3 ms·

It's not so much the world that's stopped caring, but there's been no real advance. The Higgs was expected, and found. All the other theories were refuted by t

by dkural 4y ago

It's not so much the world that's stopped caring, but there's been no real advance. The Higgs was expected, and found. All the other theories were refuted by the LHC. No new particles, no super-symmetry, nothing. The field of particle physics is at a dead-end currently.

mrguyorama 4y ago
And even if it isn't a dead end, moving forward requires EVEN LARGER accelerators for higher energies, which are expensive, which requires buy in from the public, and the public DGAF about "understanding particle physics". Also, very little of this possible future advancement could be meaningful to everyday people, as it's astoundingly unlikely for something that "breaks physics" to actually have significant effects, otherwise we should have found it ages ago. Most likely, any new physics from particle physics would likely just add more decimal places of accuracy to existing models.
- magicalhippo 4y ago
  > moving forward requires EVEN LARGER accelerators for higher energies Right, I recently saw a presentation my an experimentalist arguing that after HL-LHC[1] (a major upgrade to LHC), the next sensible size for a LHC-style collider would be one that occupied the Gulf of Mexico. And they meant literally[2], the proposal was to have submerged segments, using existing technology from the offshore oil industry, spanning the gulf. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Luminosity_Large_Hadron_Collider https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Luminosity_Large_Hadron_C... [2]: https://s3.cern.ch/inspire-prod-files-3/3e7c3bd810a4730714d3b2394fed57e1 https://s3.cern.ch/inspire-prod-files-3/3e7c3bd810a4730714d3...
  - mrguyorama 4y ago
    It's incredibly depressing. There's no path to fully exploring particle physics without basically a worldwide utopia to fund ludicrously expensive, probably unsuccessful projects. Sure, there's not likely to be anything incredible to come out of further research in the that field, but the idea of being unable to learn about our universe because nobody cares and politicians don't want to pay for it sucks.
    - magicalhippo 4y ago
      Well, it seems multi-messenger astronomy might provide an avenue to further particle physics exploration. After all, we got some giant particle accelerators around us in the form of black holes.

by dkural 4y ago

mrguyorama 4y ago

And even if it isn't a dead end, moving forward requires EVEN LARGER accelerators for higher energies, which are expensive, which requires buy in from the public, and the public DGAF about "understanding particle physics". Also, very little of this possible future advancement could be meaningful to everyday people, as it's astoundingly unlikely for something that "breaks physics" to actually have significant effects, otherwise we should have found it ages ago. Most likely, any new physics from particle physics would likely just add more decimal places of accuracy to existing models.

magicalhippo 4y ago
> moving forward requires EVEN LARGER accelerators for higher energies Right, I recently saw a presentation my an experimentalist arguing that after HL-LHC[1] (a major upgrade to LHC), the next sensible size for a LHC-style collider would be one that occupied the Gulf of Mexico. And they meant literally[2], the proposal was to have submerged segments, using existing technology from the offshore oil industry, spanning the gulf. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Luminosity_Large_Hadron_Collider https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Luminosity_Large_Hadron_C... [2]: https://s3.cern.ch/inspire-prod-files-3/3e7c3bd810a4730714d3b2394fed57e1 https://s3.cern.ch/inspire-prod-files-3/3e7c3bd810a4730714d3...
- mrguyorama 4y ago
  It's incredibly depressing. There's no path to fully exploring particle physics without basically a worldwide utopia to fund ludicrously expensive, probably unsuccessful projects. Sure, there's not likely to be anything incredible to come out of further research in the that field, but the idea of being unable to learn about our universe because nobody cares and politicians don't want to pay for it sucks.
  - magicalhippo 4y ago
    Well, it seems multi-messenger astronomy might provide an avenue to further particle physics exploration. After all, we got some giant particle accelerators around us in the form of black holes.