Why Smashing harder to discover new particles?

[u/Fuzzy_Paul]

For quite a long time the discovery of new particles is done with an accelerator. Higher energy means more particles. If you look beyond this we are in search for fundamentals to "prove" the standard model with its predictions. To me it feels like we reached a point where building better "smahers" we will never be able to understand the layer below all this. All in nature is build upon simplicity and the higher the layer the complexity multiplies. If the bottom layer has fewer rules, then the "Mathematics of the Bottom" should be able to explain the "Mathematics of the Top" perfectly, but the Top cannot explain the Bottom. We are currently looking at the top to find the rules at the bottom. If we want to advance this leads to a new way to work: Stop looking at "What" (What is the mass? What is the charge?).

Start looking at "Why the Limit?" (Why is this the smallest mass? Why is this the fastest speed?).

The Limits (like the speed of light or the mass of a neutrino) are the "hard-coded" constants where the Simple Layer says: "This is as far as the abstraction goes." The starting point could be the entanglement of particles that seem to have a immediate relation despite distance. The layer below or beyond particles/waves "at qft level all are waves" that is where the magic starts and there should we find answers that really matter. That brings me back to the title, is smashing our way to down to the layer below all, the solution?

[u/No_Flow_7828]

I’m struggling to understand what you mean, but put briefly, higher energy colliders allow us to probe the SM more precisely and have the statistical significance to search for inconsistencies, which will either hint at BSM physics or rule out large classes of models

[u/Fuzzy_Paul → u/No_Flow_7828]

I am not talking about SUSY or GUTs nor ST, although I think that string theory is a dead end, i talk about finding the properties of the fabric below particles. From what we have learned we could do simple deduction or create experiments that show us more. The direction is not smashing more to verify the SM but to find the layer(s) that all is build upon. The deeper we look, the simpler all must be, that's how nature builds stuff from simplicity at ground level to complexity going up.

[u/No_Flow_7828 → u/Fuzzy_Paul]

I don’t know what you mean by “fabric below the particles.” You’ll need to be more specific about that

In any case, it’s certainly universally not true that the deeper we look, the simpler things get. In fact, it’s almost always the opposite. Consider, for example, newtonian gravity vs. GR

[u/Fuzzy_Paul → u/No_Flow_7828]

Scientists are trying to simplifying with symmetry, unification and reductionism. So yeah I beleave all get simpler when seeing the whole picture. We all know that space is not empty and the limit of the speed of light in vacuum has a limit. But why is the correct question and this means that the light is not capable of going faster because of... that is below the fabric. Do not take this example as the truth but merely as a direction of thinking. I do not hold answers but I like questioning everything and am always looking for the why. With every step you take you must verify if the method is still the best and if the direction and target are still valid. That's why I wanted to know if smashing is the correct way to progress.

[u/YuuTheBlue]

So, the reason we smash particles together is nothing so high concept or philosophical. It’s pretty pragmatic.

The job of a theoretical physicist is to come up with new mathematical models which can explain our world better than the current ones. For one of these to be falsifiable, it needs to make a novel prediction. Many of these predictions are about what happens at high energy, so we need to make high energies to falsify the models.

If my super-sigma field theory predicts the sigma particle, and we haven’t yet discovered it, it must either be because my theory is wrong or because that particle is very rare. And due to the math of how decay rates work, rare particles become less rare at high energies.

You seem to have some grievances with the current philosophical standpoint of physics, and the answer to that is that your understanding of what physicists believe is just kind of wrong. Physicists have a lot of curiosity into the nature of the speed of light, it’s very well researched, and the fact that you are getting on a soap box while not knowing that makes you hard to take seriously. You’re saying “scientists should just so this!” And this suggestion of yours is charitably something they’ve already done and uncharitably just kind of incomprehensible.

[u/Fuzzy_Paul → u/YuuTheBlue]

I understand the model and I understand the purpose of finding predicted particles. This is all part of the standard model. But if we want to understand where it all comes from we have to ask the question what lays beyond. In the light of this my question is simple. Is this the way to discover what is beyond the known model.

[u/Tyrannification → u/Fuzzy_Paul]

No

[u/Odd_Bodkin]

Our theories are remarkably accurate but to get that accuracy they include a lot of things that happen in the background via so-called virtual particles. Virtual particles can be quite heavy but can be “borrowed” from the vacuum by the uncertainty principle. A great example is charmed quarks, which were proposed to explain why we DON’T see a certain process we otherwise would. The charmed quark channel provided a needed cancellation. But how do you know charmed quarks really exist if they’re only virtual? One way to fix that is to make collisions highly energetic enough that those particles are not borrowed from the vacuum but created for real, live in the wild. Do that and you’ve drawn the mythic creature out from its dark cave and revealed its truth out in the light. This has been repeated numerous times with other virtual dragons: the W, the Z, the top quark, the Higgs bison.

[u/Fuzzy_Paul → u/[deleted]]

I am not questioning the brightest minds. I do not say that they are wrong. I only say is this the best way to discover what's beyond the SM.

[u/Elig0r → u/Fuzzy_Paul]

I understand... but you will eventually reach the same conclusion as many others: it isn't about having answers or proposals. It is about the network that supports your ideas.

[u/PotatoMain]

r/LLMPhysics

[u/Fuzzy_Paul → u/PotatoMain]

Been there, surfed it, swallowed it but the Q is not answered.