€20 Billion isn't really all that much for a particle accelerator that can be used for more than a decade when you consider the US plans to spend $842 billion on just the military this year.
science
just science related topics. please contribute
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Yeah but finding more efficient ways to kill people is more important than this science stuff obviously
That's a really simplistic view. The military isn't just a killing machine, we get oil fields out of it too.
BS! I found my used particle accelerator for under 100 bucks on Craigslist. I'm sending nano scale black holes over to my asshole neighbor since.
Now I'm all for smashing atoms and the LHC did a grand job with the Higgs. However are we sure just smashing things harder is going to be as revelatory as other things we could spend the money on? What other grand physics instruments could we build? For example LISA will be a massive step change in our gravitational detection capabilities?
Yeah, I have a hard time getting excited about a moderately more capable synchrotron and I have a Physics background. I'm not opposed to a larger synchroton, but I'm not confident that they'll find anything particularly interesting like I was with the LHC.
Personally, I'd like to see a bigger effort to develop high energy plasma Wakefield accelerators. I think they have the potential to work with a wider variety of particles and shouldn't need months of pump down and cooling after any interruption. Plus minitiaturization of plasma accelerators have the potential to be disruptive for medical applications.
Last one, disappointingly, didn't break reality. Fingers crossed this time.
Dr Sabine Hossenfelder at the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy, said there was no evidence the FCC would reveal anything about dark matter or dark energy and was critical of the proposals.
“The truth is that the most likely thing such a machine would do is to just make better measurements of some constants in the standard model, and that’s it,” she said. “I do not think that the societal relevance is high enough to justify such a big investment.
“I fear that funding such an experiment will mean that a lot of smart people will waste their time on research that will not lead to any progress. The LHC had a good motivation. The FCC has not. Particle physicists have to accept that their time is over. This is the age of quantum physics.”
On the other hand, Sabine's objection to the project makes me skeptical of my own doubts. If she's against it, it must be a great idea!
I think Hossenfelder was bought some years ago by a conservative think tank. Or at least that would be one explanation for her abysmal takes. Maybe its just pure ego that makes a person act like this though?
Just one more collider bro.
Collider?? I barely know her!
I’m glad they’re finally going to unlock the secrets of the universe. Been waiting forever for that to drop.
I know a guy who can do it cheaper. Seriously though, there has to be a better way to do this. What about that laser based accelerator. LWFA? That seemed pretty neat.
I'm ALMOST certain that people at cern really know their stuff.
Would you say you are Cerntain?