Philosophy
They're about to start smashing things up at the Large Hadron Collider, the huge particle accelerator outside Geneva. Just to play it safe, I'm going to remain over here in North America, keeping a large chunk of the planet between me and this experiment.
No, I'm not worried that they're going to blow up up Europe. That's impossible! I'm just worried they'll create a time warp and I'll go back 6 months and be forced to relive the health care debate.
[Or worse: Back 35 years and I'm once again The Human Oddity of Hogtown.]
Seriously, although there are some hand-wringers out there who prophesy the end of the world, there's nothing to worry about. I've been to the LHC. I've been down in the tunnel. I've studied the beam line, the huge magnets, the detectors the size of small apartment buildings. What I can tell you with confidence is that it merely LOOKS like a doomsday machine.
The simple fact is that high-energy physics is already happening all around us all the time -- naturally. Particles are smashing into our atmosphere at the same kind of energy levels as will be created in the LHC. The universe is a big collider of sorts, and it likes to smash things up.
The most likely outcome of the experiment will be a lot of excited physicists and a general public that wonders if it was all worth the money. For example, as readers of this blog know, they're going to try to create a particle called the Higgs boson. But it's not like they're going to make a lot of Higgses and then sell them to tourists at the gift shop. It's not like you can take a Higgs and play racquet sports with it. As I understand it, under the best of scenarios the LHC experiments will merely detect suggestive signs of a Higgs. There will be patterns of particle decay that will hint that the Higgs had been momentarily present on the scene.
Moreover, if we do find evidence of the Higgs, it's not like we can necessarily do anything with this knowledge. This is basic research, not applied research. Which is important. You don't know when a piece of knowledge will pay off in some practical fashion. Someday, maybe, our knowledge of the Higgs will allow us to figure out where we left the remote. But don't expect anything practical to come out of this in the short run, such as a black hole swallowing half of Europe. This is a 10-billion-dollar experiment in search of ephemeral particles that have zero utility and will come and go like a sneeze in a hurricane.
What we should really fear is that scientists won't discover anything they don't fully expect to discover. No one wants the LHC to come up with all the predicted particles. Sparking up a Higgs would be nice, but better yet would be making a Higgs that had green hair and weird facial piercings. The scientists want to find things that catch them by surprise, and which inspire new theories -- "new physics." No one wants to come to the conclusion that we've found out everything that we're ever going to find out. Because then we'd have to fold up shop.
As always, what's really interesting is the unknown, and the journey into mystery.
- We Haven't Wet Ourselves Yet--the Higgs Boson
"This Just in: Higgs Boson Still Boring" by Adam Mann March 6th, 2013 Wired Physicists from around the world are convening this week and next in Italy at the annual Rencontres de Moriond conference to discuss the latest in particle physics and cosmology....
- The "face Of God" Not To Be Revealed Just Now
"Hints fade of elusive physics 'God particle'" by Kerry Sheridan August 23rd, 2011 AFP International scientists searching to solve the greatest riddle in all of physics said Monday that signs are fading of the elusive Higgs-Boson...
- Standard Physics Model Is On The Line
"End of Higgs Search Will Confirm or Refute the Standard Model of Physics 'Within Months'" by Alexis Madrigal July 24th, 2011 The Atlantic The number one particle on physicists most-wanted list, the Higgs boson, has played a key role in our...
- "and In This Corner...fermi National Accelerator Laboratory"
One begins to wonder if blood letting will occur? The Higgs boson [God Particle] is the prize and the race between Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and the LHC is on. One problem...the LHC is down for maintenance thus FermiLabs has currently an...
- "god Particle"/higgs Boson--knowledge Of The Universe
And another model of the stuff that comprises the universe...in this case the elementary particle that gives mass to particles that have no mass and mass to all elementary particles. Actually it is just a part of the established "standard model of physics"...
Philosophy
LHC thoughts from Joel Achenbach
"Time to smash things up"
by
Joel Achenbach
March 25th, 2010
The Washington Post
by
Joel Achenbach
March 25th, 2010
The Washington Post
They're about to start smashing things up at the Large Hadron Collider, the huge particle accelerator outside Geneva. Just to play it safe, I'm going to remain over here in North America, keeping a large chunk of the planet between me and this experiment.
No, I'm not worried that they're going to blow up up Europe. That's impossible! I'm just worried they'll create a time warp and I'll go back 6 months and be forced to relive the health care debate.
[Or worse: Back 35 years and I'm once again The Human Oddity of Hogtown.]
Seriously, although there are some hand-wringers out there who prophesy the end of the world, there's nothing to worry about. I've been to the LHC. I've been down in the tunnel. I've studied the beam line, the huge magnets, the detectors the size of small apartment buildings. What I can tell you with confidence is that it merely LOOKS like a doomsday machine.
The simple fact is that high-energy physics is already happening all around us all the time -- naturally. Particles are smashing into our atmosphere at the same kind of energy levels as will be created in the LHC. The universe is a big collider of sorts, and it likes to smash things up.
The most likely outcome of the experiment will be a lot of excited physicists and a general public that wonders if it was all worth the money. For example, as readers of this blog know, they're going to try to create a particle called the Higgs boson. But it's not like they're going to make a lot of Higgses and then sell them to tourists at the gift shop. It's not like you can take a Higgs and play racquet sports with it. As I understand it, under the best of scenarios the LHC experiments will merely detect suggestive signs of a Higgs. There will be patterns of particle decay that will hint that the Higgs had been momentarily present on the scene.
Moreover, if we do find evidence of the Higgs, it's not like we can necessarily do anything with this knowledge. This is basic research, not applied research. Which is important. You don't know when a piece of knowledge will pay off in some practical fashion. Someday, maybe, our knowledge of the Higgs will allow us to figure out where we left the remote. But don't expect anything practical to come out of this in the short run, such as a black hole swallowing half of Europe. This is a 10-billion-dollar experiment in search of ephemeral particles that have zero utility and will come and go like a sneeze in a hurricane.
What we should really fear is that scientists won't discover anything they don't fully expect to discover. No one wants the LHC to come up with all the predicted particles. Sparking up a Higgs would be nice, but better yet would be making a Higgs that had green hair and weird facial piercings. The scientists want to find things that catch them by surprise, and which inspire new theories -- "new physics." No one wants to come to the conclusion that we've found out everything that we're ever going to find out. Because then we'd have to fold up shop.
As always, what's really interesting is the unknown, and the journey into mystery.
- We Haven't Wet Ourselves Yet--the Higgs Boson
"This Just in: Higgs Boson Still Boring" by Adam Mann March 6th, 2013 Wired Physicists from around the world are convening this week and next in Italy at the annual Rencontres de Moriond conference to discuss the latest in particle physics and cosmology....
- The "face Of God" Not To Be Revealed Just Now
"Hints fade of elusive physics 'God particle'" by Kerry Sheridan August 23rd, 2011 AFP International scientists searching to solve the greatest riddle in all of physics said Monday that signs are fading of the elusive Higgs-Boson...
- Standard Physics Model Is On The Line
"End of Higgs Search Will Confirm or Refute the Standard Model of Physics 'Within Months'" by Alexis Madrigal July 24th, 2011 The Atlantic The number one particle on physicists most-wanted list, the Higgs boson, has played a key role in our...
- "and In This Corner...fermi National Accelerator Laboratory"
One begins to wonder if blood letting will occur? The Higgs boson [God Particle] is the prize and the race between Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and the LHC is on. One problem...the LHC is down for maintenance thus FermiLabs has currently an...
- "god Particle"/higgs Boson--knowledge Of The Universe
And another model of the stuff that comprises the universe...in this case the elementary particle that gives mass to particles that have no mass and mass to all elementary particles. Actually it is just a part of the established "standard model of physics"...