July 15, 2012
Why the Higgs Boson Matters
In case you haven't read enough yet, more from Steven Weinberg in the NYTimes:
A case can be made for this sort of spending, even to those who don’t care about learning the laws of nature. Exploring the outer frontier of our knowledge of nature is in one respect like war: It pushes modern technology to its limits, often yielding new technology of great practical importance.
For instance, the new particle was produced at CERN in collisions of protons that occur at a rate of over a hundred million collisions per second. To analyze the flood of data produced by all these collisions requires real time computing of unmatched power. Also, before the protons collide, they are accelerated to an energy over 3,000 times larger than the energy contained in their own masses while they go many times around a 27-kilometer circular tunnel. To keep them in their tracks requires enormously strong superconducting magnets, cooled by the world’s largest source of liquid helium. In previous work at CERN, elementary particle physicists developed a method of sharing data that has become the World Wide Web.
On a longer time scale, the advance of technology will reflect the coherent picture of nature we are now assembling. At the end of the 19th century physicists in England were exploring the properties of electric currents passing through a near vacuum. Although this was pure science, it led to our knowledge of the electron, without which a large part of today’s technology would be impossible. If these physicists had limited themselves to work of obvious practical importance, they would have been studying the behavior of steam boilers.
More here.
Posted by Henry Molofsky at 12:00 PM | Permalink
Comments
The discovery of a new fundamental particle that gives everything else its mass is important because it used lots of computers?!
Of course, this is the kind of thing that big physics proponents need to say, always PC. But it is ridiculous. The need to justify studying the most fundamental physics of our universe by self-interest---maybe it will give me a faster computer to browse the web on---is in a sense bankrupt.
In fact, one of the most important effects of this study is exactly the opposite, to *counter* this kind of self-centered, unimaginative thinking.
Posted by: John | Jul 15, 2012 1:26:22 PM
John, I believe what Weinberg meant to say is some folks will always question the amount of funds that are spent on pure research. To make it more palatable to this crowd, he asserts that there are ancillary benefits which we may not see for a long time and hence his example of computers and the web.
Not to say that pure research is not worth it on it's own, but this is Weinberg addressing those who question why so much has been spent.
If funding decisions were based on the poverty we see around us, there would be no space program or for that matter any pure research at all. That would be sad, wouldn't it?
Posted by: Shahzad | Jul 15, 2012 3:24:28 PM
If funding decisions were based on the poverty we see around us, there would be no space program or for that matter any pure research at all. That would be sad, wouldn't it?
Uh... you aren't seriously suggesting that a world in which there was no space program, no pure research and no poverty would be sad, are you?
I share John's sense that the author of this article totally failed to answer the question he put to himself. An analogy: when I ask you why I should spend a bunch of my money on a house, you can't reply by telling me that it will help boost the housing market. You tell me why the house itself is valuable.
Posted by: Joe | Jul 15, 2012 3:58:45 PM
Reminds me of this comment on the great discovery:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/discussion/comment-permalink/17035496
Weinberg and many other scientists have assumed the role of high priests of the scientistic cult, even though many of them are barely concealed reactionary toffs who sneer at "primitive" peoples:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2007/06/01/the-bigot-and-the-boycott
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2007/may/24/highereducation.uk1
Posted by: slr | Jul 15, 2012 6:05:03 PM
In a Peter Singer 'Life you can save' kinda way there'd be a pretty strong argument to shelve a lot of exciting science and spend the money on, say, preventing kids dying of malnutrition or enteric illnesses.
Posted by: big joe | Jul 15, 2012 6:40:11 PM
The issue is not funding for scientific research vs poverty alleviation but greed, consumerism, armaments vs poverty alleviation.
Posted by: Raza | Jul 15, 2012 9:39:46 PM
It is not possible in a short comment to dispute the many misleading and possibly false claims of professor Weinberg, who shared a Nobel prize with two of his cronies. Obviously Weinberg can find no wrongs with his pet theories which he and others have promoted for so many years.
After reading the many words of this piece, one is still at a total loss to have any simple understanding of how the so called “Higgs” particle produces mass, and indeed how it could produce mass without any effort to address gravity, the most fundamental force involving mass. So far gravity has been totally disregarded by the high priests of physics.
No one has ever calculated a single proton claimed to be “made of” quarks. If they understand things so well, why haven’t they performed this calculation? Answer, because they don’t know the forces involved and don’t know the equations involved let alone how to solve those very complicated equations which Weinberg sloughs over. He also carefully avoids the question of what the speculated quarks are “made of” themselves if indeed they do exist although none have ever been observed, and no particle with fractional electric charge has ever been observed either.
Weinberg also seeks to snow the lay reader with worthless garbage about field theory without mentioning all the problems with field theory, like mathematical convergence and inconsistencies. The gauge theories he speaks of are not unique in possible explanations of nature. These theories are not the only way one can describe nature. But it would likely upset the vanity of the high priests of physics to suggest otherwise. Perhaps this article would have more appropriately been published by Vanity Fair.
When Weinberg claims certain particles have been “discovered”, he fails to make clear that often these “discoveries” involve circular reasoning where many parameters or subjects to be “proved” are assumed as part of the “proof”. The devil is always in the details which are carefully omitted by Weinberg. He also fails to mention the dismal disregard for the scientific method which requires observations to be confirmed by many other scientists at different laboratories and times and places in the universe, not a single accelerator however fancy, expensive and filled with thousands of employees who are little more than computer jockeys doing the bidding of high priests located elsewhere.
The models by Weinberg and his cronies leave much to be desired both logically and in the deep understanding of so called “elementary” “particles”. For example, consider an example from the so called lifetime of electron positron decay or about 140 nano seconds which the high priests of physics claim to be a further proof of QED. However, if you look at the details of this calculation, usually buried under many hollow words and complicated jargon totally foreign not only to many physicists but especially to lay readers, you find that the calculation is totally unenlightening as to any basic understanding of why the combination of an electron and positron, sort of like an hydrogen atom consisting of a proton and electron, decays in this short time into nothing but pure radiation or photons.
What fundamental processes went on inside the masses of the electron and positron which led to the total destruction of both into pure radiation flying off at the speed of light forever? All the existing theories of Weinberg and his cronies say nothing about any of these fundamental questions. What is an electron made of? What is a proton made of? Is there a connection between Planck’s constant h and gravity?
A much more significant article which could and should have been posted here is this one:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/us/fda-surveillance-of-scientists-spread-to-outside-critics.html?_r=1&src=me&ref=general
Vast F.D.A. Effort Tracked E-Mails of Its Scientists
By ERIC LICHTBLAU and SCOTT SHANE
Published: July 14, 2012 583 Comments
This article confirms what a corrupt Nazi Gestapo cesspool the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has become and how our worthless legislators have done nothing to stop or abolish this outrageous expletive deleted sewer. Shame, shame, shame on the editors for their dismal failure.
By the way, if Weinberg and his cronies are so smart, why don’t they put up their own money for this research, rather than begging the unwitting and easily fooled public to put up their money at the virtual point of a gun though forced taxation? If they were forced to do this, perhaps someone of them would think or dream up a less expensive way to provide more enlightenment to everyone.
Winfield J. Abbe, Ph.D., Physics
Posted by: W.J.Abbe | Jul 15, 2012 9:41:12 PM
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