9 ms·

Why should I, as a taxpayer, want to my government to subsidize this research? I haven’t seen anything useful come out of high energy particle physics in deca

by efitz 3y ago

Why should I, as a taxpayer, want to my government to subsidize this research? I haven’t seen anything useful come out of high energy particle physics in decades. This is an honest question, not a troll. I see lots of spin-off technologies coming out of other “big science”. Consider space programs. We see materials technology coming out of space programs. I can even see the PR value in the space program as it appeals to our imagination and sense of exploration. I can even buy into the “time to make sure all our eggs aren’t in one basket” theory of Musk et al for colonization of other planets. And I love that companies are commercializing it rather than leaving it just to governments. But as a layperson, high energy particle physics seems like (figuratively and literally) pouring money down large holes to satisfy the curiosity of a few researchers. While it’s mildly interesting it’s practically inscrutable and very hard to connect to anything that normal people care about.

paddw 3y ago
Well, I think that trying to understand fundamental physics questions contains some value at large for society which is hard to quantify. But even if you don't believe in that, you could think of this research as buying an option on the case that one of these experiments does end up revealing something that's revolutionary.
bradrn 3y ago
Fundamental research has a funny way of producing results in other areas. To name just one example, the World Wide Web was developed at CERN. The other thing is that you never know exactly what will and won’t have applications later on. General relativity seemed pretty useless until we had GPS; number theory had no practical use for thousands of years until asymmetric cryptography was invented. Even within particle physics, neutron scattering is now a fundamental part of material science, and I’m sure there are many more similar examples. I can’t tell you exactly what CERN’s current research will result in, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it eventually finds a use. (Or has already, in fact.)
- efitz 3y ago
  I hate the “web was invented at CERN” trope. Yes, it’s trivially true, but TBL was standing on the shoulders of giants. When HTTP came along, we already had gopher. We already had HyperCard. SGML was already a thing. We already had FTP. Lots of us already had shell internet accounts; many more had CompuServe or AOL. The web was inevitable at that point in time, and would have taken a similar shape and happened in very short order regardless of whether CERN ever existed.
  - elashri 3y ago
    That can be said about almost every discovery or achievement in history of humanity. And exactly this is why humanity always in one form or another keep doing research. And people who do something get the credit. No one is saying that relativity was going to be formulated if Einstein did no do it (Actually people were close and of course he got some help). A couple of centuries ago, Newton summarize all this when we he said that he did all that because he was standing on the shoulders of giants. This is true today like it was in 17th century.
  - aardvarkr 3y ago
    That’s like saying the Renaissance was nothing special because they were just building on the work of other people. Congratulations, you just described the entirety of human invention. Someone had to be first and there is a reason it was CERN. When you throw money at brilliant people sometimes they come up with brilliant solutions to mundane problems.
    - kortilla 3y ago
      The web wasn’t a significant jump though over HyperCard, gopher, etc. It was nothing like the leap forward that TCP/IP brought us. Put another way, the internet today is completely usable for transferring data across the globe in an instant without Tim’s contribution. The web is not what makes the internet good. If the web is used as a justification for cern, cern is a huge waste of money because that’s a trivial invention.
  - 3y ago
paulddraper 3y ago
Deep science is "we don't know what we don't know" sort of thing. Quantum computers? Faster space travel? Long distance communication? Understanding deep space imaging? Etc
ethbr0 3y ago
There's a page for that! https://science.osti.gov/hep/Benefits-of-HEP https://science.osti.gov/hep/Benefits-of-HEP tl;dr - HEP particle detectors and medical imaging detectors share a lot of technology.
FredPret 3y ago
On the topic of spending big money on science - it would be so awesome if we built a huge observatory on the far side of the moon. I feel like we can do some really interesting radio astronomy there, or at least copy what JWST and Hubble does but with fewer constraints, being on a large, if unstable, physical body. As far as tax money, basic science feels like a large but very slow and unpredictable ROI
ars 3y ago
The answer is: We don't know. We don't know what there, the only way to find out is to experiment. This is true for all fundamental science - you don't know in advance that it's there, you have to just see what happens when you try things.
bboygravity 3y ago
I'm happy that part of the taxes I pay go to LHC. I whish a larger part of it would go there (or to any science really). In percentages whatever taxes go to science in general in the EU is tiny (compared to the US or China). What goes to LHC is pretty much insignificant on an EU taxes scale.
candiodari 3y ago
Because this sort of research was started by a stupid letter by a Physicist to the US president: work on nuclear fission now because ... probably a huge bomb can be made with this process. That physicist was Leo Szilard ... and he was right. Not researching it at any point would probably have lead to the US ceasing to exist by now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein%E2%80%93Szilard_letter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein%E2%80%93Szilard_lette... Congress still puts huge amounts of cash into researching this. Because both potential outcomes: large-scale controlled energy production, and bombs, would have huge consequences in just about any aspect of our lives. Positive and negative.
chmaynard 3y ago
I suggest that you watch Particle Fever, a beautiful documentary about the LHC. If you have already seen it, watch it again with an open mind.
aduitsis 3y ago
Our future technological improvement hinges on basic research. We can certainly iterate and improve technology, but the amount of improvement is always bound to hit a physical limit sooner or later. Doing basic research will actually move the physical limit.
GuB-42 3y ago
Sabine Hossenfelder, who is a theoretical physicist and science communicator seems to share your opinion. She is not very kind to the current state of research in particle physics. Not really because it doesn't have any application, but because particle physicists don't really know what they are looking for, and take up funding from more promising branches of physics. Edit: For clarification, I have no opinion on that matter. I think her argument is interesting, that's why I mentioned it here, but this is not an endorsement. I don't have the qualifications to make an endorsement anyways.
- jasonwatkinspdx 3y ago
  Yes, and most of the physics world is very tired of her grandstanding contrarianism every single time something interesting happens in particle physics, but because people here are also highly biased towards reflexive contrarianism these posts always show up. It's extremely tiresome. If Hossenfelder wants to advance a different research agenda she is free to do so. If enough other people agree she will get her funding. She doesn't need to continuously trash other people's genuine work where the bulk of the field does in fact think this is worthwhile, and her characterizations of particle physicists as villains wasting money is past my line. She's a great educator outside of that behavior however.
  - GuB-42 3y ago
    To be honest, I indeed find that her attitude towards particle physicists goes beyond her usual sarcasm. Being cold and sarcastic is her style, no one is spared, including herself. You may or may not like this style, I personally like it, but for particle physics it borders on hate. I mean, her arguments have merit, that's why I posted that but it is true that it makes me a bit uncomfortable. Personal reasons? Conflict of interest? Something irrational? Or maybe particle physics are indeed villains, I mean, the LHC makes a pretty good not-so-secret lair :)
    - ftxbro 3y ago
      > "You may or may not like this style, I personally like it, but for particle physics it borders on hate. I mean, her arguments have merit, that's why I posted that but it is true that it makes me a bit uncomfortable." My understanding is that she is a particle physicist who wants to understand the contradiction between gravity and quantum mechanics, and I feel like you are mixing passion vs. hate. Or you only see the hate and not the passion. She hates that they are wasting so many decades and hundreds of billions of dollars because of stupid reasons like sunk cost fallacy or because of people putting bad faith arguments to continue dead end research paths. I feel like she hates it so much because she loves the science of it and wants to see it resolved, and that she might not get to see it because they are wasting so much time and money. It's like the ones who hate the star wars sequels. Many people might be cold and sarcastic about them but the ones who truly hate them are the fans of star wars.
irjustin 3y ago
I'm never truly sure about how to answer these questions. "Why go to space?" "Why try to visit Mars or Venus when we have so many problems at home?" As the other posts have stated there are so many exciting discoveries that have led to new technologies, but I've had a handful of in person conversations about this. And those answers don't seem to resonate. I get it though. Some of these seem so far off, many don't produce results, and money sinks especially if they're tax payer dollars. It's just not possible to 100% fund the winners - that's just not how discovery works.
dguest 3y ago
It cost you (assuming an average taxpayer) less than 20 bucks and is the only way humanity will get at a specific kind of knowledge. But more importantly you aren't subsidizing it, you are paying for it outright. Subsidizing would suggest that there is some other revenue stream, whereas this kind of research would simply not exist without taxpayer money. You are subsidizing oil, you are subsidizing solar, you are subsidizing medical research and satellite launches and weapons research. You are not subsidizing fundamental research.
mensetmanusman 3y ago
Basic research always feels that way for many decades or even centuries.
wanda 3y ago
How do you think we got to where we are today?
davrosthedalek 3y ago
Nuclear physicist here, but HEP and NP have large overlap in the non-physics output. Have you been to a doctor lately? Pretty much all imaging technology is HEP/NP based (except sonogram). Proton therapy. Heavy ion radiation therapy.
SiempreViernes 3y ago
Dude, the LHC is basically just European tax money, you wanna go after Fermilab for your taxes. For a more HN flavour answer, look at all this shiny list: https://knowledgetransfer.web.cern.ch/entrepreneurship/current-startups-spin-offs-using-cern-technology-know-how https://knowledgetransfer.web.cern.ch/entrepreneurship/curre...
marcosdumay 3y ago
You seem to have a very incorrect view of things. Probably biased to press-friendliness. For an example, materials technology gets way more inputs from high-energy physics than from space programs. High-energy is one of the very few fundamental frontiers we have to push for discovering new things. (And we are certain what we know is broken somehow.) So, IMO, it's really, really important. I'm firmly on the camp that is against investing in higher-energy accelerators right now, but from that to "high-energy is useless" there are light-years of distance.
lagadu 3y ago
Modern lithography, the technologies that allow us to build microchips, owes its existence to very advanced particle physics research. That alone is colossal, our having incredibly powerful computers in our pockets, desks and data centers wouldn't have happened without that research.

by efitz 3y ago

paddw 3y ago

Well, I think that trying to understand fundamental physics questions contains some value at large for society which is hard to quantify. But even if you don't believe in that, you could think of this research as buying an option on the case that one of these experiments does end up revealing something that's revolutionary.

bradrn 3y ago

Fundamental research has a funny way of producing results in other areas. To name just one example, the World Wide Web was developed at CERN. The other thing is that you never know exactly what will and won’t have applications later on. General relativity seemed pretty useless until we had GPS; number theory had no practical use for thousands of years until asymmetric cryptography was invented. Even within particle physics, neutron scattering is now a fundamental part of material science, and I’m sure there are many more similar examples. I can’t tell you exactly what CERN’s current research will result in, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it eventually finds a use. (Or has already, in fact.)

efitz 3y ago
I hate the “web was invented at CERN” trope. Yes, it’s trivially true, but TBL was standing on the shoulders of giants. When HTTP came along, we already had gopher. We already had HyperCard. SGML was already a thing. We already had FTP. Lots of us already had shell internet accounts; many more had CompuServe or AOL. The web was inevitable at that point in time, and would have taken a similar shape and happened in very short order regardless of whether CERN ever existed.
- elashri 3y ago
  That can be said about almost every discovery or achievement in history of humanity. And exactly this is why humanity always in one form or another keep doing research. And people who do something get the credit. No one is saying that relativity was going to be formulated if Einstein did no do it (Actually people were close and of course he got some help). A couple of centuries ago, Newton summarize all this when we he said that he did all that because he was standing on the shoulders of giants. This is true today like it was in 17th century.
- aardvarkr 3y ago
  That’s like saying the Renaissance was nothing special because they were just building on the work of other people. Congratulations, you just described the entirety of human invention. Someone had to be first and there is a reason it was CERN. When you throw money at brilliant people sometimes they come up with brilliant solutions to mundane problems.
  - kortilla 3y ago
    The web wasn’t a significant jump though over HyperCard, gopher, etc. It was nothing like the leap forward that TCP/IP brought us. Put another way, the internet today is completely usable for transferring data across the globe in an instant without Tim’s contribution. The web is not what makes the internet good. If the web is used as a justification for cern, cern is a huge waste of money because that’s a trivial invention.
- 3y ago

paulddraper 3y ago

Deep science is "we don't know what we don't know" sort of thing. Quantum computers? Faster space travel? Long distance communication? Understanding deep space imaging? Etc

ethbr0 3y ago

There's a page for that! https://science.osti.gov/hep/Benefits-of-HEP https://science.osti.gov/hep/Benefits-of-HEP tl;dr - HEP particle detectors and medical imaging detectors share a lot of technology.

FredPret 3y ago

On the topic of spending big money on science - it would be so awesome if we built a huge observatory on the far side of the moon. I feel like we can do some really interesting radio astronomy there, or at least copy what JWST and Hubble does but with fewer constraints, being on a large, if unstable, physical body. As far as tax money, basic science feels like a large but very slow and unpredictable ROI

ars 3y ago

The answer is: We don't know. We don't know what there, the only way to find out is to experiment. This is true for all fundamental science - you don't know in advance that it's there, you have to just see what happens when you try things.

bboygravity 3y ago

I'm happy that part of the taxes I pay go to LHC. I whish a larger part of it would go there (or to any science really). In percentages whatever taxes go to science in general in the EU is tiny (compared to the US or China). What goes to LHC is pretty much insignificant on an EU taxes scale.

candiodari 3y ago

Because this sort of research was started by a stupid letter by a Physicist to the US president: work on nuclear fission now because ... probably a huge bomb can be made with this process. That physicist was Leo Szilard ... and he was right. Not researching it at any point would probably have lead to the US ceasing to exist by now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein%E2%80%93Szilard_letter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein%E2%80%93Szilard_lette... Congress still puts huge amounts of cash into researching this. Because both potential outcomes: large-scale controlled energy production, and bombs, would have huge consequences in just about any aspect of our lives. Positive and negative.

chmaynard 3y ago

I suggest that you watch Particle Fever, a beautiful documentary about the LHC. If you have already seen it, watch it again with an open mind.

aduitsis 3y ago

Our future technological improvement hinges on basic research. We can certainly iterate and improve technology, but the amount of improvement is always bound to hit a physical limit sooner or later. Doing basic research will actually move the physical limit.

GuB-42 3y ago

Sabine Hossenfelder, who is a theoretical physicist and science communicator seems to share your opinion. She is not very kind to the current state of research in particle physics. Not really because it doesn't have any application, but because particle physicists don't really know what they are looking for, and take up funding from more promising branches of physics. Edit: For clarification, I have no opinion on that matter. I think her argument is interesting, that's why I mentioned it here, but this is not an endorsement. I don't have the qualifications to make an endorsement anyways.

jasonwatkinspdx 3y ago
Yes, and most of the physics world is very tired of her grandstanding contrarianism every single time something interesting happens in particle physics, but because people here are also highly biased towards reflexive contrarianism these posts always show up. It's extremely tiresome. If Hossenfelder wants to advance a different research agenda she is free to do so. If enough other people agree she will get her funding. She doesn't need to continuously trash other people's genuine work where the bulk of the field does in fact think this is worthwhile, and her characterizations of particle physicists as villains wasting money is past my line. She's a great educator outside of that behavior however.
- GuB-42 3y ago
  To be honest, I indeed find that her attitude towards particle physicists goes beyond her usual sarcasm. Being cold and sarcastic is her style, no one is spared, including herself. You may or may not like this style, I personally like it, but for particle physics it borders on hate. I mean, her arguments have merit, that's why I posted that but it is true that it makes me a bit uncomfortable. Personal reasons? Conflict of interest? Something irrational? Or maybe particle physics are indeed villains, I mean, the LHC makes a pretty good not-so-secret lair :)
  - ftxbro 3y ago
    > "You may or may not like this style, I personally like it, but for particle physics it borders on hate. I mean, her arguments have merit, that's why I posted that but it is true that it makes me a bit uncomfortable." My understanding is that she is a particle physicist who wants to understand the contradiction between gravity and quantum mechanics, and I feel like you are mixing passion vs. hate. Or you only see the hate and not the passion. She hates that they are wasting so many decades and hundreds of billions of dollars because of stupid reasons like sunk cost fallacy or because of people putting bad faith arguments to continue dead end research paths. I feel like she hates it so much because she loves the science of it and wants to see it resolved, and that she might not get to see it because they are wasting so much time and money. It's like the ones who hate the star wars sequels. Many people might be cold and sarcastic about them but the ones who truly hate them are the fans of star wars.

irjustin 3y ago

I'm never truly sure about how to answer these questions. "Why go to space?" "Why try to visit Mars or Venus when we have so many problems at home?" As the other posts have stated there are so many exciting discoveries that have led to new technologies, but I've had a handful of in person conversations about this. And those answers don't seem to resonate. I get it though. Some of these seem so far off, many don't produce results, and money sinks especially if they're tax payer dollars. It's just not possible to 100% fund the winners - that's just not how discovery works.

dguest 3y ago

It cost you (assuming an average taxpayer) less than 20 bucks and is the only way humanity will get at a specific kind of knowledge. But more importantly you aren't subsidizing it, you are paying for it outright. Subsidizing would suggest that there is some other revenue stream, whereas this kind of research would simply not exist without taxpayer money. You are subsidizing oil, you are subsidizing solar, you are subsidizing medical research and satellite launches and weapons research. You are not subsidizing fundamental research.

mensetmanusman 3y ago

Basic research always feels that way for many decades or even centuries.

wanda 3y ago

How do you think we got to where we are today?

davrosthedalek 3y ago

Nuclear physicist here, but HEP and NP have large overlap in the non-physics output. Have you been to a doctor lately? Pretty much all imaging technology is HEP/NP based (except sonogram). Proton therapy. Heavy ion radiation therapy.

SiempreViernes 3y ago

Dude, the LHC is basically just European tax money, you wanna go after Fermilab for your taxes. For a more HN flavour answer, look at all this shiny list: https://knowledgetransfer.web.cern.ch/entrepreneurship/current-startups-spin-offs-using-cern-technology-know-how https://knowledgetransfer.web.cern.ch/entrepreneurship/curre...

marcosdumay 3y ago

You seem to have a very incorrect view of things. Probably biased to press-friendliness. For an example, materials technology gets way more inputs from high-energy physics than from space programs. High-energy is one of the very few fundamental frontiers we have to push for discovering new things. (And we are certain what we know is broken somehow.) So, IMO, it's really, really important. I'm firmly on the camp that is against investing in higher-energy accelerators right now, but from that to "high-energy is useless" there are light-years of distance.

lagadu 3y ago

Modern lithography, the technologies that allow us to build microchips, owes its existence to very advanced particle physics research. That alone is colossal, our having incredibly powerful computers in our pockets, desks and data centers wouldn't have happened without that research.