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@Daniel_MC the argument of this video is that the colliders are built to test alternatives to the standard model in areas that haven't been previously tested. But there is no reason to think that the standard model won't continue to hold in these new extremes, and so far we haven't found exceptions so our priors should be low.

It also argues that these alternative models are unfalsifiable because their parameters can always be tweaked to fit new data that we observe which is in line with the standard model.

Physics ended in like 2005 the big thing is AI now.

I strongly agree that we should keep doing particle physics experiments, but only somewhat agree with building bigger colliders because we will probably need more than just a bigger collider to make any big breakthroughs. Some phenomena would require such high energy that it's totally infeasible to just build a bigger collider because you would need a collider larger than the Earth.

@PlasmaBallin Are there feasible ways to test the Standard Model experimentally instead of building larger colliders?

@TimothyJohnson5c16 Plasma accelators may or may not allow for larger energies at small scales to replace bigger colliders. IMO we need to explore this path before we spend billions on big experiments.

@TimothyJohnson5c16 There are, in fact! There is a bunch of research that tests beyond-Standard-Model physics and that does not involve bigger colliders. As an example, there is a big window for using radioactive atoms and molecules to test fundamental physics [see the review paper https://arxiv.org/pdf/1710.01833.pdf]. I am also aware of nuclear physics laboratories (e.g. GANIL in France) that look for beyond-Standard-Model physics through some exotic decays into dark matter.

So although I wholeheartedly support the search for knowledge for the sake of knowledge such as in the field of fundamental physics, I am strongly against spending an unfathomable amount of money on bigger and bigger colliders such as the FCC.

@Caterpidgey FCC is, for example, under 2% of the F-35 program. I'm pretty sure there are more efficient taxpayer money savings to be made available

@CodeandSolder Oh, I do think that there are way worse things on which governments spend their money than a big particle collider, don't get me wrong.

I am just very mindful of how hard it is to get funding for some great scientific projects that I consider to have a much higher likelihood of pushing human knowledge forward. I believe there are more creative and cost-effective ways of probing fundamental physics, and they do not get as much visibility as the FCC. In an era where getting funding for fundamental physics is hard, I very much mind which projects get it, even though ideally there would be space for everything.

@Caterpidgey I assumed FCC is big enough to require funding through new allocations and not from existing budgets and thus not reduce funding available to other projects significantly (assuming there weren't other projects of that size requiring special funding), is that incorrect?

@CodeandSolder as far as I am aware, the technical and financial feasibiloty analysis for the FCC is still not done, so I do not know exactly how to answer your question. In practice, irrespective of the FCC being built or not, governmental funds for research are very competitive and the decisions can be very political.

For instance, GANIL (that I mentioned above) is being pushed towards applications in detriment of the fundamental research, for instance. Not that there is a clear culprit, it is just that the willingness to invest in something that "yields no return" is limited, and choices are made along the way.

And, again, I would rather support projects that cleverly use infrastructure that already exists and lead to the same scientific output. Cheaper, more neat, and also quicker.

@TimothyJohnson5c16 Particle astrophysics is often touted by its practitioners as this. Personally, I'm of the perspective that we still have such a poor handle on the conceptual understanding of much more down to earth versions of quantum mechanics that we should try to exhaust all paths forward in actually figuring out how to make heads or tales of what we actually can do cheaply, before working on the expensive stuff. (See, for example, Bohmian time of flight experiments.) Or have the QFT people actually come to some sort of consensus on what rigorous mathematical QFT even looks like, because oh boy do they not agree.