Kendor: This experiment sounds like a house of cards about to fall or fail. It's been one cost increase upon another. As for physicists' invention of particle upon particle, I have to do more studying, but if there is a God particle, I bet that it will not show up, because no one has seen God at any time. Maybe the field of physics is also a house of cards, which needs rebuilding on whatever turns out to comprise its valid foundation. I think that I read in the article that even the definition of mass is at risk of being overhauled, although I did not read that the physicists also had some expectation of gaining some insight into someday achieving fusion. That this experiment can shed light on the big bang is most ludicrous, indicating how far scientists have to go for big bucks for their overambitious experiments, which seem to me to be on the wrong track.
It's purpose is basic research into the structure of the universe. It has nothing to do with nuclear fusion. It's the highest energy accelerator ('atom-smasher') yet produced, the culmination of some four decades of evolutionary design and construction.
The biggest criticism of 'big science', exemplified by this costly machine, is that it sucks away precious funds that would support a great deal more research in other areas of science. The trade-off is a social and economic issue. Big questions cost big money to answer. Is it worth it?
tsaeb, physics is hardly 'a house of cards'. It's foundation rests firmly on the bedrock of observations tracing back centuries to Galileo and the Enlightenment. If LHC experiments are successful they may shed light on revolutionary new ways of understanding physics. This would help clarify mysteries -- without falsifying what is already known.
Posts: 2067 | Location: U.S. | Registered: 06-03-02
Professor: I heard about the fusion part on TV. Do you want to bet that nothing comes of this $8 billion (!) experiment? You make the field of physics sound like the field of law in which knowledge changes very conservatively. I am suggesting the physicists have been on the wrong track (now on two tracks of an experiment) for years and that someone will come along and supply so much enlightenment that the rug will be pulled out from under the field of physics. Of course, I wouldn't mind being that someone, if it means setting the field of physics on the right track.
Even major scientific revolutions, such as relativity and quantum theory that set physics on its ear at the opening of the 20th C, have to reconcile everything that precedes it. We didn't throw away Newton's laws in light of those discoveries -- we just revised them to fit a wider range of situations.
It's doubtful that what we know -- or think we know -- about physics will be 'wrong' in light of future discoveries. Instead we expect a clearer and simpler picture to emerge that will explain present-day mysteries, such as the origin of the particle masses, the nature of dark matter, details of the early big bang, how to reconcile gravity and quantum mechanics, etc.
On the subject of spending for "big science": Both the LHC and the space programme are vital if the human race is not to stultify and eventually die out. Together, they cost less than one tenth of a per cent of world GDP. If the human race cannot afford that, it doesn’t deserve the epithet 'human'. --Stephen Hawking, Sept. 9, 2008
Posts: 2067 | Location: U.S. | Registered: 06-03-02
Professor: Interestingly, I wrote what I did before reading in another thread that Hawking to an extent agrees with me and even made a bet. If there will be a need for reconciliation, then there will be found things wrong which need changing. What I have in mind are revisions to past theories and the entrance of the new discoveries which not only require the revisions but also supply new solutions to world problems. So, yes, physics will survive much in tact, but the trade-off between the old in favor of the new will be quite astounding.
Professor: I have the design, and know how it works. I await the physicist waiting in the wings for his/her Nobel Prize to share it with me, I mean, supply the math. Dreaming again there for a minute. . . . Am I correct in thinking that you feel that the math may be incorrect?
