Talk:Large Hadron Collider

Readers of this article want to know...

...is it true, as I have sort of gathered from the popular science media, that people who understand this stuff well are convinced that it is irrational to believe that there will ever be any practical application for the findings of the LHC? Pure science only? Sheldon and all the other sheldons will have an understanding in their brains that will feel nice to them when they understand these things, but the rest of us who can't or don't care enough to understand about this kind of physics should never expect any benefit whatsoever from this investment? Chrisrus (talk) 02:53, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Who are these people and if they don't care enough about it why are they still commenting on it? My first question is are they qualified to comment on it, do they understand the advances in science, medical imagery, computing to name a few that these types of machines have already developed? This talk page is about discussing and making improvements to the article not as a social commentary forum to discuss what people think or whether it is worthwhile, there are more than enough blogs on the web for that. But I would just remind them that the world wide web, that tool these people are using to discuss whether the LHC or CERN has instrinsic value, was developed at CERN and given to the world freely as a directly result of developements for the LHC. This in itself has paid for the LHC many times over. Here and here are few others from improvement to mammograms to pet medical imagery to the Medipix chip. To me it sounds like they just plain don't understand it and don't want to make the effort to, but still want something to whine about, and nothing about being a Sheldon.^Khukri 07:26, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

It is disingenuous to claim that the spin-offs make the LHC worthwhile, since those benefits could have been acquired at far less cost by direct investment in specific projects. Did we really need the spaceprogram to develop non-stick frying pans? (A myth, I know, but you get the point.) -- cheers, Michael C. Price ^talk 09:32, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

The problem Michael is the "...could have been acquired at far less cost by direct investment in specific projects.", what is the driving force behind these direct investments? In reality there are three main driving forces behind any type of development, R&D such as CERN & the space programs, corporate innovation and military developement. Both the military and scientific R&D tend to stumble on these advances or benefits by accident. Directed programs as you suggest tend to only be financed by corporations looking for profit and focused on a certain goal and miss these accidental developments. When they are found the end product comes at far more cost to society as they have a less altruistic motivation than organisations like CERN who tend to put their developments freely into the public domain. I have tried to find it though will look again when I get back to work on Tuesday, that CERN has paid for itself ten times over with what it has given to society, and it's cost when compared to military expenditure, events like the olympics pale into insignificance. I don't believe it is disingenuous, but everyone has their viewpoint. Cheers ^Khukri 10:30, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict with that from MC Price above.) Look at, for example, the article Anti-lasar, which is just a tiny stub, but it has a section about projected practical applications for the technology, giving the reader a good idea of the practical applications of the technology once the experiments are completed; not as a spin-off that might come as a side result of figuing out how do the research, as in the sort of "Teflon and Tang" arguement for manned space exploration for example, but what the anti-lasar could actually be good for. In contrast, this article presents the only purpose of this massive thing rationally projected by people who are in a position to know what they are talking about will be the positive feelings in the brains of a tiny percentage of people who are not only mentally capable of understanding it, but also happen to be interested in such matters. Readers like me should be able to find what practical benefits the general public can expect from finding the hyperbolically named "God particle", or whether experts agree that there very likely never be any, as one might expect because we've gotten countless benefits from breakthroughs in Newtonian physics, a source of power from the work of Einstein and such, and quantum physics and such is helpful to us all in the design of computers, so upon arrival at the article one could be expected to think that this will be similar. I came here to find out what this pending breakthrough is projected to do for us, or whether, as I've gathered, experts agree that there is very good reason to doubt that anything practical will ever come out of this breakthough. The sources you provide seem to be talking about spin-off benefits that come from things already learned from just making putting together such a massive project, quite like those "Teflon and Tang" benefits that we got from the Moon missions, as opposed to the actual facts learned from going to the moon and picking up the moon rocks and bringing them back and learning from them; i.e.: not spin-off things that we couldn't have learned in any other way, such as directly investing in non-stick coating research and powdered drink mix development programs. Whether this experiment is expected by experts to never have any practical benefits beyond such spin-off things learnable elsehow, as readers like me might rationally expect based on the winfalls from previous breakthroughs, or whether it's true that this breakthrough is different from those before in that experts agree that there is no way that it will ever have practial applications for society in general because for complicated reasons there is no way this will ever have any such applications. The spin-off stuff would be a nice addition to the article as well, but that's not as important, but if you want to use these citations to add a spin-off benefits section as well I wouldn't object, but that's different from a section on practical applications, or lack of same, sorely missing from this article. Chrisrus (talk) 10:04, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Look here for example, this http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2006/nov/20/topstories3.science is the kind of thing readers like me want to know: "Professor Engelen admits there is no practical benefit in finding the Higgs Boson. "Even in my wildest imagination I can't think of this discovery having a practical application"" So my vague recollection was correct, there's never going to be any practical benefit from the LHC beyond spin-off stuff. I will wait a bit for comment, but then I'm adding this fact to the article in as upfront and blunt a way as appropriate. Chrisrus (talk) 10:36, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

The higgs isn't the entirety of the LHC, a large part admittedly, but it does have other purposes, and new possibilities are being discussed all the time and and plans being made when looking forward to the LHC consolidation. No one can ever tell you in advance what the benefits of pure research will be, it's impossible, but hindsight shows us that up to now the benefits to humanity of pure science have outweighed the negatives by a significant factor. Be blunt by all means but avoid your own POV. Cheers ^Khukri 10:58, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

This sums it up quite nicely, long paper but interesting thoughts on this debate, which has this comment from Rutherford around 1930 similar to Engelens above "Anyone who expects a source of power from the transformation of atoms is talking moonshine", and we know how wrong that proved to be. ^Khukri 11:04, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Nice link. Quoting selectively:

In my experience the general public generally finds the cultural argument at least, if not more, convincing than spin-offs, and it is dangerous to base arguments on examples of spin-off which may not stand up to careful analysis. [........] It is true that so far there have not been any direct applications of the discoveries of particle physics [...]

And of course Engelen does use the important qualifier "Even in my wildest imagination" - I'm sure the Higgs, like any theoretical advance, will have applications one day. The definition of the technological singularity is that we can't imagine past it, so that day may arrive sooner than most expect. -- cheers, Michael C. Price ^talk 11:25, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes, he does say that, but the surprising thing is, unlike you, none of them that I've seen says anything remotely like the "I'm sure...than most expect" statement you've made here. In fact, they seem to go out of their way to stress that in the case of this breakthrough (these breakthroughs?), we can rest assured that the day you refer to will never arrive. How they could possibly be confident of that, I don't know, but when they do address this question directly they don't qualify that statement nearly as much as one might expect given the track record of past breakthroughs. It seems that, with the knowledge necessary to understand deeply the LHC, Higgs-Boson, and whatnot, comes some kind of insight that there expecting any kind of practical benefit beyond the spin-offs and intrinsic value of knowing these things; nothing more will ever come of such things. I can only speculate as to how they could know that. The other thought that occurs to me is that they might be deliberately down-playing the possibility that something will come of it so that when nothing does we won't be disappointed. But they are scientists and scientists don't normally say "never" in a flippant way, so I really don't thinks so. Anyway, we can only go by what they say and as far as I've seen that's what they say and given their credentials and the fact that they seem to have every motivation to tell the public otherwise it seems we can take that to the bank and cash it.

Also, it seems to me that the logical place to put the new "benefits" section would be right next to the "costs" section. Should it go "benefits" before or after "costs"?Chrisrus (talk) 05:50, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

Scientists have an abysmal record at determining what is impossible. See the first of Clarke's three laws. -- cheers, Michael C. Price ^talk 07:31, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

Please note, this page is for discussions of edits to the LHC article. General discussions of the merits of Blue sky research do not belong here. Ashmoo (talk) 14:39, 26 April 2011 (UTC)

Yes, Mr. Ashmoo. So, where do you think the "benefits" section should go, before or after the "costs" section? Chrisrus (talk) 06:13, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Since the LHC was constructed to solve the scientific issues that are details in the 'Purpose' section and not for specific tangible benefits, I'd say the section should go in the later section of the article. But all mentions of possible benefits need to be sourced to a notable commentator who directly linked the LHC to the benefit. General speculation about practical uses of the LHC's discoveries should not be included. Ashmoo (talk) 09:47, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Not sure if this question was serious or simply intended to annoy the "sheldons" (as someone put it) of wikipedia. In any case, I can't think of any practical benefit in finding the Higgs Boson either, however, the point is to further our understanding of quantum mechanics which in turn has an impact on a huge number of technologies and other scientific fields we benefit from daily in every day life, for example the computer we all (probably) are reading this on. Measuring the orbit of mercury doesn't have any practical applications either but it helped us verify the correctness of general relativity and relativity is necessary for the GPS system to work correctly. 'Pure science' usually means exploring new ground, no one knows what to find (if they did there really wouldn't be any point) and consequently it's impossible to predict exactly what the benefits will be. However we can be certain that the LHC will improve our understanding of the fundamental laws of the universe and that have proven incredibly useful in the past. If you worry about tax money being wasted on pointless experiments and obscure theories there are plenty of worthy targets out there but the LHC isn't one of them.85.230.137.5 (talk) 13:55, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

That seems convincing and true, but actually that's not what the experts seem to be saying in the sources. They seem to be saying that, I don't know how they could possibly know this, that, unlike previous breakthroughs in physics, in this case they can state with confidence that there will never be any practical benefits coming from this knowledge. They only disagree about whether to "sell it to the public" on spin-off technologies or by waxing philosophical about the great human spiritual need to know this wonderful great mystery. Don't take it from me, check it yourself, I could be wrong about that. Then please summarize what they say in the article in a "benefits" section to accompany the "costs" section, as this is a glaring omission that ignores the need of the reader and surplants them with the need of fans of the LHC to promote their POV that the project is wonderful and the article should, like the LHC website, promote the project. Chrisrus (talk) 15:20, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

Who said there has to be benefits? It has a number of objectives and none of them are about benefits. We can explain maybe to the readers that that it's pure research and as such no one will say there are benefits, but as I said in my first response to you history shows us that the economics benefits far outweigh the initial costs and to demonstrate this we could link to something like this. ^Khukri 19:23, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

This is different. As the article Pure Research teaches, it is often the long term it is the basis for many practical applications and is often supported because as you say, ya never know. Who knows where it will lead? In this case, it's different. Experts seem to agree that there will never be any long term practical applications, so forget about it, this is different. This is a pretty extraordinary thing about this area of research. How they can say this will such seeming confidence is beyond me. How can they assure us that it's not going to happen? It's one of the most notable things about this project. The amount of experts declaring that there will never be any practical application for knowing about the Higgs Boson and whatnot. They say that there is just plain no rational basis for forseeing any application whatsoever and we should believe it. They call insinuations that there might be an energy sourse or some such, things like "irresponsable" and "fairy stories" and some such. Check it yourself, I know it's hard to believe, but they're telling us to erase from our minds any notion that the kind of thing you say about it being pure research and pointing to the history and rational basis for thinking that something might ever come of the LHC that would improve human existence on a practical level, they assure us to take it from them, it'll never happen in this case, that this case is somehow different. How on earth they can know this I have no idea. So just pointing the readers to the article pure reseach where it says that there is often long term application for it is not serving the reader well because s/he'll walk away with hope that the experts are instructing us not to have. Scientists don't normally take so much time out to tell us this about something. Instead, they either point to spin-off benefits, economic benefits for the area surrounding the facility, or wax philosophical about solving the greatest mysteries of the universe, or telling each other not to use one or the other of these justifications. There is quite a bit of this defensive, seemingly pre-emptive talk (I don't know anyone but me who's asked for some rational cost-benefit analysis, so they seem to be arguing back to a strawman about it), but in the media there is plenty of this expert discussion addressing this point and disagreeing about how to then "sell this to the public". They also spend a lot of time talking about how, if one compares the costs to some of the most expensive things you can imagine and saying things like "look how much cheaper than (the Iraq war, for example) it is, this isn't so mind-bogglingly expensive if you look at it that way" and some such. It's all over the media, don't take it from me. If the experts want to talk about the spin-off stuff, which has been substantial, and the philosophical rationalizations, and blah blah, but we are to understand that unlike what one might think when they here that this is pure research, this will never have practical applications; if they want to say this so often to us, then why does this article not report this? If it's important to them and maybe to the reader, then it should be important enough to summarize in the article in an appropriate way. Chrisrus (talk) 22:50, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

OK lets see some sources then that say the LHC will have no benefits. I can see loads of sources[1][2][3][4][5][6][7], to link a few, that have a similar position to mine and I've seen people saying they can't envisage a practical use for the higgs discovery, but that is not the entirety of the LHC.

“	Throughout history, people have studied pure science from a desire to understand the universe, rather than practical applications for commercial gain. But their discoveries later turned out to have great practical benefits. It is difficult to see an economic return from research at the LHC, but that doesn't mean there wont be any.	”
—Stephen Hawkins

Cheers ^Khukri 07:17, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

That's reassuring. :) Also: I was thinking a little about how the first professor said he could not think of any practical benefit. Perhaps it's wrong to ask the actual scientists working at the LHC what the benefit will be, since the focus for a scientist in this field is naturally the pure science. It would make more sense to direct the question of how it will benefit society towards those who are funding the experiment. They have hopefully given that question more thought.85.230.137.5 (talk) 17:59, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

Well, that statement from Hawkins may have been the end of my arguement, but wait. This all started because of this article that I was reading and linked to and referred to above: | http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2006/nov/20/topstories3.science, specifically this part here I quote:

Professor Engelen admits there is no practical benefit in finding the Higgs Boson. "Even in my wildest imagination I can't think of this discovery having a practical application, but setting ourselves that goal, doing something so exceptionally difficult, has required us to be innovative technology-wise. I can very easily sell the idea of new and fundamental science using that argument, even though the Higgs itself is not going to let you make a better toothpaste," he said.

Now it seems my argument has been misplaced. It's more at specifically at the Higgs-Boson, and not necessarily at the LHC per se, which, for all the reader knows at this point, is scheduled to do work which an expert could, in his or her wildest imagination, conceive of a practical non-spinnoff benefit from. That of course will have to wait until the somehow more urgent matter of the Higgs-Boson is settled. (What kind of timetable, broadly speaking, are we talking here before we can get to experiment #2?) These are matters readers like me come to this article looking to learn about but can't seem to find easily. Chrisrus (talk) 20:17, 6 June 2011 (UTC)

You might check out Big Science and the LHC, by Gian Giudice (CERN). In the last section he discusses what - in his view - are the benefits for society of "big" fundamental-science projects. Cheers Ptrslv72 (talk) 09:29, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

The only problem here is idiots who honestly think theory has no practical use, despite the fact that scientific theory allows practical applications because we then UNDERSTAND HOW, WHY AND WHAT works. 58.7.134.151 (talk) 14:35, 2 October 2011 (UTC) Sutter Cane

If experts in this area do in fact agree that that it's not rational to expect any practical benefits beyond spin-off technology that could be gotten more cheaply elsehow, and the rationale given for an experiment is based on non-scientific philosophical benefits that will accrue to a tiny group of experts, it's not unitelligent to ask for a rational cost/benefit analysis. If experts do not so agree, then that's another matter. This is not tantamount to an argument against pure research in general as the opportunity costs of LHC include lots of pure research as well, so to argue as this citation seems to for pure research in general is to miss the point. Everyone is for pure research; it's a question of priorities in a world where nothing is free and we can't do everything. Nevertheless, it's wrong to refuse to include a "benefits" section alongside the "costs" section to frankly inform a reader of the spin-off benefits, expert opinion on possible direct benefits, and the oft-cited fuzzy "spiritual" benefits that would come from finding the Higgs, as the inclusion of a "benefits" section would constitute article improvement and serve the reader. Also, is it true that there was no research beyond "the search for the God particle" that the LHC can do that couldn't be done by pre-existing equipment? Chrisrus (talk) 19:16, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

BBC article on SUSY searches

The view that the recent LHCb results "all but killed" supersymmetry stems from the misunderstandings of a BBC journalist and is pretty much ridiculed in the physics community (see e.g. here and here). A far more balanced presentation of the same results can be found in the Fermilab/SLAC magazine:

Looking for excesses like this is one way to search for supersymmetry. Not seeing this type of enhancement does not, however, rule out the existence of supersymmetry, said Sheldon Stone, group leader of experimental elementary particle physics at Syracuse University. “There is still a lot of room for new physics to appear,” he said.

I am inclined to remove the sentence about the BBC article. Comments? Cheers, Ptrslv72 (talk) 12:01, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Far better to keep the sentence but provide the more balanced analysis as well. Just removing the story is not useful to readers looking for answers.

Also another story: LHC reveals hints of 'new physics' in particle decays needs coverage here. -- cheers, Michael C. Price ^talk 07:17, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Data processing

There's nothing in the article (including the computing resources section) about how the data is processed. Most of the raw data is lost, IIUC, with only the subset flagged up as "interesting" kept for further analysis. Do the algorithms search for events that confirm various extensions of the SM, or do they look for anything that doesn't fit with the SM? -- cheers, Michael C. Price ^talk 08:16, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

To be or not to be

"On 13 December 2011 it was reported that both the CMS and ATLAS detectors have shown intensity peaks in the 124–125 GeV range, consistent with either background noise or the observation of the Higgs boson." While correct this sounds a bit strange to me, couldn't it be made a bit clearer? If I have understood the press release from CMS correctly, isn't the big news that they have excluded the rest of the energy spectrum, so if this, not yet significant excess of events, isn't the Higgs boson it would seem it doesn't exist at all? Happy new year! 85.230.137.5 (talk) 13:46, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

I updated the section, hope it is clearer now. 85.230.137.5 (talk) 14:26, 2 January 2012 (UTC)