3 ms·

Building more colliders isn't what I would call a revolution, more like status quo. What would be a revolution is if a series of scientifically sound (tabletop)

by casey2 3y ago

Building more colliders isn't what I would call a revolution, more like status quo. What would be a revolution is if a series of scientifically sound (tabletop) experiments started advancing the field.

parhamn 3y ago
> if a series of scientifically sound (tabletop) experiments Does fruit hanging this low still exist?
- floxy 3y ago
  https://news.stanford.edu/2019/09/25/precision-physics-tabletop-experiments/ https://news.stanford.edu/2019/09/25/precision-physics-table... https://phys.org/news/2014-12-world-compact-tabletop-particle.html https://phys.org/news/2014-12-world-compact-tabletop-particl...
- peterfirefly 3y ago
  For a sufficiently long table: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AWAKE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AWAKE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_acceleration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_acceleration Nobody knows if wakefield accelerators will be good enough but they are improving fast and they aren't too expensive to build.
  - ndngmfksk 3y ago
    There is a recent e+e- Higgs factory proposal called HALHF, with the e-'s accelerated by plasma and the e+'s by a conventional accelerator. https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.10150 https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.10150
ndngmfksk 3y ago
If such tabletop experiments were possible, then surely the particle physicists who use these colliders would be building them? As far as I can see, they're requesting colliders because to the best of their knowledge, colliders are necessary. A muon collider would be revolutionary in the sense that it would open up a new energy range for lepton collisions. It would also be a technological marvel.
- naasking 3y ago
  Those colliders need more research, but are possible (like wakefield accelerators). The physicists who want these colliders probably aren't interested in this kind of research though, so they push for classic collider designs they already know how to build. I agree that muon colliders are a better investment than something like the Future Circular Collider though, it's an area that hasn't been as thoroughly explored.
- EvgeniyZh 3y ago
  It's not that simple. There are many smaller scale experiments in HEP, all kind of dark matter detectors among them. Colliders are irreplaceable in a sense that we do not know how to get higher energies without them, but it's unclear for me that just getting higher energies is enough. Energy scales for new physics can be enormous for all we know, I do not see any reason to expect that new physics hides "around the corner" (in a 1.5 orders of magnitude FCC or muon collider could give us). Muon collider is at least looking in a different place, and it's definitely more interesting than FCC for me, but I'm still not 100% sure it is the right thing to do, given the limited resources.

by casey2 3y ago

parhamn 3y ago

> if a series of scientifically sound (tabletop) experiments Does fruit hanging this low still exist?

floxy 3y ago
https://news.stanford.edu/2019/09/25/precision-physics-tabletop-experiments/ https://news.stanford.edu/2019/09/25/precision-physics-table... https://phys.org/news/2014-12-world-compact-tabletop-particle.html https://phys.org/news/2014-12-world-compact-tabletop-particl...
peterfirefly 3y ago
For a sufficiently long table: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AWAKE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AWAKE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_acceleration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plasma_acceleration Nobody knows if wakefield accelerators will be good enough but they are improving fast and they aren't too expensive to build.
- ndngmfksk 3y ago
  There is a recent e+e- Higgs factory proposal called HALHF, with the e-'s accelerated by plasma and the e+'s by a conventional accelerator. https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.10150 https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.10150

ndngmfksk 3y ago

If such tabletop experiments were possible, then surely the particle physicists who use these colliders would be building them? As far as I can see, they're requesting colliders because to the best of their knowledge, colliders are necessary. A muon collider would be revolutionary in the sense that it would open up a new energy range for lepton collisions. It would also be a technological marvel.

naasking 3y ago
Those colliders need more research, but are possible (like wakefield accelerators). The physicists who want these colliders probably aren't interested in this kind of research though, so they push for classic collider designs they already know how to build. I agree that muon colliders are a better investment than something like the Future Circular Collider though, it's an area that hasn't been as thoroughly explored.
EvgeniyZh 3y ago
It's not that simple. There are many smaller scale experiments in HEP, all kind of dark matter detectors among them. Colliders are irreplaceable in a sense that we do not know how to get higher energies without them, but it's unclear for me that just getting higher energies is enough. Energy scales for new physics can be enormous for all we know, I do not see any reason to expect that new physics hides "around the corner" (in a 1.5 orders of magnitude FCC or muon collider could give us). Muon collider is at least looking in a different place, and it's definitely more interesting than FCC for me, but I'm still not 100% sure it is the right thing to do, given the limited resources.