Dark Matter evidence found at Chicago not HLC: 12/18/09

Rod
Rod
Joined: 3 Jan 06
Posts: 4396
Credit: 811266
RAC: 0

RE: About 10000 people are

Message 96131 in response to message 96130

Quote:
About 10000 people are involved in LHC experiments and get paid for it. Perhaps elementary particle physics should be called alimentary particle physics. Sometimes I envy them for doing what they like and also getting paid.
Tullio

There can be nothing this large built these days for altruistic reasons (for the science). The most pervasive reasons for people to jump on the bandwagon is ' To scratch out a living' or( beyond a handful of people maybe) 'What can I or my group can get out of it'. That's how these projects get momentum. Human Beings are like BlueJays and Crows... Opportunistic Creatures' :-)

Edit, Maybe somebody could point to me some literature that I can get my head around on the validity and what been done so far to validate the standard model.

There are some who can live without wild things and some who cannot. - Aldo Leopold

Mike Hewson
Mike Hewson
Moderator
Joined: 1 Dec 05
Posts: 6534
Credit: 284710168
RAC: 110462

Amongst other targets, they

Amongst other targets, they appear to be flogging the search for the Higgs particle. This is physics-speak for 'why do things have inertia?', in that the Higgs mechanism is hypothecated to be the 'reason' why there is resistance to movement. Which many scientists, ancient and recent, have mulled over ....

Apart from that it is a continuation of the general investigation into smaller and smaller pieces/places of the Universe that particle physics does, in order to see what turns up. Maybe they might fall over a super-symmetric partner to a known low energy fermion/boson. If so then various theoretical difficulties would be perhaps sorted - with the ability to eliminate some annoying infinities.

In rough terms one has to concentrate a sufficiently large amount of energy into a given small volume in order to probe what's there. Most forces have, or are assumed to have, quite strong values as the relevant 'charge' carriers get closer. So the electromagnetic 'inverse square' law, for instance, is derived from human scale observations and have yet to be rigorously tested directly for teensy-weensy distances. Even what are labeled at our everyday low energies as separate forces may converge to the same thing when particles are barely separated - the force strengths ( probably ) converge to the same values. For that matter the idea of 'a particle' is challenged and perhaps is more like a fuzzy ball of stuff that buzzes alot. But having said that I don't think anyone is expecting LHC to get anywhere near the scale to view that. This is where cosmology comes in, as the Big Bang is the ultimate high-energy particle experiment. So there'd be correlations to be sought between LHC and astronomy then.

As for value for money, well that depends upon who is paying, how much and whether the (tax)payers know what they are buying .... which I think can be best summarised as 'a chance to find something new'. More or less this issue was aired with the now defunct SSC and US taxpayers in the late 80's - the reply in the negative there.

Cheers, Mike.

( edit ) Having said all of that, it occurs to me that particle physics ( cosmology too ) will always come up short. It is a reductionist strategy which doesn't, as far as I know, admit an endpoint. There will always be something smaller, more energetic to look at : humans will discover a limit to probing machines, and time post Big Bang will degrade signals from that era as well. So the issue becomes how much fuss do you want to endure to yield a certain level of understanding. My personal view is that societies need more of the 'synthetic sciences' that attempt to cope with complex systems, that assume some base of principles/axioms, rather than digging deeper and wandering further away from immediate human experience.

I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...

... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal

Rod
Rod
Joined: 3 Jan 06
Posts: 4396
Credit: 811266
RAC: 0

RE: As for value for

Message 96133 in response to message 96132

Quote:

As for value for money, well that depends upon who is paying, how much and whether the (tax)payers know what they are buying .... which I think can be best summarised as 'a chance to find something new'. More or less this issue was aired with the now defunct SSC and US taxpayers in the late 80's - the reply in the negative there.

Cheers, Mike.

( edit ) Having said all of that, it occurs to me that particle physics ( cosmology too ) will always come up short. It is a reductionist strategy which doesn't, as far as I know, admit an endpoint. There will always be something smaller, more energetic to look at : humans will discover a limit to probing machines, and time post Big Bang will degrade signals from that era as well. So the issue becomes how much fuss do you want to endure to yield a certain level of understanding. My personal view is that societies need more of the 'synthetic sciences' that attempt to cope with complex systems, that assume some base of principles/axioms, rather than digging deeper and wandering further away from immediate human experience.

The impression I get from the mainstream media and literature from policy makers is that they are looking for an end result.

I hope I am around in a couple of decades to read the book.:-)

Edit: I understand there is lots of experiments going on and there is plenty of room for good science.
I apologize for being jaded.. It came with the Job. I always have problems understanding the PR.

There are some who can live without wild things and some who cannot. - Aldo Leopold

tullio
tullio
Joined: 22 Jan 05
Posts: 2118
Credit: 61407735
RAC: 0

Lots of books have been

Lots of books have been written about the Standard Model and cosmology. The problem is that they tend to reflect the author's profession (experimental physicist, theoretical physicist, astrophysicist, astronomer, etc) and ideas. To cite just an example, I think Stephen Hawking does not believe in the existence of the Higgs boson. So the books often are contradictory and the layman does not know whom to trust. I prefer to read magazines such as CERN Courier (it is free) which often gives well written surveys on this vast field.
Tullio

Mike Hewson
Mike Hewson
Moderator
Joined: 1 Dec 05
Posts: 6534
Credit: 284710168
RAC: 110462

RE: The impression I get

Message 96135 in response to message 96133

Quote:
The impression I get from the mainstream media and literature from policy makers is that they are looking for an end result.


Speaking of end results, I wonder where fusion reactors are at these days? Now that's an area well worth plugging at, for some benefit. With a similiar level of material investment that 'big science' has. Last I heard they had not achieved technical 'break even' rates - a net output of energy - and way off anything economically feasible. Yet. They need to 'surf' the plasma for longer.

Cheers, Mike.

I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...

... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal

Ver Greeneyes
Ver Greeneyes
Joined: 26 Mar 09
Posts: 140
Credit: 9562235
RAC: 0

Well, they're building ITER,

Message 96136 in response to message 96135

Well, they're building ITER, but that's still a ways off. Also, I think the scientists working at the NIF had some success with their palletized fusion method and are expecting to achieve stable/spontaneous fusion in the coming year. On the other end of the spectrum there's LENR methods, if the field ever gets recognized ('cold fusion' purists have been holding it back for years), but there I think there's a legitimate fear that corporate pressure might hold things back, considering the potential large scale applicability of any 'tabletop' method. I don't know what happened to that company (something like BlackLight, I think?) who said they were going to be selling a LENR-based reactor - whether they couldn't live up to their promises, or ...

Going back to the mainstream though, even the most positive predictions don't put wide availability of fusion-based energy production any earlier than 2050. It always amuses me when scientists get all excited about predictions like this - similar to saying we'll manage to build a space elevator before the end of this century. I don't know about you, but 40 years is still a very long time for me, even -if- Methuselarity ends up making some headway before then. Hell, who's to say we won't all be solar-powered cyborgs in 40 years? Now -that- would be fast, so I doubt it, but at least it's forward thinking.

tullio
tullio
Joined: 22 Jan 05
Posts: 2118
Credit: 61407735
RAC: 0

At Trieste, in what is now

At Trieste, in what is now the Abdus Salam International Center for Theoretical Physics, I have spoken with prof. Bruno Coppi of MIT. He is the father of Alcator (Alto Camp Torus) which is a smaller and less costly machine than ITER. But all his attempts to build a similar reactor in Italy, called Ignitor, have brought to nothing.Fusion energy is still only a dream, and I am convinced that we should rather make use of the big fusion reactor which rises every morning in the sky: the Sun. Carlo Rubbia has the same opinion and is sponsoring the solar thermic solution in Spain, since he could not obtain financing in Italy. Now mr.Berlusconi wants to build 4 fission reactors designed by Electricite' de France and sponsored by his friend Sarkozy, despite a strong popular opposition. When working in Mondadori Edizioni Scientifiche one of my advisors was prof. Mario Silvestri of Milan Polytechnic University, who had designed a fission reactor fueled by natural uranium and moderated by heavy water. A 40 MWe (electric) prototype (CIRENE) was built at Latina, near Rome, but was never started because if a national referendum. Prof. Silvestri asked to.be authorized to test at least the software his team had developed, but he was not allowed and died soon after,RIP.
Tullio

Mike Hewson
Mike Hewson
Moderator
Joined: 1 Dec 05
Posts: 6534
Credit: 284710168
RAC: 110462

Ah, cold fusion. For my

Ah, cold fusion. For my money, if it's there, it'll be a weak force mechanism. Large nuclei, that are close to electrostatic explosion, need a neutron to become a proton - an electron plus stuff zips off - and then pop goes the weasel via tunneling through the strong force barrier. Now if you could reverse that, but with light nuclei, then you'd have fusion - provided the energy well could be breached. T'is a quantum thingy. Mind you it is probably a good thing that low energy fusion isn't likely - spontaneously anyway - as life would be rather more exciting than it is now. If a suitable arrangement of trace heavy metals, electric current and hydrogen isotopes is the required mix then that's a pretty unlikely chance combo in the wild.

NB : 'nuclear' energy is really electromagnetic in that electric charge repulsion is what drives things away from the reaction vertex at speed. The strong force confines the nucleons and hence is a negative contribution to the energetics.

Quote:
.... but 40 years is still a very long time for me .....


I'm still waiting for the paperless office promised in the 80's .... :-)

Cheers, Mike.

I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...

... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal

Rod
Rod
Joined: 3 Jan 06
Posts: 4396
Credit: 811266
RAC: 0

RE: Well, they're building

Message 96139 in response to message 96136

Quote:
Well, they're building ITER.t.

Well there.. They are guaranteed to find out what won't work...

You are only as strong as your weakest member..

There are some who can live without wild things and some who cannot. - Aldo Leopold

Ver Greeneyes
Ver Greeneyes
Joined: 26 Mar 09
Posts: 140
Credit: 9562235
RAC: 0

The concepts behind ITER are

Message 96140 in response to message 96139

The concepts behind ITER are pretty well established, really. A reactor of its kind has simply never been built at that scale before, which does of course pose some impressive engineering challenges. It will also be the first fusion reactor to -produce- energy - the previous best has been to break even, I believe.

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.