This will be hosted at either Brookhaven National Lab (NY) or Jefferson Lab (Virginia). Unfortunately, National Labs need to find new large construction projects to justify their continued existence, and there aren't enough big science projects to go around. The European model of sharing a single facility (CERN) is much more sensible in that it decouples scientific prioritization and the issue of local jobs.
It's a collider of electron on proton/ion beams.
There are two candidate sites: Jefferson Lab (Newport News, Virginia), which already has a electron beam (CEBAF). And Brookhaven National Lab (Brookhaven, Long Island, New York), which already has an ion beam.
This suggestion is for an electron beam, and they radiate sybchrotron radiation like crazy when you make them turn at high energies. So building it in a circular tunnel is a good idea if you want to make a x-ray source or a lot of radioactive rock.
I wish that would happen, the SSC design is even more powerful than LHC. But not sure Texas is culturally the optimal place for such high science these days. Part of the opposition to SSC back in the day was religious. CA or NV might be better.
PS - part of the opposition to the LHC also was religious. Remember people objecting to humanity deliberately searching for the “God Particle”, aka Higgs Boson, which the LHC was specifically designed to find? Probably not the best word choice on the part of the scientific community, unless they were deliberately trying to troll the 20-30% of the population that treats religion literally. There were similar undercurrents reaching all the way up to Congress during the SSC’s life.
I thought particle physics were coming to an end? After CERN found the Higgs boson then nothing. The ROI of a more powerful accelerator is abysmal. It is impossible to know how large a new collider needs to be and if anything interesting will be found. Use the money on a moon-base instead and then mars.
At the quantum level gravity is not explained properly yet. My favorite rant is from Heisenberg in his autobiography.
But even on the astronomic level GR leaves the dark matter hole, which is a non-satisfactory explanation to many.
Elegant yes, but certainly not proper.
How do you propose to measure the ROI of the completely unknown? This is not just related to your comment here, but it's a very general and important part of science. In the early part of the 20th century it was felt that physics was basically 'solved' and the only changes would come in refining values to another decimal point. Of course that was before the discovery of quantum mechanics or the explosion in particle physics. Have we started reach a valley at which point there's nothing but ever more diminishing returns ahead in the future? Or are we just about over the precipice onto a new explosion of revolutionary knowledge? I don't see how you can propose to meaningfully answer this one way or the other.
I'd also prioritize manned exploration above particle physics, but I think they should continue and grow in tandem as I see no way of knowing exactly what the future of these endeavors holds, other than that there is a reasonable argument to be made that either could produce discoveries of tremendous value.
Using probability is a good start I think. As I understand it, CERN should be able to find new particles below about 2–3 TeV in energy. It hasn't and physicists say it’s a reasonable assumption that there might not be anything new to find until energy scales of 100,000,000 TeV or more. You'll need to build and accelerator around the Sun to reach those energy levels. With that in mind, does it make sense to build something slightly larger than LHC? At billions of dollars?
> physicists say it’s a reasonable assumption that there might not be anything new to find until energy scales of 100,000,000 TeV or more
This is an extremely pessimistic view. Yes, we're almost certainly going to find something there, but that doesn't mean there's nothing before then. I'd bet a reasonably large sum of money that there's something before around 10TeV.
Also, this collider isn't looking for new particles so much as trying to improve our understanding of ones we know about already.
If all the experimentation at the LHC brought up nothing that physicists expect, that would imply that our model of physics is wrong. Now the model can be updated with new theories and tested with new experiments
I wouldn't imagine that particle physics would be coming to an end until we had an experimentally proven model that explained all phenomena we can observe
While Hossenfelder is well within her wheelhouse criticising the search as wrongheaded, members of the public reading and forming an opinion on the proper course of physical research is less than useless.
It's exactly the same thinking that leads people to conclude that global warming isn't a problem, because they found a climate scientist who also disagrees.
Unless we all, en masse, want to go get physics degrees to properly critique the arguments, the only responsible thing for a member of the public to do is trust majority opinion. It can be wrong, certainly, but it's vastly less likely to be than any of the dozens or hundreds of minority opinions which oppose it.
"It's exactly the same thinking that leads people to conclude that global warming isn't a problem, because they found a climate scientist who also disagrees."
No it isn't.
You've read the book?
The point is, particle scientiests have shown no fundamental progress in the last decades, and claimed several times there will be progress for sure with the next billion EUR. But this has not materialized.
Hossenfelder argues that the "for sure" part comes from the perception of beauty by the scientists, and they have no other basis for being convinced there is possible progress than that the current theories are not beautiful (e.g. no quantum gravity, no unified theory, no super symmetry).
Climate scientists have shown massive progress over the last decades.
"[...] because they found a climate scientist who also disagrees."
It's not that "one" scientist says there is no progress, all scientists agree there is no progress in particle science (except showing a particle exists that everyone was sure existed already and waves that everyone also was sure exist, no new insights). So listen to the scientists about their progress, when billions of EURs and broken promises have not brought any progress and decide if they should get more, or the billions are better spend on scientists that make progress (climate, health, AI, ...).
Given that science has a pretty good (but not perfect) track record of improving the human condition, yes, trust them or spend the effort to become a recognized expert.
I'll mix nuclear physics and particle physics, which are close anyway: The www, digital x-ray, PET/CT, MRI, proton/ion beam cancer therapy. Just from the top of my head, certainly not complete.
The article should also be considered required reading, as these scientists are trying to understand the physical composition of a proton. Pretty safe bet that it exists, though it would be rather exciting if they discover it didn't.
Is there any important theory yet to be proved ? Is fusion reactor/any such advance tech required this ? i.e. do we have a vague idea of end goal here ? Is current theory predicts successful fusion reactor ? Can this help uncover any ?
Personal politics is a larger dynamic than scientists like to admit. When you are planning something big, something international, you have to think about access. In 2030, will this facility be accessible to the international community? Will Chinese involvement become a security issue? Will data be shared openly? Those decisions are made by the executive branch, subject to the whims of whoever is in charge at the time. Planners think about this stuff.
Shouldn't we consider other possible ways of spending the moneys required, such as an AI endeavor perhaps?
Wouldn't most alternatives be significantly cheaper and more likely to provide new scientific information?
Finally, after seeing the politics of the Superconducting Super Collider, I don't envision any hope of a significantly larger accelerator within the next 100 years unless some incredible theoretical breakthrough makes it irresistable.
The top 20 universities in the US are sitting on over a quarter of a trillion dollars in endowment money (including MIT at $15b), which continues to perpetually increase. I'd like to see them step up and almost entirely fund the creation of the EIC (the US Government could still kick in billions of dollars with little hassle). Far better to be directing their wealthy donors toward important projects like this, than another building on campus.
This is an argument against public investment in science and a reliance on private donor-based science. Is that really the direction we want for our country and the entities in which we want to entrust the future R&D decisions of our country?
But OP said that the government could also pony up billions of dollars for the project. The main point seemed to be that universities are wasting their endowment with fancy buildings instead of doing science.
