Made this comment below but spending billions on another collider in an attempt to essentially validate SUSY is irresponsible. A few years ago, a bunch of physical philosophers tried to justify this turn of particle physics in general away from experiment, particularly suggesting the search of symmetries and mathematical beauty (I guess) was enough of a justification for the work even though it essentially is contrary to the basic scientific principles of relying on experiment and observation. Now, we're seeing real world consequences of that mistake, billions in resources and potentially decades of man-hours to be devoted to another super-collider.<p>Honestly, this money could be spent on myriad other projects, not to mention towards fusion research or alternative energies (solar, wind) in general especially in the face of climate change. Again, seeing the failure of the LHC and then deciding you're going to double down is just straight irresponsible. I honestly wonder what member states are thinking when they see CERN contemplate this especially after the LHC failed to find SUSY particles.<p>This is just another painful reminder of how narrow minded some scientists are and so focused on their own little niche. There are so many larger problems the world is facing today, it's upsetting but not surprising no one at the table even asked the most important questions when making these plans, "is this even necessary?"<p>Last tidbit, there are next generation acceleration schemes using lasers that could promise much cheaper acceleration of particles on a much smaller scale (centimeters) although the brightness and general beam quality isn't quite there yet. That could be a potential route forward and be much cheaper in the long run, it just would require a) some time and research but more importantly b) the current crop of experimental scientists at CERN might find it not their expertise and so might not get the grants. Again, reiterating the narrow mindedness of scientists these days.
> It could be a hard sell, especially as the new collider wouldn’t have as clear a goal as the LHC did. However, particle physics and the Standard Model are at a place where the application of science is needed to validate theories.<p>I mean I understand the need to keep pushing the boundaries of fundamental physics, but how long do you justify such spending on a single project? That same money could possibly be pumped into more immediately useful "hard" applied problems like fusion reactors, clean energy, propulsion systems or pretty much any problem on the technology horizon that won't be funded by private capital.
Everyone complaining about funding of projects at CERN using a website running in the www[1] which might not exist if it wasn't for CERN...<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Web" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Web</a>
I'm surprised it got through. $23B is a lot of money, and it will cost A LOT more when you start adding up the operational costs. In comparison, the space shuttle was $1.5B per launch "amortized" over 135 launches.<p>One of the effects of the Space Shuttle is that it hogged the budget of NASA (around 30%). Really worthwhile exploration and other space science programs got less funding because the Shuttle program was so big in cost.<p>Is the FCC going to do the same for Physics? There's an opportunity cost here that isn't getting addressed.
Honest question, what are some engineering spin-offs that could come out of this? I'm asking because I'm reminded of a Peter Thiel interview where it's mentioned that, despite changing our view of the universe, no "real world" applications came out of the quark model discovered in the 1960s.<p>This is different from a project like ITER, which is also hugely expensive but could be a game changer.
I'd guess Prof. Sabine Hossenfelder (herself a physicist, and a Research Fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies) must be pretty annoyed, to put it politely. She posits that a lot of current physicists are working with outdated notions of "beauty":<p>(quote)<p><i>But if it’s clear that putting forward new hypotheses just because they are beautiful doesn’t mean they’re likely to be right, then why do theorists in these fields focus so much on beauty? Worse, why do they continue to focus on the same type of beauty, even though that method has demonstrably not worked for 40 years?</i><p><i>... So I have historical evidence, math, and data. In my book I lay out these points and tell the reader what conclusion I have drawn: Beauty is not a good guide to theory-development.</i><p><i>I then explain that this widespread use of scientifically questionable but productive methodology is symptomatic to the current organization of academic research, and a problem that’s not confined to physics.</i><p>(/quote)<p>---<p>I'd also recommend listening to the EconTalk podcast[2] where Hossenfelder was a guest.<p>---<p>PS: I'm not judging this decision of funding, not least because I'm no where near qualified :-). I like what CERN does in general (and I sometimes interact with one of their Cloud Infrastructure teams.)<p>[1] <a href="http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2018/10/you-say-theoretical-physicists-are.html" rel="nofollow">http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2018/10/you-say-theoretical...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://www.econtalk.org/sabine-hossenfelder-on-physics-reality-and-lost-in-math/" rel="nofollow">https://www.econtalk.org/sabine-hossenfelder-on-physics-real...</a>
HN: Governments don’t fund enough scientific research projects.<p>Also HN: Governments shouldn’t be funding this scientific research project.<p>Can’t win with this crowd.
Alternative link that doesn't have a redirect to an advertising.com address or forced tracking cookie acceptance<p><a href="https://phys.org/news/2020-06-cern-council-endorses-larger-supercollider.html" rel="nofollow">https://phys.org/news/2020-06-cern-council-endorses-larger-s...</a>
$2 billion was sunk into this 40 TeV collider before it was cancelled<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_Super_Collider" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_Super_Collider</a>
most of the comments are about the cost-to-deliverable tradeoff, which is pretty high. But we have to consider that the new particle accellerator is not the only thing that will be created. An enormous amount of infrastructure will have to be developed and researched, including new hardware to handle all the events, new detector hardware, magnets, etc. All of these are pretty usable outside of a particle detector or even science environments, because many of the hard parts are engineering problems. I think the "useless" part of this 23B investment is far smaller than we think.<p>For evidence of that look at the past, two projects that immediately come to my mind as being pushed by CERN: HTTP and KiCad. But there are surely some more.
This article and the title (and subject) seems invite uninformed speculation. Some people who are pro-particle-research will point out that you never know what is there till you look. Others will point out CERN has not achieved much with the LHC yet and that this research is highly speculative.<p>I have 2 questions:<p>Can anyone make a good case why this is necessary? The only experiment listed is Higgs Dark matter work. But that seems speculative and also is already being done at ATLAS.<p>If this is not speculative, is it still a good use of money compared to spending the same cash on (say) genetics or AI or nano materials, all of which seem to be areas both in need of funding and with high potential for break throughs?
I guess this might be a stupid question, but how does the size of the circle matter ? I mean, the particles are going in a round, wouldn't that be like infinite from the particles prespective, so is it related to the turn rate or something ?
Aside from the gamble that any fundamental research represents, consider the immense amount of training CERN generates every year, with several thousand physicists and engineers continuously involved. That sort of a mix generates more learning than the sum of its parts, because everyone has opportunities to learn from many related fields. If the money was instead split into many smaller projects it wouldn't generate the same <i>kind</i> of learning, because each project would be a tiny silo compared to CERN.
> The aim is to start construction of the new tunnel by 2038<p>Why wait so long? Surely the tunnel is the easiest part of the project, and the Swiss are very good at digging tunnels. The article goes on to talk about funding issues, but I'd imagine they'd be able to start digging the tunnel now and round up funding over the years by expanding their organization or lobbying the EU harder.
This is simply the reaction of CERN to the competition from China, which is planning to build an 80km collider:<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_Electron_Positron_Collider" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_Electron_Positron_Col...</a>
Also discussed 4 days ago: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23577124" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23577124</a>
Has anyone considered a collider in space? It seems like you could have huge distances. And just let the particles fly in the vacuum between acceleration points?