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LHC - Top Science or Titanic Money Pit?
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How do the time spent, set-backs, and cost of the LHC compare to past huge projects like, say, space shuttles?
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According to NASA:
http://www.space.com/news/shuttle_cost_050211.html
And keep in mind that article is four years old. The total cost of the LHC so far?
6.4 billion Euros, which is (according to my napkin math) something like $8.254 billion.
Also, because I don't think I've gotten the opportunity to say this, Emanon should educate himself beyond talk radio.
If the LHC was supposed to go online in 2007... and then got delayed until 2008 by a major miscalculation that required a complete rebuild the array of (i think it was 14) Fermi superconducting magnets... then the 2008 startup was delayed for another year another simple problem (bad solder joint was the last I heard on the subject)... is there a limit on the number of years of delays due to poor worksmanship or miscalculations?
How many years would the LHC have to sit there idle before it was sold as scrap?
What would you replace it with?
Realistically the only reason to dismantle LHC would be if it's experiments could be redesigned such that ILC could perform them if/when it comes online (probably the early 2020s).
Until a larger/more powerful supercollider was constructed. Though the ILC is a different kind so I don't know if it would really act as a 'replacement' of the LHC.
There's a really cool panorama here if anyone wants to get a sense of the sights and sounds of standing next to ATLAS, just ONE of the many detectors at CERN.
I like how the areas you can do parkour on are highlighted in blue.
I'm not saying that the LHC isn't an important tool. There's no line drawn in the sand. It just seems like a lot of work and hopes are being pinned on the results of a device that was designed to work within a half-finished model of the Universe.
Supposing the Universe itself enacts a form of cosmic censorship that limits the energy level one can easily manipulate? Miscalculations aside, what if we spent a decade only to discover that lacking certain fundamental knowledge we inadvertently exceeded some energy limit that we can accurately manipulate and the entire apparatus is a wash? There's already been one "Oops, we didn't think of that" event.
At what point do we admit that the holes in our knowledge... staggering holes at that... far surpass our engineering abilities?
Every possiblity you mentioned (seriously, "cosmic cencorship"?) would be a massive success for the LHC. Because it would be experimental evidence that such a strange Cosmic Bureaucracy did indeed exist.
It is virtually certain that the LHC will prove the Standard Model "wrong" to some degree. Maybe just a little maybe a lot. But regardless of whether it confirms current theory or provides evidence that current theory is wrong it is still a success.
That is how science works. That is what makes science a completely different way of approaching the world (and, to my mind, a vastly superior one) than those based on Revealed Truth: the only way to lose is not to play.
Edit: Again, just watch the video in my sig to listen to someone who is one of the most qualified people on the planet talk about it.
Ok, I'll revise. There's no good reason to expect Bose-Einstein condensation of matter at high temperatures. Although there may turn out to be some application of condensed magnons, somehow I doubt it will revolutionize physics or technology.
When we hit that ceiling.
We aren't there yet.
I see your point somewhat. So even if it never works, we'll still have discovered something that should point us in a direction forwards.
(Cosmic censorship was mostly in jest... but still, point out a free quark.)
Exactly. What the LHC will provide is vast amounts of experimental data. Whether that data agrees with predictions or not it will, and indeed it must, provide the basis for the next round of theory.
We can be pretty confident that the data provided by the LHC will be interesting because in the past every time a new more powerful accelerator has been built this has been the case.
The LHC creates energies never before observed by humans in a controlled environment*. It is guaranteed that we will learn something from it because even if nothing new is found that itself is interesting data.
* Note the "controlled environment" clause. Cosmic rays vastly more powerful than anything the LHC will produce bombard our planet all the damn time. You just can't predict where or when so you can't use them for experiments.
A cosmic ray isn't much of a substitute. There's a difference between a cosmic ray impacting random molecules in Earth's atmosphere and colliding together collections of protons head on when they're moving at near the speed of light in opposite directions.
The other half is in the LHC. Probably. Maybe.
The LHC though once it gets working, its not an if I am pretty sure it will get working at some point, could do for physics what the disproving of the ether did. Every time I read about it, I get a little more excited that maybe we will figure out how to do those cool things we see and read about in sci-fi movies and books.
I wonder if it will help with current attempts and research in teleportation. I want to be able to teleport to the states to visit instead of the blasted 15 hours on a plane with 4 hours being stuck in LAX. But they if it ever happens will be after I am dead.
You are arguing from a very strange perspective here. We have every reason to believe that the LHC will vastly increase our knowledge of particle physics. Why? Because we've learned something from each new and bigger particle accelerator that was built. We know the LHC can either support or disprove existing theories. We can surmise from past experience that we will probably learn something quite unexpected from it.
We can admit that our holes in knowledge outstrip our engineering abilities when we stop making discoveries. Considering the rate at which our science has been advancing over the past 100 years, we can safely say that now is not the time to think that.
^Awesome dude in an awesome thread over on SA.
As for the practical aspects of something like the LHC, I would like to bring up the entire Condensed Matter/Solid State field as it is. You like your new 45nm manufacturing process? Guess what, that was a result of some of the Field Theory applications to condensed matter physics. So there are application in the near future if we figure something out, just not necessarily in the way that you think.
Bah, I forgot the rest of my thought!
Then that will be awesome as Science likes nothing better than proving a current theory wrong. I (along with a lot of bookies) hope they don't find the Higgs-Boson as theoretical particle physics will crank into overdirve. Max. Extreme.
I made a game, it has penguins in it. It's pay what you like on Gumroad.
Currently Ebaying Nothing at all but I might do in the future.
Also, that panorama shot does about 0.5% of the justice of the sheer size, precision and down right awesomeness that ATLAS deserves. It truly is pant wettingly huge.
http://steamcommunity.com/id/pablocampy
Show me a free quark?
You can sort of get there with top quarks. They decay weakly before they can hadronise into jets.
EDIT: I'm playing devil's advocate here. Colour confinement better damn well be true, otherwise we're all screwed.
6.4 billion is nothing compared to the 597 billion we've burned in iraq.
Considering all the work and money that's been put into the LHC, I certainly hope we get it working... but if not this year, I think it may be time to consider ways to cut losses on the thing.
You have to draw the line somewhere, mans.
The line doesn't exist until we have a bigger better working one, until then keep working on it.
I don't think we'll get anywhere with this sort of person unless we break down just how little this thing costs and what we stand to gain.
edit: Let me handle it
In the beginning there were rocks and wood. We broke those apart and made tools.
Then there was metal. We broke it apart and formed it into things.
Then there were hydrocarbons. We broke them apart and made all kinds of crazy stuff.
Then there was matter. We broke it apart and made power.
Now we're down to the atoms, and we're kind of curious about what's inside the even tinier bits they're made of. We are about to peer behind the fourth wall, and you want to stop?
Almost 2 years into having everything in place, with 2 years of delays. The Fermi magnets had to be replaced, but the LHC was fully assembled in 2007.
My question isn't why not take it apart... my question was how many years of continuing delays would have to pass before it became an issue. Would another decade of discovering design or construction flaws be too much?
I'm not saying rip the bastard to pieces right now.