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The Next Big Particle Accelerator
Guinnessy writes "This year more than a thousand physicists gathered for three weeks at Snowmass Village, in the Colorado Rockies near Aspen, to talk about the future of particle physics in the US. Physics Today has a report on the meeting which says that the community should build a 500-GeV electron-positron linear collider. That's powerful enough to make mini black holes."
Unfortunately, I doubt that it will get built.
Like the SCSC before it, it will end up on the cutting floor of a supposedly cost-conscious Congress.
I doubted that the current Congress would've approved something like this to begin with. With the current state of economy, and the fact that eventually we'll have to clean up the giant mess that the recent anti-terrorism and airline support bills have made of our budget, the outlook is grim.
Hopefully they won't waste a lot of money partially building it and then abandon it like the SCSC.
I love Molly Shannon!
Okay, particle physics are not my cup of tea, but I am going to assume that if people are even beginning to think about building a five billion dollar particle accelerator, there must be some really good reason.
So would someone who does have a clue enlighten the rest of us as to just WTF this thing would actually be good for? I mean, is this going to provide us with new ideas, knowledge, and technology that can greatly benefit mankind, or does it just let some really badass physicists find out what happens when they slam particles together really fast?
this is like saying:
"I'm not an expert in cars, but what if they explode randomly?"
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
...nobody really knows how gravity works, at a fundamental level. Gravitons, gravity waves, a quantum mechanical theory of gravity--all these things are related and outstanding (as in "not done yet").
Those of us with even a passing familiarity with science can surely think of applications for a fundamental theory of gravity, but for the others of you here's a hint: anti-gravity, time travel, faster than light drives.
324006
> As long as there are people living below the poverty line, blue
> skies projects like this should not get funding from the federal government.
Although I understand your point, there are a few issues to consider. The first is that, since the poverty line is more or less a percentage measure, there will always be people below it (it's like saying, "until everyone earns in the top 60 percent wage bracket"). The second is that there will always be social issues that require funding, but it's very short-sighted to say there should be no funding for science until all of the relevant social issues are solved, since all of the relevant social issues will never get solved, and pure science research often leads to practical applications that solve some of the social issues. You must always remember that funding is never an all-or-nothing proposition, and it shouldn't be. The developers of radio science could never have imagined that someday their ideas would be used (in MRI) to diagnose diseases without surgery, and saying that such studies shouldn't have been funded until we cured all diseases would have been very short-sighted.
In short, most funding poured into scientific studies is wasted. The problem is, you never know beforehand which projects will be duds and which will transform the world. So, we must strike a balance, and this particular machine has showed much promise in revealing new secrets, so its price tag may very well be paid back with a cure for cancer or cheap, renewable energy that will make coal- and oil-fired power plants obsolete.
Virg