amount to build a prototype world wide web. There were 5,000 things like WWW we didn't do because we built LHC.
- dekhn 4y ago
  folks were already putting postscript papers on FTP servers. Discoverability (linking) was the big hard problem.
BaseballPhysics 4y ago
> yes it is, but where does this fundamental science helps in everyday problems? PhD or not, this is an oddly utilitarian view of science. I suspect there would be countless discoveries that never would have been made had we only ever weighed an experiment based purely on its ability to "help in everyday problems". I mean, why, say, develop the theory of evolution? At the time that was irrelevant to "everyday problems". Today our understanding of evolution is valuable in countless settings, but at the time? At best it was an interesting exercise in trying to understand the natural world. And yet by this reckoning we never would've bothered.
- cookingmyserver 4y ago
  I think it is important to remember the context of the discussion. I think I it is completely reasonable, and not odd at all, to have a utilitarian view of science, when you are talking about spending $100 Billion.
  - BaseballPhysics 4y ago
    Alright. I agree, that's certainly a very valid point. So would you have cancelled the moon landing program? In 2020 dollars that program cost over $257B (over $400B if you count related programs and costs)[1], and that goal--landing humans on the moon--has demonstrated very little utility. [1]: https://www.planetary.org/space-policy/cost-of-apollo https://www.planetary.org/space-policy/cost-of-apollo
    - LordDragonfang 4y ago
      It had utility to the US government in demonstrating to the Russians our ability to accurately move payloads on the planetary scale. Actually landing on the moon was just a conveniently goal-aligned PR win. Beyond that though, being able to put things at that scale in orbit has shown major dividends at in every sector.
      - BaseballPhysics 4y ago
ordu 4y ago
> We have so many problems where physics is needed (energy production to start with, and then exploring biology) How can physics help to explore biology? At a first half of 20th century biology experienced a flow of physicist converting to biology and that had led to a transformation of a biology into what it is now and to a bunch of breakthrough discoveries, most notably the double helix (Francis Crick was a physicist). But I wonder what breakthroughs might happen now if physicists tried to boost biology one more time.
JoeDaDude 4y ago
Honest question: Did you feel this way when you were working on your PhD at CERN? Were you working toward solving everyday problems, or fundamental science problems? If the latter, what changed your views since then? I hope I don't come off as confrontational, it is not the least my intention. It just sounds like you have seen both sides of this issue and maybe you have a deeper understanding you could share.
- BrandoElFollito 4y ago
  My work at CERN was a tiny little screw in a huge machine. It meant nothing. I have probably 100 or 1000 articles with my name as one of the 1000 collaborators of the project. I have no idea what they are about. I loved my time in CERN because of the people and the insane possibilities you had there. I discovered Unix and this ultimately made me change my life, going to industry. My friends who were working on solid state physics had much more impactful research, research that could potentially bring something to everyday life. I was much happier working on biophysics research afterwards. Physics today is dead in the practical sense, nothing is happening that sparks for in people's imagination. Compare this to biology where you hear about new discoveries everyday.
esrauch 4y ago
How long was the time gap from quantum machanics work in the 1920s until serious practical applications for that work?
- BeetleB 4y ago
  Most semiconductor applications involve an understanding of QM. The transistor was invented in 1948. So not too long after. Also, nuclear power...
- AprilArcus 4y ago
  off the cuff, non-exhaustive list: 1930s — video image tubes 1940s — nuclear power, atomic clocks, transistors 1960s — lasers, fiber-optic communications, PET-CT scans 1970s — MRIs
  - deanCommie 4y ago
    It's worth acknowledging that the fears of the cold war funded tremendous scientific and technological innovation on both sides of the iron curtain. People had singular focus - not on the betterment of humanity in the abstract sense, but for primal SURVIVAL - because both sides believed that if given the chance the other would wipe them out. This created a unifying focus (amongst two divided sides). A lot of people have hoped for some event to unify humanity (like the space squid in the watchmen) towards a common goal again. Alas, COVID has shown that is just simply not possible any longer.
    - somewhereoutth 4y ago
      Curiously, and sadly, it seems that the only threat we are always primed and ready to deal with is other humans. Which I suppose makes sense given our 'tribe' ancestry.
ryan_j_naughton 4y ago
> knowledge that brings us nowhere. If someone could answer to this "and so what?" in a meaningful way I would be glad to change my mind. Devil's Advocate: Could that not also be said for many astrophysics discoveries including: - Edwin Hubble's discovery of the expanding universe and galaxies - Kepler's discovery of 1K plus exoplanets - Hubble telescope's ultra deep field None of these are practical pursuits that provide us with new, widely used technology (or at least investing in them is not the most efficient path to said practical technology). Instead, they provide us context on where we sit in the universe. Starting from Copernicus, the constant realignment of our perspective that we are not privileged observers in the universe (disproving geocentrism, heliocentrism, and galactocentrism), have been essential to the development of modern secular humanism and providing us context on our purpose (or at least an effective tool to knock down foolish purported purposes espoused by dogmatic leaders). So I guess I am taking issue with your narrowly defined purpose of science. What is an "everyday problem" worth solving through fundamental research? If however, you include these philosophical benefits of fundamental science, then I agree with you. "Have we had a case where the Higgs boson changed anything in our life?" I think nails that the reason why we shouldn't pursue a LHC++. It has neither benefits from providing us practical tools or new technologies to advance society NOR does it aid us in philosophically contextualizing where we sit in the universe.
bobbylarrybobby 4y ago
Did the physicists working on early QM know that it would be so useful? Or were they, like the scientists at CERN, just trying to piece together a model of reality?
FredPret 4y ago
As an engineer, my sole concern is making things useful in everyday life for real humans. However, I need the tools science gives me. I need scientists and mathematicians to think about how the universe and logic works, so that I can know how to make it work for people. Quantum foam will almost certainly feature in some product down the line. Edit: there have been some instances of engineers working out solutions before the science existed by trial and error (steam locomotives before thermodynamics, airfoils before those were understood), but knowing proper theory upfront makes it much easier.
- lupire 4y ago
  How many orders of magnitude of energy inprovement are needed to make quantum foam accessible?
BeefWellington 4y ago
I understand your point of view here but I think I disagree. If you restrict your view only to the particular targeted research in question you are missing much of the pie. Going to the Moon did not help the average person in their day to day lives on its own but numerous side technologies emerged as a result of the engineering and research efforts required to solve problems. LHC and CERN as a whole have led to a number of technological improvements[1], even if the research goals themselves do not seem oriented towards anything an individual should care about today. It is certainly possible that similarly funded fusion research or carbon sequestration research would yield similar technologies, it's not a given. [1]: https://kt.cern/technology-portfolio https://kt.cern/technology-portfolio
memetomancer 4y ago
Consider a hypothetical analogous argument against supporting fundamental science made in 1900: What they are working on is completely useless for humanity and doesn't help solve everyday problems... the "and so what?" about the photoelectric effect or quantum theory. Because those people in 1900 could not conceive of inventions like lasers and transistors. They didn't just lack imagination, they lacked total conceptual inability in that context. Just as you are seeming to do here. But of course, either of those two inventions have transformed human society on a level with fire, language, writing and metallurgy. "Is there a comparable impact on knowing that the Higgs boson is +/- 10^-9 (or whatever) aligned with the theoretical model?" perhaps there is! Might not understanding the fine points of the theoretical model help with something like a reactionless thruster? Could this unlock the door on direct manipulation of spacetime? Assist in devising exotic materials, like say some sort of stable muonic matter and opening up a whole new world of chemistry/solid state physics? The potential is staggering, and by nature is almost completely unguessable until it happens. If the world followed the lead of yourself or the Sabine Hossenfelders of the world we might never know. The argument that this hypothetical collider can only be used to explore unconfirmable symmetry theories is simply false. The cost of such a facility is insignificant compared to the potential. My back-of-the-envelope game theory perspective is that humanity should double down on all fronts, at all cost, to push these boundaries. The only impediment is the folks like you, mired in the present and seemingly unable to realize that the unimaginable results are very much unimaginable. Just as those lasers and transistors were 100+ years ago.
srveale 4y ago
Does anyone know anything like a percentage of scientific advancements that ended up being hugely beneficial to society, but were originally derided as being pointless wastes of resources? Might be hard to find out, for example, how many Victorians scoffed at Maxwell wasting his time wondering about imaginary waves flying through the air. At least, in 50-100 years, we'll probably still have records of comments and articles like these, which will make it easier to say just how wrong people were about the importance of pure research. (If anyone is reading this in 2100, and it turns out the ROI on these research projects wasn't worth it, feel free to whisper "I told you so" to my ghost.)
somenameforme 4y ago
"The more important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all been discovered, and these are now so firmly established that the possibility of their ever being supplanted in consequence of new discoveries is exceedingly remote. .. Our future discoveries must be looked for in the sixth place of decimals." - Albert Michelson, 1894 What makes that quote especially remarkable, and ironic, is that was the same Michelson of the famous Michelson - Morley experiment which [1] was an extremely important clue on the path to discovery that would lead rapidly to relativity, and then general explosion of discovery in physics to follow. Not only could he not even imagine the relevance of his very own 'discovery', but largely doubted his own results as the experiment was not intended to 'fail'! The point I make is that so much of major advances in science have come about not through directed efforts but through some sort of serendipity. And it seems to me that observing what happens with ever higher energy collisions is one area where what may be important is not what is expected, but what is unexpected. It's also an area where there is no direct profit motive as contrasted with things like energy or what I assume you are implying with biology. Those fields will naturally advance because there's money to be made. Atom banging is generally not quite as lucrative an industry and, as such, various sorts of public funding tends to be much more important. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelson%E2%80%93Morley_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelson%E2%80%93Morley_exper...
snowwrestler 4y ago
Do we pursue knowledge to build a strong economy? Or do we build a strong economy so we can pursue knowledge? Although I’ve spent a lot of my career working for a strong economy, I lean strongly toward the latter. The highest achievement of humanity is not cheap cell phone plans, it’s more like General Relativity, or the Moon landing. What “use” is humanity? What is life for? Big questions for sure, and I won’t claim to have the answers. But I feel pretty confident that most folks believe there is more to life than squinting at everyday problems.
- colinmhayes 4y ago
  Most people care about knowledge for its ability to raise quality of living, a.k.a it's ability to strengthen the economy.
  - snowwrestler 4y ago
    I don’t think the moon landing is celebrated because it gave us Velcro and Tang. I don’t think Einstein is so famous because he helped create the foundation for cell phones. Daily quality of life is important but I think there is a deeper feeling about life that most people share.
staticassertion 4y ago
> But what you are working on is completely useless for humanity. Knowing that there is a quantum foam is knowledge that brings us nowhere. If someone could answer to this "and so what?" in a meaningful way I would be glad to change my mind. For the time being, the energy scale we are making these discoveries is not useful. How many things were discovered by ancient Greeks that only became useful in the last 100-200 years? The Sieve of Eratosthenes comes to mind - I can't imagine that was really helping anyone out until we had modern cryptography.
Cd00d 4y ago
Are you claiming that no knowledge or technology has come out of CERN that benefits humanity in any way? I find that hard to believe considering how much technical innovation came out of the space race that has had an impact on our everyday lives [0]. [0] https://www.aii.org/how-the-space-race-built-todays-technology/#:~:text=Relevant%20examples%20include%20medical%20imaging,and%20countless%20other%20vital%20inventions https://www.aii.org/how-the-space-race-built-todays-technolo....
dwaltrip 4y ago
> Knowing that there is a quantum foam is knowledge that brings us nowhere. A bit myopic, eh? We don't know which scientific advancements will result in practical applications or how long it will take. But history is incredibly clear on this point. In general, scientific pursuits and the technological advancements required to carry them out bring about countless incredible practical applications over time. In the long run, curiosity and interestingness are very good heuristics for worthwhile endeavors to pursue.
willis936 4y ago
Digitizer and controller platforms suitable for many other industries (such as uTCA.4) were developed for LHC. White Rabbit alone adds a lot of value to humanity. Proper coherency of data flying around an Ethernet network is super handy when making a big complicated controller for a big complicated machine.
mateo1 4y ago
The biggest contribution of CERN to humanity is not theoretical physics, it's the engineering progress made possible by the truly exceptional requirements of the machinery of the accelerator and all the supporting infrastructure. Ultra high vacuum, specialty detectors, electromagnetic components, control systems, cryonics, new alloys etc. All the know-how and human capital generated by these megaprojects along with a better understanding of fundamental physics is transferred into practical applications a few years later. I can understand how a physics phd might not be exposed so much to this aspect of the project, but the societal benefits are very real despite being hard to quantify and track.
Nagyman 4y ago
The pursuit of knowledge is insanely underrated. > But what you are working on is completely useless for humanity. You simply can't know that. We don't know what we don't know and we are but babies when it comes to understanding and harnessing the universe. One cannot possibly predict how _fundamental science_ might impact our future. > We have so many problems where physics is needed (energy production to start with, and then exploring biology), the money should go there instead. Even if it means having less particle physicists the same way we have less philosophes. This is a false dichotomy; we have the resources for both and more. Perhaps a lack of willpower/grit/political incentives in some arenas, but none of that is insurmountable.
lifeplusplus 4y ago
it takes time, discoveries made 100s of years ago only became useful later on, and in ways nobody knew, the more we understand fundamentals the better it's unquestionably.
guerrilla 4y ago
> "yes, but this is fundamental science..." → yes it is, but where does this fundamental science helps in everyday problems? Have we had a case where the Higgs boson changed anything in our life? God, people like you are the worst. You never know when something could be useful in the future and I think the assumption that fundamentally understanding the universe will never be useful is just absurdly ridiculous. But that's the besides the point, because understanding these things has value in and of itself simply for the fact that people are curious! Is it worth $X billion? That's a different question. But to say it's worthless is just absolute nonsense.
- BrandoElFollito 4y ago
  When the energy you need to access these areas are orders of magnitude larger that what we have on earth (except for pinpointed single places such as the LHC) then it does not make sense. You simply cannot make use of them. Let's get back to them when we have the energy. This is similar to astrophysics where you discover that a sun has planets. And do what. Are you going to go there anytime? Or use it to modify your own planet? You won't, and any dreaming won't change that.

orangesite 4y ago

There's a point at which theory needs to catch up to observations before it makes sense to gather more observations.

louissan 4y ago
what about trying to see such advanced fields of studies as (extremely?) long-term investments (for the species?). I'm sure that 20,000 years ago some crazy shaman was frowned upon for trying to "melt rocks and see what happened", or "ate some weird/unknown/sacred plants" or "what if I push this seed into this little corner of land and look after it (water, sun, defend if against herbivores)"? etc, etc, etc?
philipov 4y ago
My understanding is that theory has blasted way past observations and what we need now are more precise observations. And developing the technology capable of making such precise observations has immense utility outside of the particular experiment that drives their invention. Even if superparters are useless, more powerful magnets are useful. Better sensors are useful. Better data processing technology is useful. And that stuff gets invented by the people probing to find superpartners.

kensai 4y ago

It's ironic that you write this comment on the World Wide Web. An invention made in the "useless for humanity" CERN... :-/ https://home.cern/science/computing/birth-web https://home.cern/science/computing/birth-web

orhmeh09 4y ago
I have no doubt we’d have gotten basically the same thing within five years from elsewhere if CERN didn’t exist.
- dehrmann 4y ago
  Gopher came slightly after WWW, so I'm not sure how much influence WWW had on it, but it makes me think you're right. Other people were working in the problem space.
  - kensai 4y ago
    It came because it was somewhere inspired. WWW was the initial spark. And it could have only come in some big time, blue sky lab.
  - lupire 4y ago
    Gopher came first. Berners-Lee used gopher while we was developing WWW. https://www.minnpost.com/business/2016/08/rise-and-fall-gopher-protocol/ https://www.minnpost.com/business/2016/08/rise-and-fall-goph... But it doesn't matter. Lots of people all over the world were collaborating to build new Internet protocols.
dehrmann 4y ago
It's not, though. > There are many known problems in physics right now. $100 billion could fund (quite literally) 100,000 smaller physics experiments. $1M is a reasonable amount to build a prototype world wide web. There were 5,000 things like WWW we didn't do because we built LHC.
dekhn 4y ago
folks were already putting postscript papers on FTP servers. Discoverability (linking) was the big hard problem.

BaseballPhysics 4y ago

> yes it is, but where does this fundamental science helps in everyday problems? PhD or not, this is an oddly utilitarian view of science. I suspect there would be countless discoveries that never would have been made had we only ever weighed an experiment based purely on its ability to "help in everyday problems". I mean, why, say, develop the theory of evolution? At the time that was irrelevant to "everyday problems". Today our understanding of evolution is valuable in countless settings, but at the time? At best it was an interesting exercise in trying to understand the natural world. And yet by this reckoning we never would've bothered.

cookingmyserver 4y ago
I think it is important to remember the context of the discussion. I think I it is completely reasonable, and not odd at all, to have a utilitarian view of science, when you are talking about spending $100 Billion.
- BaseballPhysics 4y ago
  Alright. I agree, that's certainly a very valid point. So would you have cancelled the moon landing program? In 2020 dollars that program cost over $257B (over $400B if you count related programs and costs)[1], and that goal--landing humans on the moon--has demonstrated very little utility. [1]: https://www.planetary.org/space-policy/cost-of-apollo https://www.planetary.org/space-policy/cost-of-apollo
  - LordDragonfang 4y ago
    It had utility to the US government in demonstrating to the Russians our ability to accurately move payloads on the planetary scale. Actually landing on the moon was just a conveniently goal-aligned PR win. Beyond that though, being able to put things at that scale in orbit has shown major dividends at in every sector.
    - BaseballPhysics 4y ago

ordu 4y ago

> We have so many problems where physics is needed (energy production to start with, and then exploring biology) How can physics help to explore biology? At a first half of 20th century biology experienced a flow of physicist converting to biology and that had led to a transformation of a biology into what it is now and to a bunch of breakthrough discoveries, most notably the double helix (Francis Crick was a physicist). But I wonder what breakthroughs might happen now if physicists tried to boost biology one more time.

JoeDaDude 4y ago

Honest question: Did you feel this way when you were working on your PhD at CERN? Were you working toward solving everyday problems, or fundamental science problems? If the latter, what changed your views since then? I hope I don't come off as confrontational, it is not the least my intention. It just sounds like you have seen both sides of this issue and maybe you have a deeper understanding you could share.

BrandoElFollito 4y ago
My work at CERN was a tiny little screw in a huge machine. It meant nothing. I have probably 100 or 1000 articles with my name as one of the 1000 collaborators of the project. I have no idea what they are about. I loved my time in CERN because of the people and the insane possibilities you had there. I discovered Unix and this ultimately made me change my life, going to industry. My friends who were working on solid state physics had much more impactful research, research that could potentially bring something to everyday life. I was much happier working on biophysics research afterwards. Physics today is dead in the practical sense, nothing is happening that sparks for in people's imagination. Compare this to biology where you hear about new discoveries everyday.

esrauch 4y ago

How long was the time gap from quantum machanics work in the 1920s until serious practical applications for that work?

BeetleB 4y ago
Most semiconductor applications involve an understanding of QM. The transistor was invented in 1948. So not too long after. Also, nuclear power...
AprilArcus 4y ago
off the cuff, non-exhaustive list: 1930s — video image tubes 1940s — nuclear power, atomic clocks, transistors 1960s — lasers, fiber-optic communications, PET-CT scans 1970s — MRIs
- deanCommie 4y ago
  It's worth acknowledging that the fears of the cold war funded tremendous scientific and technological innovation on both sides of the iron curtain. People had singular focus - not on the betterment of humanity in the abstract sense, but for primal SURVIVAL - because both sides believed that if given the chance the other would wipe them out. This created a unifying focus (amongst two divided sides). A lot of people have hoped for some event to unify humanity (like the space squid in the watchmen) towards a common goal again. Alas, COVID has shown that is just simply not possible any longer.
  - somewhereoutth 4y ago
    Curiously, and sadly, it seems that the only threat we are always primed and ready to deal with is other humans. Which I suppose makes sense given our 'tribe' ancestry.

ryan_j_naughton 4y ago

> knowledge that brings us nowhere. If someone could answer to this "and so what?" in a meaningful way I would be glad to change my mind. Devil's Advocate: Could that not also be said for many astrophysics discoveries including: - Edwin Hubble's discovery of the expanding universe and galaxies - Kepler's discovery of 1K plus exoplanets - Hubble telescope's ultra deep field None of these are practical pursuits that provide us with new, widely used technology (or at least investing in them is not the most efficient path to said practical technology). Instead, they provide us context on where we sit in the universe. Starting from Copernicus, the constant realignment of our perspective that we are not privileged observers in the universe (disproving geocentrism, heliocentrism, and galactocentrism), have been essential to the development of modern secular humanism and providing us context on our purpose (or at least an effective tool to knock down foolish purported purposes espoused by dogmatic leaders). So I guess I am taking issue with your narrowly defined purpose of science. What is an "everyday problem" worth solving through fundamental research? If however, you include these philosophical benefits of fundamental science, then I agree with you. "Have we had a case where the Higgs boson changed anything in our life?" I think nails that the reason why we shouldn't pursue a LHC++. It has neither benefits from providing us practical tools or new technologies to advance society NOR does it aid us in philosophically contextualizing where we sit in the universe.

bobbylarrybobby 4y ago

Did the physicists working on early QM know that it would be so useful? Or were they, like the scientists at CERN, just trying to piece together a model of reality?

FredPret 4y ago

As an engineer, my sole concern is making things useful in everyday life for real humans. However, I need the tools science gives me. I need scientists and mathematicians to think about how the universe and logic works, so that I can know how to make it work for people. Quantum foam will almost certainly feature in some product down the line. Edit: there have been some instances of engineers working out solutions before the science existed by trial and error (steam locomotives before thermodynamics, airfoils before those were understood), but knowing proper theory upfront makes it much easier.

lupire 4y ago
How many orders of magnitude of energy inprovement are needed to make quantum foam accessible?

BeefWellington 4y ago

I understand your point of view here but I think I disagree. If you restrict your view only to the particular targeted research in question you are missing much of the pie. Going to the Moon did not help the average person in their day to day lives on its own but numerous side technologies emerged as a result of the engineering and research efforts required to solve problems. LHC and CERN as a whole have led to a number of technological improvements[1], even if the research goals themselves do not seem oriented towards anything an individual should care about today. It is certainly possible that similarly funded fusion research or carbon sequestration research would yield similar technologies, it's not a given. [1]: https://kt.cern/technology-portfolio https://kt.cern/technology-portfolio

memetomancer 4y ago

Consider a hypothetical analogous argument against supporting fundamental science made in 1900: What they are working on is completely useless for humanity and doesn't help solve everyday problems... the "and so what?" about the photoelectric effect or quantum theory. Because those people in 1900 could not conceive of inventions like lasers and transistors. They didn't just lack imagination, they lacked total conceptual inability in that context. Just as you are seeming to do here. But of course, either of those two inventions have transformed human society on a level with fire, language, writing and metallurgy. "Is there a comparable impact on knowing that the Higgs boson is +/- 10^-9 (or whatever) aligned with the theoretical model?" perhaps there is! Might not understanding the fine points of the theoretical model help with something like a reactionless thruster? Could this unlock the door on direct manipulation of spacetime? Assist in devising exotic materials, like say some sort of stable muonic matter and opening up a whole new world of chemistry/solid state physics? The potential is staggering, and by nature is almost completely unguessable until it happens. If the world followed the lead of yourself or the Sabine Hossenfelders of the world we might never know. The argument that this hypothetical collider can only be used to explore unconfirmable symmetry theories is simply false. The cost of such a facility is insignificant compared to the potential. My back-of-the-envelope game theory perspective is that humanity should double down on all fronts, at all cost, to push these boundaries. The only impediment is the folks like you, mired in the present and seemingly unable to realize that the unimaginable results are very much unimaginable. Just as those lasers and transistors were 100+ years ago.

srveale 4y ago

Does anyone know anything like a percentage of scientific advancements that ended up being hugely beneficial to society, but were originally derided as being pointless wastes of resources? Might be hard to find out, for example, how many Victorians scoffed at Maxwell wasting his time wondering about imaginary waves flying through the air. At least, in 50-100 years, we'll probably still have records of comments and articles like these, which will make it easier to say just how wrong people were about the importance of pure research. (If anyone is reading this in 2100, and it turns out the ROI on these research projects wasn't worth it, feel free to whisper "I told you so" to my ghost.)

somenameforme 4y ago

"The more important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all been discovered, and these are now so firmly established that the possibility of their ever being supplanted in consequence of new discoveries is exceedingly remote. .. Our future discoveries must be looked for in the sixth place of decimals." - Albert Michelson, 1894 What makes that quote especially remarkable, and ironic, is that was the same Michelson of the famous Michelson - Morley experiment which [1] was an extremely important clue on the path to discovery that would lead rapidly to relativity, and then general explosion of discovery in physics to follow. Not only could he not even imagine the relevance of his very own 'discovery', but largely doubted his own results as the experiment was not intended to 'fail'! The point I make is that so much of major advances in science have come about not through directed efforts but through some sort of serendipity. And it seems to me that observing what happens with ever higher energy collisions is one area where what may be important is not what is expected, but what is unexpected. It's also an area where there is no direct profit motive as contrasted with things like energy or what I assume you are implying with biology. Those fields will naturally advance because there's money to be made. Atom banging is generally not quite as lucrative an industry and, as such, various sorts of public funding tends to be much more important. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelson%E2%80%93Morley_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelson%E2%80%93Morley_exper...

snowwrestler 4y ago

Do we pursue knowledge to build a strong economy? Or do we build a strong economy so we can pursue knowledge? Although I’ve spent a lot of my career working for a strong economy, I lean strongly toward the latter. The highest achievement of humanity is not cheap cell phone plans, it’s more like General Relativity, or the Moon landing. What “use” is humanity? What is life for? Big questions for sure, and I won’t claim to have the answers. But I feel pretty confident that most folks believe there is more to life than squinting at everyday problems.

colinmhayes 4y ago
Most people care about knowledge for its ability to raise quality of living, a.k.a it's ability to strengthen the economy.
- snowwrestler 4y ago
  I don’t think the moon landing is celebrated because it gave us Velcro and Tang. I don’t think Einstein is so famous because he helped create the foundation for cell phones. Daily quality of life is important but I think there is a deeper feeling about life that most people share.

staticassertion 4y ago

> But what you are working on is completely useless for humanity. Knowing that there is a quantum foam is knowledge that brings us nowhere. If someone could answer to this "and so what?" in a meaningful way I would be glad to change my mind. For the time being, the energy scale we are making these discoveries is not useful. How many things were discovered by ancient Greeks that only became useful in the last 100-200 years? The Sieve of Eratosthenes comes to mind - I can't imagine that was really helping anyone out until we had modern cryptography.

Cd00d 4y ago

Are you claiming that no knowledge or technology has come out of CERN that benefits humanity in any way? I find that hard to believe considering how much technical innovation came out of the space race that has had an impact on our everyday lives [0]. [0] https://www.aii.org/how-the-space-race-built-todays-technology/#:~:text=Relevant%20examples%20include%20medical%20imaging,and%20countless%20other%20vital%20inventions https://www.aii.org/how-the-space-race-built-todays-technolo....

dwaltrip 4y ago

> Knowing that there is a quantum foam is knowledge that brings us nowhere. A bit myopic, eh? We don't know which scientific advancements will result in practical applications or how long it will take. But history is incredibly clear on this point. In general, scientific pursuits and the technological advancements required to carry them out bring about countless incredible practical applications over time. In the long run, curiosity and interestingness are very good heuristics for worthwhile endeavors to pursue.

willis936 4y ago

Digitizer and controller platforms suitable for many other industries (such as uTCA.4) were developed for LHC. White Rabbit alone adds a lot of value to humanity. Proper coherency of data flying around an Ethernet network is super handy when making a big complicated controller for a big complicated machine.

mateo1 4y ago

The biggest contribution of CERN to humanity is not theoretical physics, it's the engineering progress made possible by the truly exceptional requirements of the machinery of the accelerator and all the supporting infrastructure. Ultra high vacuum, specialty detectors, electromagnetic components, control systems, cryonics, new alloys etc. All the know-how and human capital generated by these megaprojects along with a better understanding of fundamental physics is transferred into practical applications a few years later. I can understand how a physics phd might not be exposed so much to this aspect of the project, but the societal benefits are very real despite being hard to quantify and track.

Nagyman 4y ago

The pursuit of knowledge is insanely underrated. > But what you are working on is completely useless for humanity. You simply can't know that. We don't know what we don't know and we are but babies when it comes to understanding and harnessing the universe. One cannot possibly predict how _fundamental science_ might impact our future. > We have so many problems where physics is needed (energy production to start with, and then exploring biology), the money should go there instead. Even if it means having less particle physicists the same way we have less philosophes. This is a false dichotomy; we have the resources for both and more. Perhaps a lack of willpower/grit/political incentives in some arenas, but none of that is insurmountable.

lifeplusplus 4y ago

it takes time, discoveries made 100s of years ago only became useful later on, and in ways nobody knew, the more we understand fundamentals the better it's unquestionably.

guerrilla 4y ago

> "yes, but this is fundamental science..." → yes it is, but where does this fundamental science helps in everyday problems? Have we had a case where the Higgs boson changed anything in our life? God, people like you are the worst. You never know when something could be useful in the future and I think the assumption that fundamentally understanding the universe will never be useful is just absurdly ridiculous. But that's the besides the point, because understanding these things has value in and of itself simply for the fact that people are curious! Is it worth $X billion? That's a different question. But to say it's worthless is just absolute nonsense.

BrandoElFollito 4y ago
When the energy you need to access these areas are orders of magnitude larger that what we have on earth (except for pinpointed single places such as the LHC) then it does not make sense. You simply cannot make use of them. Let's get back to them when we have the energy. This is similar to astrophysics where you discover that a sun has planets. And do what. Are you going to go there anytime? Or use it to modify your own planet? You won't, and any dreaming won't change that.