<story><title>Did the W-boson just “break the standard model”?</title><url>http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2022/04/did-w-boson-just-break-standard-model.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>XorNot</author><text>&amp;gt; LHC have absorbed a disproportionate share of these scare resources&lt;p&gt;As opposed to? This sentiment was bandied around &lt;i&gt;a lot&lt;/i&gt; before the LHC went online, but no one ever had a proposition of what the alternative was is the goal was to advance fundamental particle physics. You&amp;#x27;ve got exactly 2 ways to probe subatomic interactions: (1) particle accelerator measurement and (2) incidental measurements of high-energy spaceborne collisions.&lt;p&gt;We&amp;#x27;re doing both. Theoreticians being unable to conclusively find a new measurement is a problem independent of the fact the LHC exists &lt;i&gt;to do those sorts of measurements that they&amp;#x27;d need&lt;/i&gt;.</text></item><item><author>photochemsyn</author><text>There is a limited pool of resources available to do basic fundamental science and it&amp;#x27;s fair to argue that things like LHC have absorbed a disproportionate share of these scare resources, without a whole lot to show for it.  Since it&amp;#x27;s the general public that ultimately funds these projects (unless the LHC can attract its own Jeff Bezos), I think it is OK to have a public discussion about it.</text></item><item><author>katmannthree</author><text>&amp;gt; It is unfortunate that a science communicator would express her research preference in such a way.&lt;p&gt;It is disappointing, and more unfortunately pretty much her personal brand now. There are, as she seems to have discovered, a lot of eyeballs to be had when you bash things that are poorly understood and already looked down upon for it.&lt;p&gt;She&amp;#x27;s a fine physicist and her points have merit, but she&amp;#x27;s smart enough to be perfectly aware that rather than improving the field through discussions with peers what she&amp;#x27;s doing here is just capitalizing on that distaste people have for their work and doing what she can to undermine them.</text></item><item><author>d0mine</author><text>This part also stand out to me. It is unfortunate that a science communicator would express her research preference in such a way. It is true there were no breakthrough in ages in the particle physics (standard model works extremely well), it is true &amp;quot;paper production&amp;quot; has disproportionate influence on funding (applicable to academia in general), personally I&amp;#x27;m excited about the recent deployment of Webb space telescope (new instruments are often good for scientific progress), and quantum computing is gobbledygook (theoretically there were some exciting algorithms, in practice I expect at best modest but nonetheless important [cryptography] applications--that we could duplicate in less elegant way in a classical way)&lt;p&gt;but for people unfamiliar with science it may sound like &amp;quot;defund LHC&amp;quot; (that would be unfortunate)</text></item><item><author>photochemsyn</author><text>Well this is kind of funny and I mostly agree so TLDR:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &amp;quot;I’m afraid all of this sounds rather negative. Well. There’s a reason I left particle physics. Particle physics has degenerated into a paper production enterprise that is of virtually no relevance for societal progress or for progress in any other discipline of science. The only reason we still hear so much about it is that a lot of funding goes into it and so a lot of people still work on it, most of them don’t like me. But the disciplines where the foundations of physics currently make progress are cosmology and astrophysics, and everything quantum, quantum information, quantum computing, quantum metrology, and so on, which is why that’s what I mostly talk about these days.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;The popular science literature is also full of string theory this and god particle that, and it&amp;#x27;s really not very satisfying or illuminating.  If people want to get into this general subject, I&amp;#x27;d recommend instead Stephen Hawking&amp;#x27;s compendium of classic papers on quantum physics, with commentary, &amp;quot;The Dreams That Stuff is Made Of.&amp;quot;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>JackFr</author><text>Maybe the physicists are looking for their car keys under the streetlight. Unable to find, them the only solution they can conceive of is a bigger streetlight.</text></comment>
<story><title>Did the W-boson just “break the standard model”?</title><url>http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2022/04/did-w-boson-just-break-standard-model.html</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>XorNot</author><text>&amp;gt; LHC have absorbed a disproportionate share of these scare resources&lt;p&gt;As opposed to? This sentiment was bandied around &lt;i&gt;a lot&lt;/i&gt; before the LHC went online, but no one ever had a proposition of what the alternative was is the goal was to advance fundamental particle physics. You&amp;#x27;ve got exactly 2 ways to probe subatomic interactions: (1) particle accelerator measurement and (2) incidental measurements of high-energy spaceborne collisions.&lt;p&gt;We&amp;#x27;re doing both. Theoreticians being unable to conclusively find a new measurement is a problem independent of the fact the LHC exists &lt;i&gt;to do those sorts of measurements that they&amp;#x27;d need&lt;/i&gt;.</text></item><item><author>photochemsyn</author><text>There is a limited pool of resources available to do basic fundamental science and it&amp;#x27;s fair to argue that things like LHC have absorbed a disproportionate share of these scare resources, without a whole lot to show for it.  Since it&amp;#x27;s the general public that ultimately funds these projects (unless the LHC can attract its own Jeff Bezos), I think it is OK to have a public discussion about it.</text></item><item><author>katmannthree</author><text>&amp;gt; It is unfortunate that a science communicator would express her research preference in such a way.&lt;p&gt;It is disappointing, and more unfortunately pretty much her personal brand now. There are, as she seems to have discovered, a lot of eyeballs to be had when you bash things that are poorly understood and already looked down upon for it.&lt;p&gt;She&amp;#x27;s a fine physicist and her points have merit, but she&amp;#x27;s smart enough to be perfectly aware that rather than improving the field through discussions with peers what she&amp;#x27;s doing here is just capitalizing on that distaste people have for their work and doing what she can to undermine them.</text></item><item><author>d0mine</author><text>This part also stand out to me. It is unfortunate that a science communicator would express her research preference in such a way. It is true there were no breakthrough in ages in the particle physics (standard model works extremely well), it is true &amp;quot;paper production&amp;quot; has disproportionate influence on funding (applicable to academia in general), personally I&amp;#x27;m excited about the recent deployment of Webb space telescope (new instruments are often good for scientific progress), and quantum computing is gobbledygook (theoretically there were some exciting algorithms, in practice I expect at best modest but nonetheless important [cryptography] applications--that we could duplicate in less elegant way in a classical way)&lt;p&gt;but for people unfamiliar with science it may sound like &amp;quot;defund LHC&amp;quot; (that would be unfortunate)</text></item><item><author>photochemsyn</author><text>Well this is kind of funny and I mostly agree so TLDR:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; &amp;quot;I’m afraid all of this sounds rather negative. Well. There’s a reason I left particle physics. Particle physics has degenerated into a paper production enterprise that is of virtually no relevance for societal progress or for progress in any other discipline of science. The only reason we still hear so much about it is that a lot of funding goes into it and so a lot of people still work on it, most of them don’t like me. But the disciplines where the foundations of physics currently make progress are cosmology and astrophysics, and everything quantum, quantum information, quantum computing, quantum metrology, and so on, which is why that’s what I mostly talk about these days.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;The popular science literature is also full of string theory this and god particle that, and it&amp;#x27;s really not very satisfying or illuminating.  If people want to get into this general subject, I&amp;#x27;d recommend instead Stephen Hawking&amp;#x27;s compendium of classic papers on quantum physics, with commentary, &amp;quot;The Dreams That Stuff is Made Of.&amp;quot;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>TheOtherHobbes</author><text>As opposed to open season on new theory - or even new kinds of theory.&lt;p&gt;The Standard Model is a bit of a franken-theory of a thing, a kit of parts bolted together in awkward ways. It looks a lot like the pre-quantum ad-hoc theories that attempted to describe quantum effects before QM was invented.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s hard to believe that physics can&amp;#x27;t do better. But easy to believe that physics won&amp;#x27;t do better while most of the money and all of the mental space is owned by concepts that are more than a hundred years old now.</text></comment>