Joseph D. Lykken - “The Future of Particle Physics”

[RJM Corbet]

The LHC is still very busy and very important:

 

[tegeus-Cromis]

Funny then that so many physicists are clamoring for a yet bigger, yet more ridiculously expensive collider.

 

[RJM Corbet]

I wonder if that's still the case? The video lasts about an hour, but it is presented in an easily understandable way. In fact it appears that progress now is going to be largely focused on quantum engineering, devices that make use of entanglement, superimposed states, etc. I enjoyed the video and gained a lot from it.

 

[tegeus-Cromis]

I wonder if that's still the case? The video lasts about an hour, but it is presented in an easily understandable way. In fact it appears that progress now is going to be largely focused on quantum engineering, devices that make use of entanglement, superimposed states, etc. I enjoyed the video and gained a lot from it.

Certainly according to Sabine Hossenfelder, who has been actively critical of the demand for a "next larger collider" for a good while now: If we spend money on a larger particle collider, we risk that progress in physics stalls.

 

[RJM Corbet]

Certainly according to Sabine Hossenfelder, who has been actively critical of the demand for a "next larger collider" for a good while now: If we spend money on a larger particle collider, we risk that progress in physics stalls.

Ok, I've read it. I don't know who she is, but I do find her attitude a bit of a gloating one in a them vs us vein: Super symmetry is wrong! You were wrong! Admit it you lost! Get over it, dudes ...

The fact super symmetry was not visible at LHC energies does not mean string/m theory is wrong, to the best of my knowledge? Which is the whole issue. Nevertheless she seems to make some valid points, about such a super collider perhaps becoming cheaper in a few years, with advances in technology, if it is still wanted by that time?

I'm a total amateur. The LHC seems still to have a considerable ongoing value, but the thinking seems to be shifting now a bit away from 'atom smashing' and towards 'quantum engineering'?

However if evidence could be found for string theory, that would be a VERY important event? I wonder how Sabine Hossenfelder would take the news, lol?

 

[tegeus-Cromis]

She's a particle physicist, and actually I've found her quite fair in her dealings with string theory. You may want to poke around her blog some more. I highly recommend her book, Lost in Math, a critique of the current state of physics.

 

[Venusian Broon]

Ok, I've read it. I don't know who she is, but I do find her attitude a bit of a gloating one in a them vs us vein: Super symmetry is wrong! You were wrong! Admit it you lost! Get over it, dudes ...

The fact super symmetry was not visible at LHC energies does not mean string/m theory is wrong, to the best of my knowledge? Which is the whole issue. Nevertheless she seems to make some valid points, about such a super collider perhaps becoming cheaper in a few years, with advances in technology, if it is still wanted by that time?

I'm a total amateur. The LHC seems still to have a considerable ongoing value, but the thinking seems to be shifting now a bit away from 'atom smashing' and towards 'quantum engineering'?

However if evidence could be found for string theory, that would be a VERY important event? I wonder how Sabine Hossenfelder would take the news, lol?

I've heard her, herself, state that she isn't on 'friendly terms' with certain scientists, so I guess she had forthright views! I don't know her nationality or background, and so my first impression of her (when I found her Youtube channel a few months ago) was that she was a tad abrasive and talked down to people like a strict school marm, but that might just have been the way she speaks and me being a bit unfair.

The fact that LHC did not find anything new is still valuable - it's empirical evidence. If we didn't have LHC, the particle physics community would be trying to build something like it to get those sort of energies to smash stuff together!

I believe the dissappointment is that nothing 'weird' popped out that would show something new. We haven't had a paradigm shift or any evidence for any of these deep theories of everything, or anything new that shows us we should be thinking about something else altogether. Any evidence would of course be nice for anything, please! I personally would love something that could actually choose what sort of Quantum mechanical interpretation is closest to reality. But that's not the sort of thing LHC is designed to do...

Of course, equally, any project Sabine talked up, could be just as wasteful as her view on the next generation LHC, and not produce anything as significant. Unfortunately we can't tell unless we do all of them and then compare.

Just googling, LHC cost ~5 billion USD and to go to the next level of atom smashing could be much costlier, then there becomes an issue with science budget. I mean spending just 21 billion EUR for the next generation of LHC, even between all governments involved means serious expenditure increases that could go to loads of interesting projects. I mean, we've got to keep up our global 1.8 trillion USD spending on military stuff every year, can't have that money being diverted to something as wasteful as science; we've gotta have loads of new stuff to kill each other with!

 

[RJM Corbet]

Well it seems she'll be able to gloat on for a while, lol? A new super collider doesn't seem to be high on the list of immediate priorities? It will be a lot cheaper to build a relatively low energy linear 'Higgs factory' collider, that churns out zillions of Higgs particles to enable detailed study of the Higgs, etc?

Jospeph D. Lykken (in the above video) seems to think power collider stuff isn't going to be the future for the next 25 years or so. It seems to be about dark matter and neutrinos and creating useful quantum superposition states separated by distances of metres and measured in seconds, etc. Cutting edge stuff, imo.