CERN's $17B supercollider in question as top funder criticizes cost

Maybe they should take that 17B and invest it in AI research, then take the resulting model and ask it what particles we’ll find at higher energies. Just kidding, please don’t lambaste me.

17B is no small sum but we’re talking about investigating the fundamental nature of reality. In some ways, this is the most important research in the world as it touches on something extremely deep.

Science in general tells us “how”, but physics is the only possible field that has even a remote chance of telling us “why”. Why is there something rather than nothing? Why do I experience consciousness?

Maybe physics will never answer these, or maybe a supercollider isn’t the best way to answer these, but I like to think that $17B is a small price to pay to find out.

Maybe they shouldn’t be looking for the smallest particle.

If space can be divided down to infinity then maybe there may be always smaller bits as you go deeper, but nothing as fundamental they’re wishing to find. Eventually they need accelerator larger than the Earth and maybe it still doesn’t satisfy :)

Instead why not trying to understand the pattern of division so they could predict what comes next.. With all the data so far I would imagine they could succeed in that, maybe with help of AI, and that might save them huge construction effort, time and money.

But what do I know.. just wondering out loud!

The Texas supercollider was also 90 km when the Americans canceled it 30 years ago. Perhaps there is a threshold circumference above which governments just won't pay for these.

Check out Sabine hossenfelder‘s criticism and the lack of evidence that this device would bring any advancements

EDIT: more succinctly: are there clear reasons beyond the historical and social that fundamental research in one field receives large investment versus another?

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I think stuff like this is awesome (though I have absolutely zero experience in physics research let alone particle physics research), but I was having a conversation with a mathematician friend, and I didn’t really have a good answer for this question: is there a good reason we put $17B (or might) towards something like this as opposed to something like the Langlands program, or some of the millennium prize problems, etc?

I mean there are some obvious historical answers (ie the links between particle physics research departments of energy and defense), as well practical answers like the fact that throwing money at experimental and hardware problems seems like a more direct path to success than just hiring mathematicians to work harder…

But I couldn’t necessarily come up with a good answer that spoke to why might we actually value (financially) this kind of research over others. Is it just inertia? Every researcher wishes their field had massive amounts of funding of course. And in the grand scheme of science research, this isn’t all that much funding I suppose?

Anyways, it’s amazing that we can undertake massive international research projects like this. Just interesting to think about.

Capitalism is one of the most important innovations. Thanks to this system, talented people not born into royalty or the upper class have the ability to change the world by convincing people with lots of capital to invest in their ideas. Figures like Sam Altman and OpenAI with ChatGPT, Steve Jobs and Apple with the iPhone, Zuckerberg and Meta with their social media platforms, and Elon Musk with SpaceX and his other endeavors exemplify this. If CERN weren’t controlled by governments and their bureaucracy, and instead had someone like Elon running it, it would've been much more successful.