Will The LHC Be The End Of Experimental Particle Physics?

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chelle
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Will The LHC Be The End Of Experimental Particle Physics?

Post by chelle » Thu Sep 24, 2015 5:12 pm

I found this article on the LHC by Ethan Siegel:

http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang ... -synopsis/
(https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/w ... 69355df75f)

"But in the 21st century, the physics of the Standard Model describes our Universe so well that there truly may be nothing else new to find not only at the LHC, but at any high-energy particle collider we could build here on Earth."

Sounds like a first honest statement from a scientists regarding the race of particle physics and these high end bulk-accelerators. :think:
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Stephen
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Re: Will The LHC Be The End Of Experimental Particle Physics

Post by Stephen » Sun Nov 15, 2015 2:53 pm

Well with all the problems humans have here on earth, spending so much time and money on particle accelerators is a total waste in my honest opinion. Finding nothing won't mean the end of such experiments, since universities and researches always have motivation to keep going. To be fair, there are always new things to be discovered, so you never know when that next "big discovery" is going to happen :music-listening:

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chelle
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Re: Will The LHC Be The End Of Experimental Particle Physics

Post by chelle » Sun Nov 15, 2015 3:03 pm

Hi Stephen,

Glad to see you show up again.

btw good see that Xymox payed his provider, because yesterday the site was down. :thumbup:
Stephen wrote:Well with all the problems humans have here on earth, spending so much time and money on particle accelerators is a total waste in my honest opinion. Finding nothing won't mean the end of such experiments, since universities and researches always have motivation to keep going. To be fair, there are always new things to be discovered, so you never know when that next "big discovery" is going to happen :music-listening:
It seems that you haven't read the article, the point was that there isn't anything new to be found, and we already have Cosmic Rays as a reference.

Universities better focus on something else like working on simulations.
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Re: Will The LHC Be The End Of Experimental Particle Physics

Post by mfb » Sun Nov 29, 2015 9:55 pm

Stephen wrote:Well with all the problems humans have here on earth, spending so much time and money on particle accelerators is a total waste in my honest opinion. Finding nothing won't mean the end of such experiments, since universities and researches always have motivation to keep going. To be fair, there are always new things to be discovered, so you never know when that next "big discovery" is going to happen :music-listening:
To write this post, you used technology developed for particle physics. A complete waste of money: who needs websites?
That is just one example of useful by-products of particle physics.

While you didn't state it explicitely, I guess you like those "fix problem X first" statements. Do you expect any of those X be fixed completely and forever in the future? And if yes, how? All the solutions to reduce those problems need basic science done before.
With that "fix problem X first" attitude, we would still use hunting and gathering as main food source, because we have to fix the hunger problem before we can spend time on trying to domesticate animals and grow plants in a controlled way.
"But in the 21st century, the physics of the Standard Model describes our Universe so well that there truly may be nothing else new to find not only at the LHC, but at any high-energy particle collider we could build here on Earth."
It is possible, and in fact after finding the Higgs the LHC is the first collider where this is really an option. It would be a weird universe then, however, where things happen at low energy, and other things at the GUT and Planck scale, and nothing in between.
We can still do precision physics, and understand the Standard Model (especially QCD) better.

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chelle
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Re: Will The LHC Be The End Of Experimental Particle Physics

Post by chelle » Fri Dec 04, 2015 6:28 pm

mfb wrote:To write this post, you used technology developed for particle physics. A complete waste of money: who needs websites?
That is just one example of useful by-products of particle physics.
All respect to Tim Berners-Lee who developed the first HTML code, but if you read a book like The Innovators by Walter Isaacson than it's quite a big leap forward to suggest that if he (at CERN) hadn't written that piece of code there wouldn't have been websites.

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Re: Will The LHC Be The End Of Experimental Particle Physics

Post by DCWhitworth » Sun Dec 06, 2015 12:05 pm

Well you can make a respectable argument that the LHC makes no economic sense and that we should be spending the money on hospitals and the poor or something like that. But you can also make similar arguments about sport, arts, entertainment and such like.

The fact is it is good for us as species to push boundaries and search for the unknown and reach understanding, and to waste time and money in pursuing seemingly pointless things. It is what keeps us healthy as a species. I believe that the end of our civilisation will be heralded by, not some cataclysmic event, but when we turn inwards and stop asking questions and being curious about the universe.

The biggest curse of economics is that it seeks to put a price on everything and if you can't quantify your 'return on investment' in hard cash then you are accused of wasting money.

The world is full of bad stuff and awesome stuff, if you want a world with a bit less bad stuff and no awesome stuff then we could do that, but I know which world I want to live in.
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Re: Will The LHC Be The End Of Experimental Particle Physics

Post by mfb » Sun Dec 06, 2015 6:39 pm

chelle wrote:
mfb wrote:To write this post, you used technology developed for particle physics. A complete waste of money: who needs websites?
That is just one example of useful by-products of particle physics.
All respect to Tim Berners-Lee who developed the first HTML code, but if you read a book like The Innovators by Walter Isaacson than it's quite a big leap forward to suggest that if he (at CERN) hadn't written that piece of code there wouldn't have been websites.
Without him, someone would have invented something similar, sure. Later, and with different money sources. That's hardly an argument, because that is true for basically every invention and discovery.

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chelle
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Re: Will The LHC Be The End Of Experimental Particle Physics

Post by chelle » Mon Dec 07, 2015 6:17 am

My argument is, okay someone at CERN came up with the HTML code, that is sure a feather the organisation can stick on its hat. but it is more like adding their 2 cents into the bucket, than saying that the internet is their invention ... just wanted to put things in perspective.

Btw i guess what Stephen was saying is that there is a compulsive side to science where they keep pushing forward regardless the effects it has, science is indifferent. A large part of science is to clean up what other science has f**ked up.
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