Underwater Volcanoes and Stratospheric Dinners

Well, she already made suggestions in her book about five years ago

Sabine, have you proposed alternative experiments that have a higher probability of being useful? Wouldn’t the first step be to show that there are alternatives?

haha, higgs-factory, that's nice. Great, Sabine, that you take so much time for explanation of this insider's view, hope it's not a disturbance. Japan's financial capacities aren't much above that of one bigger european nation, I guess. I agree about China, these people are absolutely not stupid, perhaps a hope for humanity. But a rebellious mind like yours would have even worse chance to be heard there, like in the west. The problem with retirement of decisioners of long-lasting projects isn't limited to science, I saw it often in my life, it's a misery. Anyway, I wish you a nice and sunny day.

CERN is a European organization that gets annual funding. They can use their annual budget towards the new collider. However, it's not going to be enough, so they need to find additional funding. This may or may not be international. The question is complicated by the fact that other countries are looking into building a bigger collider too, most importantly Japan and China. The Japanese have been somewhat hesitant in the past years. No one really knows what's going on with China. Some particle physicists have tried to convince Chinese politicians that this would someone tie them to the international community and be great for the country. Personally I think the Chinese aren't stupid enough for it. They must know that there is a high risk this collider will be the first to not find anything new and that's not going to bring them much prestige. The Chinese have invested a lot into material science and quantum things and space, and each of those is going to pay off much more handsomely. As to the cost explosion. CERN laid out their plans a few years ago, and they're planning to do it in several steps, first digging the tunnel but with collisions at similar energies to the LHC (what they call a "Higgs factory") then an upgrade to higher energy. This strategy is heavily banking on the sunk cost fallacy, that if nations have put money into the first step and it didn't find anything they're going to put forward more money for the next thing because the tunnel is already there anyway etc. You have to keep in mind that basically no politician who agrees to fund the thing will still be in office when the results come in. So the only thing that matters for them is how it looks at the moment they sign the contract.

I understand well, and feel the same, but Sabine's arguments convinced me. As you say, for technical development and student's support there are other projects to realize. Don't think, she would say anything against the space based gravitational wave observatory, or other astronomy/astrophysical projects. And I would also like to give my tax for that.

Full disclosure: I am hedged here. I'd be thrilled to see another accelerator built and would happily fork over my tax dollars if that is indeed where they were going, as well as pay up on a wager. Not just because I am curious if there is some new physics laying within reach (admittedly starting to feel there isn't) but also because of the ancillary engineering and technology developments that projects on that scale require. At a minimum, it trains the next generations of graduate students, many of whom will end up in the real world. The same can probably be said for a space based gravitational wave observatory or a hyper long baseline array radio telescope, perhaps with dishes on the dark side of the moon, though less grad student and more NASA labor goes into those.

Rad Antonov

Yes, but the increase of costs isn't a science project problem only. Thanks for your explanation. Not in our life time? Don't know who of you both is older, Bee or you, but I'm looking forward who wins the wager.

Oooh, even better idea!

You don’t need to be an insider. The numbers speak for themselves. When the SSC was cancelled in 1992, the estimated cost had ballooned to $8 bn. Today, it will probably cost 5x as much. Just look at the $2 bn price tag of the Hubble vs $10 bn for the JWST 30 years later. One thing physicists are terrible at is managing project costs. Even a dinky neutrino detector at an existing mine is ending up twice as expensive as originally promised. By the time a new accelerator is even proposed, we’d probably be looking at $50 bn in today’s dollars. It’s not happening. The Cold War is over, nuclear physics has had its heyday and no elected officials will stick their neck out for the nebulous promise of a new particle. Not to mention that the people commissioning the study will be near the end of their scientific careers by the time any shovel hits dirt. Maybe a muon accelerator in another retrofit of the LHC tunnels merits consideration, but still a long shot IMO. The LHC cost $5 bn and no one has ever built a muon accelerator on that scale. Figure $15 bn ask to start.

Rad Antonov

My idea is: a bunch of us charter the thing, then we lounge around in the upper atmosphere of Earth in our fancy underwear whilst having the World's Most Expensive Picnic.

That's what I thought too, but you see what Sabine said, she's insider. One rebel alone? SSC was financed in the US, I guess, but LHC and the new plan international? Don't know anything about it. My interest is science, not financial stuff. It makes no sense to build a machine, you expect nothing from. I trust Sabine and her book, but I even heard in my youth, that it would need a collider of solar system's diameter for verifying things like GUT.

I’ll take the other side of that. There won’t be another collider built in our lifetime. Happy to wager on it if you’d like. Let’s not forget that Phil Anderson told Congress to kill the SSC. In fact, the LHC was not even a new machine. It was retrofitted into the old LEP tunnels. In other words, the last time particle physicists dug tunnels for a brand new machine was in the 80s. Those were the days!

Rad Antonov

Thanks for your attention. That's crazy, but I'm afraid, politicians don't read Lost in Math. I remember 'the desert', you mentioned there. But I've heard of it already many years ago, though I'm not a physicist. So they all should know about it. That's really weird.

The particle physics community is large (one of the largest physics communities) and for historical reasons extremely well connected. Both the size and the the link grew out of the post WWII realization that one shouldn't underestimate physicists and was handed over from nuclear physics to high energy physics. Politicians have yet to understand that there are no applications coming out of high energy physics in the next several hundred years or so. Now add to this that besides me there is virtually no scientist speaking up against it and it's extremely likely to go forward. I cannot see anything that would prevent it other than possibly a complete economic collapse of the developed world.

Don't know, if you still read this Sabine, but do you really think, these particle physicists have any chance to realize and finance this project? Seems like a witty dream for me, if I look on all the new tasks, that governments want to finance

Thanks for your research, that's really a modest amount for NGOs. If you book the trip together with the german chancellor, you can split the prize with him

PLAN: 1. get rich, 2. take a balloon ride to the stratosphere while enjoying a good meal with fine wine, 3. brag to Colleen about how cool it all was :-). About sea floor mapping, I guess I'm kind of surprised how little has actually been mapped thus far. Yeah, lots of ocean on Earth and yeah, expensive equipment is expensive, but I'm still surprised mostly because this is exactly the kind of information navies want and the US, at least, spends a fortune on the military.

I actually want to do the space-balloon thing. Anyone got a spare ten grand of euros lying around they can lend me? Seriously though, this sounds like a much more enjoyable trip than going on a rocket or space plane, and far less hassle than visiting/staying on the ISS or such. I had a look at the space-balloon website, they're planning to give money to NGO's, albeit 1%.