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Sabine is skeptical [0]. Is it really true that there a no theories that are proven or dicarded with this experiment, and that the Chinese have plans to do it m

Sabine is skeptical [0]. Is it really true that there a no theories that are proven or dicarded with this experiment, and that the Chinese have plans to do it much faster? Her video is pretty damning. [0] https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2025/04/why-cerns-new-collider-plans-are-dead.html?m=1 https://backreaction.blogspot.com/2025/04/why-cerns-new-coll...

jameskilton 2y ago
The utter lack of significant discoveries at the LHC after the Higgs (2012!) is a pretty telling sign. Any bigger collider is riding purely on the hope that something will make the effort worth while.
- refulgentis 2y ago
  There's been plenty of significant discoveries, many, many. (O(10)s hadrons, consistent standard model discrepancies are really big news, those weren't expected) There hasn't been a significant new particle discovery, but none was expected other than Higgs, as far back as 2006 when I was still screwing around in graduate physics. I honestly can't remember the last time a new particle was randomly discovered by experiment that wasn't already proposed and agreed to as sound-in-theory. It's much cheaper and faster to do theory, then built what you need to verify, than to crank up energy as high as you can and hope for the best (I'd hazard a guess this ran out of steam by the 50s/60s at the latest)
  - T-A 2y ago
    > There hasn't been a significant new particle discovery, but none was expected other than Higgs The word "expected" is doing a lot of work in that sentence. At least one kind of Higgs had to be found unless the mass generation mechanism of the Standard Model and all its proposed extensions (MSSM etc) was categorically wrong; the LHC was designed to cover the entire mass range where it had to be. In that sense, the Higgs was strictly expected. But if you had asked a bunch of phenomenologists "What new thing do you expect to be found first at the LHC?", most would have gone for one or more superpartners. The Higgs' hierarchy problem [1] was believed to require electroweak-scale SUSY, which in turn implied the existence of electroweak-scale supersymmetric partners to the known SM particles. Those would have been easier to find than the Higgs, so they would have shown up earlier in the data, before there was enough of it to also discern a Higgs bump. You could argue that superpartners were not expected with the same degree of certainty as some kind of Higgs, but the absence of any sign of SUSY was a big disappointment, and the beginning of the end for what had become the dominating scenario for Beyond Standard Model physics. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierarchy_problem#Supersymmetry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierarchy_problem#Supersymmetr...
    - MadnessASAP 2y ago
      I'm not much of a particles guy but isn't the lack of "expected" discoveries itself a discovery?
      - refulgentis 2y ago
        You nailed it. In addition, they're absolutely correct, some subset of particle researchers were wish-casting for SUSY stuff. In addition, there's a significant substantive difference between "$X was defined and built for discovering $Y" and "some subset of $X hoped for proof of their theory $Y via $Z being discovered" -- there was also some subset that hoped for proof of string theory, or innumerable other things. In general they're right and know their stuff if they're able to have this detailed of a take, but the actual claim "The word "expected" is doing a lot of work.", is doing a lot of work. And I was there. In a graduate physics lab with multiple faculty members on the LHC before it opened, including a big SUSY fan who thought that'd be a bank shot on a bank shot outcome, maybe. Hoped for by some? Yes. Expected by a majority? Absolutely not.
        MadnessASAP 2y ago
        Neat! Thanks for sharing your insight and fancy words :)
        T-A 2y ago
        Experimenters always were more skeptical; I hypothesized asking phenomenologists for a reason. I like Adam Falkowski's description of what it was like in [1] (about the end of dedicated SUSY working groups at CERN): the existence of SUSY was almost a fact for a bulk of researchers working on the topic. This certainly was reflected in hiring practices, and you had a large group of top researchers whose entire publication list was tied to supersymmetry [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/supersymmetrys-long-fall-from-grace/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/supersymmetrys-lo...
        refulgentis 2y ago
        I don't disagree but you choosing contrarianism to show you're clever and know a lot here (which worked!) made it sound like CERN was expecting a SUSY particle or whatever (which it wasn't)
- pfdietz 2y ago
  I'm not a physicist, but if I understand correctly there's likely new-ish physics to be found in Higgs-Higgs interactions.
  - cyberax 2y ago
    There is a _hope_ that there's new physics there. But so far, nothing indicates that the next collider will find something. There is definitely new physics to be discovered, but it might need a collider the size of the Solar system for the discovery.
- 77pt77 2y ago
  Negative results are valuable results. SUSY is excluded. Like completely at these scales. Extra dimensions the same.
  - tsimionescu 2y ago
    Sure, but there was never any firm reason to believe SUSY should be true, and certainly no evidence that it should happen at these scales specifically. This is like saying that burning a billion dollars in cash is valuable science, because it conclusively proved that money can't spontaneously reform out of ash, at least not at the scale of a billion dollars.
- FilosofumRex 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - ChadNauseam 2y ago
    I don't know anything about high energy physics, but functional programming is carried on the shoulders of LGBT people, and it wouldn't surprise me if other extra-nerdy fields are similar. So I don't see anything wrong with CERN writing a blog post commemorating LGBT people.
refulgentis 2y ago
Sabine is something other-than a good source on how physicists actually think about things at this point, unfortunately. It's not true at all. I'll come back and write some up over the next 20 minutes.
- gadflyinyoureye 2y ago
  I look forward to it. I listened to her a lot recently because YouTube decided ever “next video” bump while I drove should be her.
  - refulgentis 2y ago
    Blissfully, I found an IEEE article that collects the stuff I'm aware of in one neat package. https://spectrum.ieee.org/supercolliders https://spectrum.ieee.org/supercolliders The shell games are: 1. claiming it is a proton collider[^1 source] designed to look for new particles [^2 comment]. 2. false equivalence between China putting in their latest 5 year plan to make a plan to make something that will transition to being a proton collider. And it's worse than that: If they immediately started after the plan was complete and on schedule, they'd be done in 2048 and transition from e/p to protons in 2066. CERNs plan is to be done with e/p in 2042 and transition to protons in 2070. That's 4 years later, but it's comically irrelevant. That's not getting done sooner, that's just transitioning to doing stuff we already can do faster, the cool thing and why both are interested in building one is the electron/positron collider stuff, not scaled up proton collider stuff. Content: - The project would transition to a proton collider at the end of its lifespan as a novel tool, in 2070. - It is proposed to operate by 2042, assuming funds dispersed over 12 years, starting in 2030. - It will operate as a electron-positron collider for the intervening ~3 decades before transitioning to essentially LHC with 4x power. - Electron / positron is a unique collision form, chosen to allow for more precise measurement, such as the LHC discoveries of discrepancies in the Standard Model. - This is very important work. The more precise you nail down these uncertainties, the more theorists can do to verify their work, allowing the experimentalists to know where to look for new stuff, if any. [^1 source] Via Sabine link: "CERN wants to build a new particle collider which will smash protons together at roughly 6 times the energies seen at the Large Hadron Collider." [^2 comment] This is the undercurrent of the whole criticism, I cannot explicitly source it to one sentence. It's also bizarre: I can't remember the last time experimentalists got to discover something without the theorists telling them where to look. It's cheaper that way! LHC was a failure too by that standard. There simply aren't any candidates in the theory that are accessible at humanities near-term energy levels, the Standard Model's worked beautifully, modulo these tantalizing discoveries at LHC of small discrepancies that electron/positron collisions let you explore.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
ks2048 2y ago
She seems to base her content on how good of a Mr-beast-style thumbnail she can make to get clicks.
- gr_norm 2y ago
  I have repeatedly heard from people who work in physics research that she's optimized her content for maximum rage/anger/emotional response rather than accuracy, particularly as of late. The tidbits of truth and warranted skepticism lend the rest of it undue credibility. Sadly, good science reporting doesn't get the advertising revenue that manufactured-scandal tabloid-style reporting does. I think her critical perspective can be useful, but it's important to keep in mind while considering it that you're being presented a warped telling of reality.
  - 77pt77 2y ago
    > her content for maximum rage/anger/emotional response rather than accuracy Yes. The content mirrors the thumbnail style.
    - exe34 2y ago
      I've started to watch one or two videos of hers, but I don't respond very well to emotional rants. So I stopped.
      - 77pt77 2y ago
        It's a shame because some of her content is actually good. It's not like she's Kaku or something. Alas...
        exe34 2y ago
        to be honest, I already have several lifetimes of projects and books lined up, so I'm okay missing out on some things.
  - johnny22 2y ago
Uptrenda 2y ago
I was just about to post this. Good to see another Sabine listener here. Her criticism of particle physics, the LHC, and academia is absolutely savage.
marcosdumay 2y ago
The report has about 100 pages with summaries of experiments they want to test there, if you want to see for yourself. Personally, I'm skeptical too, but the new ideas have been piling up since the time she started talking about this. Things have changed a lot since then.

jameskilton 2y ago

The utter lack of significant discoveries at the LHC after the Higgs (2012!) is a pretty telling sign. Any bigger collider is riding purely on the hope that something will make the effort worth while.

refulgentis 2y ago
There's been plenty of significant discoveries, many, many. (O(10)s hadrons, consistent standard model discrepancies are really big news, those weren't expected) There hasn't been a significant new particle discovery, but none was expected other than Higgs, as far back as 2006 when I was still screwing around in graduate physics. I honestly can't remember the last time a new particle was randomly discovered by experiment that wasn't already proposed and agreed to as sound-in-theory. It's much cheaper and faster to do theory, then built what you need to verify, than to crank up energy as high as you can and hope for the best (I'd hazard a guess this ran out of steam by the 50s/60s at the latest)
- T-A 2y ago
  > There hasn't been a significant new particle discovery, but none was expected other than Higgs The word "expected" is doing a lot of work in that sentence. At least one kind of Higgs had to be found unless the mass generation mechanism of the Standard Model and all its proposed extensions (MSSM etc) was categorically wrong; the LHC was designed to cover the entire mass range where it had to be. In that sense, the Higgs was strictly expected. But if you had asked a bunch of phenomenologists "What new thing do you expect to be found first at the LHC?", most would have gone for one or more superpartners. The Higgs' hierarchy problem [1] was believed to require electroweak-scale SUSY, which in turn implied the existence of electroweak-scale supersymmetric partners to the known SM particles. Those would have been easier to find than the Higgs, so they would have shown up earlier in the data, before there was enough of it to also discern a Higgs bump. You could argue that superpartners were not expected with the same degree of certainty as some kind of Higgs, but the absence of any sign of SUSY was a big disappointment, and the beginning of the end for what had become the dominating scenario for Beyond Standard Model physics. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierarchy_problem#Supersymmetry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hierarchy_problem#Supersymmetr...
  - MadnessASAP 2y ago
    I'm not much of a particles guy but isn't the lack of "expected" discoveries itself a discovery?
    - refulgentis 2y ago
      You nailed it. In addition, they're absolutely correct, some subset of particle researchers were wish-casting for SUSY stuff. In addition, there's a significant substantive difference between "$X was defined and built for discovering $Y" and "some subset of $X hoped for proof of their theory $Y via $Z being discovered" -- there was also some subset that hoped for proof of string theory, or innumerable other things. In general they're right and know their stuff if they're able to have this detailed of a take, but the actual claim "The word "expected" is doing a lot of work.", is doing a lot of work. And I was there. In a graduate physics lab with multiple faculty members on the LHC before it opened, including a big SUSY fan who thought that'd be a bank shot on a bank shot outcome, maybe. Hoped for by some? Yes. Expected by a majority? Absolutely not.
      - MadnessASAP 2y ago
        Neat! Thanks for sharing your insight and fancy words :)
      - T-A 2y ago
        Experimenters always were more skeptical; I hypothesized asking phenomenologists for a reason. I like Adam Falkowski's description of what it was like in [1] (about the end of dedicated SUSY working groups at CERN): the existence of SUSY was almost a fact for a bulk of researchers working on the topic. This certainly was reflected in hiring practices, and you had a large group of top researchers whose entire publication list was tied to supersymmetry [1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/supersymmetrys-long-fall-from-grace/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/supersymmetrys-lo...
        refulgentis 2y ago
        I don't disagree but you choosing contrarianism to show you're clever and know a lot here (which worked!) made it sound like CERN was expecting a SUSY particle or whatever (which it wasn't)
pfdietz 2y ago
I'm not a physicist, but if I understand correctly there's likely new-ish physics to be found in Higgs-Higgs interactions.
- cyberax 2y ago
  There is a _hope_ that there's new physics there. But so far, nothing indicates that the next collider will find something. There is definitely new physics to be discovered, but it might need a collider the size of the Solar system for the discovery.
77pt77 2y ago
Negative results are valuable results. SUSY is excluded. Like completely at these scales. Extra dimensions the same.
- tsimionescu 2y ago
  Sure, but there was never any firm reason to believe SUSY should be true, and certainly no evidence that it should happen at these scales specifically. This is like saying that burning a billion dollars in cash is valuable science, because it conclusively proved that money can't spontaneously reform out of ash, at least not at the scale of a billion dollars.
FilosofumRex 2y ago
[flagged]
- ChadNauseam 2y ago
  I don't know anything about high energy physics, but functional programming is carried on the shoulders of LGBT people, and it wouldn't surprise me if other extra-nerdy fields are similar. So I don't see anything wrong with CERN writing a blog post commemorating LGBT people.

refulgentis 2y ago

Sabine is something other-than a good source on how physicists actually think about things at this point, unfortunately. It's not true at all. I'll come back and write some up over the next 20 minutes.

gadflyinyoureye 2y ago
I look forward to it. I listened to her a lot recently because YouTube decided ever “next video” bump while I drove should be her.
- refulgentis 2y ago
  Blissfully, I found an IEEE article that collects the stuff I'm aware of in one neat package. https://spectrum.ieee.org/supercolliders https://spectrum.ieee.org/supercolliders The shell games are: 1. claiming it is a proton collider[^1 source] designed to look for new particles [^2 comment]. 2. false equivalence between China putting in their latest 5 year plan to make a plan to make something that will transition to being a proton collider. And it's worse than that: If they immediately started after the plan was complete and on schedule, they'd be done in 2048 and transition from e/p to protons in 2066. CERNs plan is to be done with e/p in 2042 and transition to protons in 2070. That's 4 years later, but it's comically irrelevant. That's not getting done sooner, that's just transitioning to doing stuff we already can do faster, the cool thing and why both are interested in building one is the electron/positron collider stuff, not scaled up proton collider stuff. Content: - The project would transition to a proton collider at the end of its lifespan as a novel tool, in 2070. - It is proposed to operate by 2042, assuming funds dispersed over 12 years, starting in 2030. - It will operate as a electron-positron collider for the intervening ~3 decades before transitioning to essentially LHC with 4x power. - Electron / positron is a unique collision form, chosen to allow for more precise measurement, such as the LHC discoveries of discrepancies in the Standard Model. - This is very important work. The more precise you nail down these uncertainties, the more theorists can do to verify their work, allowing the experimentalists to know where to look for new stuff, if any. [^1 source] Via Sabine link: "CERN wants to build a new particle collider which will smash protons together at roughly 6 times the energies seen at the Large Hadron Collider." [^2 comment] This is the undercurrent of the whole criticism, I cannot explicitly source it to one sentence. It's also bizarre: I can't remember the last time experimentalists got to discover something without the theorists telling them where to look. It's cheaper that way! LHC was a failure too by that standard. There simply aren't any candidates in the theory that are accessible at humanities near-term energy levels, the Standard Model's worked beautifully, modulo these tantalizing discoveries at LHC of small discrepancies that electron/positron collisions let you explore.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

ks2048 2y ago

She seems to base her content on how good of a Mr-beast-style thumbnail she can make to get clicks.

gr_norm 2y ago
I have repeatedly heard from people who work in physics research that she's optimized her content for maximum rage/anger/emotional response rather than accuracy, particularly as of late. The tidbits of truth and warranted skepticism lend the rest of it undue credibility. Sadly, good science reporting doesn't get the advertising revenue that manufactured-scandal tabloid-style reporting does. I think her critical perspective can be useful, but it's important to keep in mind while considering it that you're being presented a warped telling of reality.
- 77pt77 2y ago
  > her content for maximum rage/anger/emotional response rather than accuracy Yes. The content mirrors the thumbnail style.
  - exe34 2y ago
    I've started to watch one or two videos of hers, but I don't respond very well to emotional rants. So I stopped.
    - 77pt77 2y ago
      It's a shame because some of her content is actually good. It's not like she's Kaku or something. Alas...
      - exe34 2y ago
        to be honest, I already have several lifetimes of projects and books lined up, so I'm okay missing out on some things.
- johnny22 2y ago

Uptrenda 2y ago

I was just about to post this. Good to see another Sabine listener here. Her criticism of particle physics, the LHC, and academia is absolutely savage.

marcosdumay 2y ago

The report has about 100 pages with summaries of experiments they want to test there, if you want to see for yourself. Personally, I'm skeptical too, but the new ideas have been piling up since the time she started talking about this. Things have changed a lot since then.