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> "lets ignore the knowledge we've accumulated and start over afresh" The idea of getting young physicists to do lots of research is not at all about ignoring

by rocqua 4y ago

> "lets ignore the knowledge we've accumulated and start over afresh" The idea of getting young physicists to do lots of research is not at all about ignoring the old knowledge. These young people will have gotten a PhD in physics. They will have absorbed a lot of the relevant old knowledge. The idea is that, because they came to this knowledge quite quickly, they have a fresh view on it. You simply get a different view on knowledge you build over decades as opposed to knowledge you learnt in a few years. This different view could very well lead to new and valuable insights. There is not a "cabbal of old researchers that have found a much better way to explore things but for political reasons is keeping it secret". But there is a "group of people who have been doing high energy physics that want to keep doing high energy physics". It makes sense that they want to keep doing it, even if other approaches would be more fruitful. They have invested lots of time into it, and they might not even know about the other approaches. And doing 'more of the old thing' is a safe bet. It's just that by now 'more of the old thing' is getting really stupidly expensive. And it looks to be a lot more efficient to try a lot more new things. Give the people with a fresh look on it a change to come up with ideas. > Why is it so impossible for you to believe that people have done honest attempts at finding new ways to do the fundamental physics they want to explore for decades and keep coming to the conclusion that they'll need big machines to do anything worthwhile on the timescale of a PhD position? These people surely do exist. But there are plenty of others out there that have ideas for 10 million dollar machines rather than 100 billion dollar machines. Try some of the 10 million dollar machines rather than only the 100 billion dollar machines. I think many of the 10 million dollar machines are currently not being funded because that level of funding requires clout, reputation, and political acumen to get. This currently lies with the people who like doing accelerators. They don't like building non-accelerators that cost 10 million dollars, so they don't help the 10 million dollar machines as much. That is not malice, these people aren't evil. They just like a tool that is getting inefficient.

SiempreViernes 4y ago
> But there is a "group of people who have been doing high energy physics that want to keep doing high energy physics". Apparently it needs to be said because people act like they don't know it: those are the only people interested in answering questions about the fundamental particles! Diverging interests is the fundamental reason people separate into different fields. > they might not even know about the other approaches You can easily find the lists of seminars given at CERN and other places: they do know about other fields. In fact people from HEP move to other fields, and folks from other fields move into HEP. > Try some of the 10 million dollar machines rather than only the 100 billion dollar machines. They are being built though! In fact there are 2 billion experiments being built. The argument here is something else: that High energy physics should just stop building big machines at all, and instead magically solve the problem that small machines were built and fully exploited many many decades ago. The proposed FCC cost is 30 billion.

by rocqua 4y ago

SiempreViernes 4y ago

> But there is a "group of people who have been doing high energy physics that want to keep doing high energy physics". Apparently it needs to be said because people act like they don't know it: those are the only people interested in answering questions about the fundamental particles! Diverging interests is the fundamental reason people separate into different fields. > they might not even know about the other approaches You can easily find the lists of seminars given at CERN and other places: they do know about other fields. In fact people from HEP move to other fields, and folks from other fields move into HEP. > Try some of the 10 million dollar machines rather than only the 100 billion dollar machines. They are being built though! In fact there are 2 billion experiments being built. The argument here is something else: that High energy physics should just stop building big machines at all, and instead magically solve the problem that small machines were built and fully exploited many many decades ago. The proposed FCC cost is 30 billion.