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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] 10 points 9 months ago

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?