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"Physics experiments are approaching the highest energies it will ever be possible to test by any collider experiment, both for financial and technical reasons.

"Physics experiments are approaching the highest energies it will ever be possible to test by any collider experiment, both for financial and technical reasons. We can’t build a collider bigger than the surface of the Earth" We can't build a collider bigger than the surface of the earth TODAY. We had not gone outside of the earth, but that does not mean that in the future they wont. That "we already know everything about the world" had been said for long. It was said to Socrates centuries before Jesus was born, and it was said to the inventor of the microscope(why do we need something to see everything we already know bigger?). The interesting part is that we don't know what we don't know. E.g we know 0 about the real cause of gravity.

coldtea 12y ago
>We can't build a collider bigger than the surface of the earth TODAY. Yeah, I'm sure the processor that so eloquently addressed tons of issues in his interview also knew that. The thing is the possibility of doing it tomorrow is not that big either. We are more like to regress or kill everybody (from nuclear war to bacterial resistance), than to conquer the universe. And even if we did fan out to the Solar system planets, the logistics stil look bad for us. Plus, some things we investigate approach physical limits, so no amount of "larger colliders" or "more energy" will help us with those. >That "we already know everything about the world" had been said for long. There's nothing about saying something and being wrong for a long time that precludes it eventually being true. Plus, it's not like we actually have said that "we know everything about the world" for a long time. Most societies, from ancient Egypt to Greece, to medieval times and renessaince and so one, believed there are tons of mysteries to be solved and things to be explained, and worked on finding things out. Yes, even the during the so called "dark ages" (mediaval times) they did that, math and other kind of sciences, from medicine to cartography, was practiced strongly even then. The common misconception about those ages thinking "they know everything" is just an old wives tale -- often just based on the sayings of some fundamendalists.
- pavel_lishin 12y ago
  It sounds like you're saying that we should focus on things that give us a bigger bang for our buck today, instead of hoping that tomorrow we'll be able to turn the asteroid belt into a collider. And that's true. But we were more pessimistic about our survival prognosis during the cold war, and we seem to have made it through that. There surely is a middle ground between "let's see what this dollar will get us" and "maybe, in the future, when we have a quajillion dinaros".

coldtea 12y ago

>We can't build a collider bigger than the surface of the earth TODAY. Yeah, I'm sure the processor that so eloquently addressed tons of issues in his interview also knew that. The thing is the possibility of doing it tomorrow is not that big either. We are more like to regress or kill everybody (from nuclear war to bacterial resistance), than to conquer the universe. And even if we did fan out to the Solar system planets, the logistics stil look bad for us. Plus, some things we investigate approach physical limits, so no amount of "larger colliders" or "more energy" will help us with those. >That "we already know everything about the world" had been said for long. There's nothing about saying something and being wrong for a long time that precludes it eventually being true. Plus, it's not like we actually have said that "we know everything about the world" for a long time. Most societies, from ancient Egypt to Greece, to medieval times and renessaince and so one, believed there are tons of mysteries to be solved and things to be explained, and worked on finding things out. Yes, even the during the so called "dark ages" (mediaval times) they did that, math and other kind of sciences, from medicine to cartography, was practiced strongly even then. The common misconception about those ages thinking "they know everything" is just an old wives tale -- often just based on the sayings of some fundamendalists.

pavel_lishin 12y ago
It sounds like you're saying that we should focus on things that give us a bigger bang for our buck today, instead of hoping that tomorrow we'll be able to turn the asteroid belt into a collider. And that's true. But we were more pessimistic about our survival prognosis during the cold war, and we seem to have made it through that. There surely is a middle ground between "let's see what this dollar will get us" and "maybe, in the future, when we have a quajillion dinaros".