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Cern aims to build €20bn atom-smasher to unlock secrets of universe (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Research lab submits plans for next-generation model at least three times size of Large Hadron Collider

Officials at Cern, home to the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, are pressing ahead with plans for a new machine that would be at least three times bigger than the existing particle accelerator.

The Large Hadron Collider, built inside a 27km circular tunnel beneath the Swiss-French countryside, smashes together protons and other subatomic particles at close to the speed of light to recreate the conditions that existed fractions of a second after the big bang.

The machine, the world’s largest collider, was used in the discovery of the Higgs boson in 2012, nearly 50 years after the particle was proposed by Peter Higgs, the theoretical physicist at the University of Edinburgh, and several other researchers. The feat was honoured with the Nobel prize in physics the following year.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago (2 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 17 points 9 months ago (3 children)

Discovery is valuable even if it doesn't have immediate engineering applications. Much of our understanding of physics and the standard model has come from just smashing things together with higher and higher energy levels.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago (2 children)

I think it's worthwhile science communication for them to be clearer about what is planned for testing. Some handwaves about "it will help us maybe find dark matter" is much less compelling to me than something concrete like "we have models which predict dark matter particles emerge at X TeV, this will test them."

Not that I'm opposed to open discovery either. Maybe when you collide electrons at the higher energy, they turn into pure gravitons and we'll find the GUT? But I like to think there's some deliberation and intent behind a project that's roadmapped to 2070, beyond just long term job security for some particle physicists.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago

we have models which predict dark matter particles emerge at X TeV

This runs at the problem that no, we don't have any model that puts anything attainable as "it's probable we'll find something here, or else we will learn that all we know is wrong". The extra energy is all of the "we don't expect anything new here, but we expect something new somewhere" kind.

But if you start talking about luminance, this changes quickly.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

Im sure theres technical papers out there on the proposed merits.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

they were talking about other experiments, like lisa... not immediate engineering applications at all...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Yeah it's valuable, but is it really the best value for our money?

[–] [email protected] -1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Considering really the only difference between peaceful prosperous modernity and the barbarity our ancestors experienced is technology, yes.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago

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.