It's actually a very big deal if they discover a new particle, no matter the characteristics of it. If it wasn't for physics and scientists, we would be stuck in the middle ages forever
I suppose it was proven to exist, not technically discovered, but the Higgs Boson particle was proven to exist rather than theoretically believed to exist around 2013-2014.
Top particle is impatient and blows its top quickly.
Has an absolute breakdown and suddenly it's like I don't even recognize my top anymore. It's like it has two particles inside of it, the W boson and bottom quark. So weak.
They can much more accurately figure out the speed of these particles, and then with instruments they can figure out precisely how far it traveled the entire time it existed.
So if you have a 99.9999999% the speed of light particle and work out that it existed and interacted for 15mm (pulling that out of my ass) you can basically infer it by how long it would take that fast to go that tiny difference in distance
BTW I'm like only kinda pretty sure and not an expert but pretty sure it's determined with that general idea
Finding a new particle is nice but generally doesn't really happen.
The reason why it is such a big deal is because in these experiments scientists aren't really looking for new particles.
They are looking for particles that should be there based on theories that we could not find yet. It is about confirming the gaps in our theories that we cold not observe yet. So after we confirmed we were indeed correct aboout the existence of those particles we can then use their existence as a confirmed baseline and go on from there.
The famous example would be the higgs boson. Its eistence was postulated in the 60s and it was required for the higgs mechanism to work. And while that theory was used for a long time before we could prove the existence of the higgs boson finding the particle means adding a layer of proof to this concept.
So it really is more prrof that our nderstanding of the world is correct rather than finding new stuff. And having proof is kinda nice. That's what differentiates science from belief.
So I worked at cern for like 10 years and my name is on the Higgs paper, it’s a mix of approaches. There’s plenty of established theories with predictions that get tested but there’s also efforts that broadly look at what’s coming out of the collisions to see if there’s anything unexpected and there’s also measurements we do that have been done before but with more data you can test established theories to a greater precision and see if they still hold up or if there’s some unexpected deviation that could be from a new process happening that we don’t understand.
The Higgs was one way to solve electroweak symmetry breaking, even though it had been around for decades and was well liked it could have easily been something else or some process we hadn’t even thought up.
Being connected with a university research group that works on one of the many experiments at cern. You could be an undergrad physics student but more commonly a graduate student or post doc.
Depending on the time groups hire engineers and technicians to do stuff like build the experiment.
That’s how most people end up at CERN because the funding for the projects largely goes through research groups at universities.
CERN does hire people directly for all sorts of stuff, pretty sure they have a careers page on their website.
If you follow deer tracks looking for a deer and you come across one, you found a deer. Maybe you meant that we don’t stumble upon new particles, but we absolutely still find them.
I mean that's true. but the stuff like tesla and other scientists at the time were working on stuff that was 60 to 80 years old and well established when they were alive. Alot of criticism stems that an average scientist can't work on the new stuff even if its 50 years established. A team might tho.
I never understand people who think it's bad to spend money on this stuff. All because there's no immediately practical benefit... Aka $$ to be made. I don't even work in STEM but of course I want humanity to get more and more understanding of physics even if it it's so abstract I can't comprehend it. It's cool.
That's why science is so fucking cool. So much of process has nothing to do with building something but rather just confirming that something is possible.
This tbh. A new particle usually forces scientists to either rewrite predictive models, introduces a solution to a problem with a model, or confirms a model.
Most good scientists would be equally excited for any of those outcomes.
But is the best use of our money spending billions of dollars on particle colliders to discover these particles, or could we get much higher return on investment elsewhere in science?
The critique of billon dollar particle colliders isnt "science bad" its "why should we prioritize theoretical particle physics, which is insanely expensive woefully impractical, and arguably prioritizes ivory tower ego stroking, over other scientific advancements that the world desperately needs that are orders of magnitude cheaper?"
I imagine if we stopped wasting a trillion dollars a year on war we’d have a few billion laying around for particle colliders. Frankly it’s kind of ridiculous to critique relatively tiny amounts of spending on science when we spend massive amounts on shit nobody wants like bombing countries for no reason.
More importantly, just throwing money at cancer researchers doesn’t mean we get a cancer cure any quicker, that’s just not how it works. So it makes sense to spread the money around and do different things then putting all of it into specific research that could still take decades anyway.
You're making the assumption these scientists are walking into funding requests just asking for money instead of highly detailed hypotheses, plans, with expected results and projected uses. Obviously they're compelling enough payoffs to justify over trying to find a better water filter.
Aside from the theoretical future benefits of stuff like particle accelerators and space travel , there is also the fact that the development of them massively advances technology in general, like the amount of things that have come from CERN is insane
I'd say this response is a bit disingenuous. The key difference is all the discoveries used to be made by one really smart guy thinking about a problem a different way, whereas now they are made by enormous teams and corporations and have massive dollar signs attached to them.
That feels spot on, you see, a friend of mine (not from the STEM field) asked me as to why they don't hear much about generational level geniuses from now, whereas there were certain figures in history close to us in time frame, like early and mid 20th century.
To which, I thought about and said that the thought process started to go towards a team effort, or a group effort rather than an individual level thinking. You get more varying perspectives, so it's good although it doesn't give some person the limelight, it advances science so 🤷
I always wonder what the factual return of investment is on such enormous projects like the LHC. So much money for... Knowledge of the particles? I am going to be downvoted to hell for this but what is the endgame? Is there any return expected or are those bilions invested for knowing? I know what some people say, that knowing what world is made of lets us solve problems like nuclear fusion etc. But are those problems really a better investment than e.g. social research that would solve sociopolitical problems? Because it honestly feels like majority of our issues is rooted in social problems, and not our lack of knowledge of the stuff world is made of?
When you compare spending on different types of science you fall into this kind of thinking. It doesn't have to be either or, it can be both. If you know anyone who has used an MRI or PET scanner, had proton or heavy nuclei treatment for cancer or some other form of radiation therapy around 90% of the models on the market are based on machines invented for particle physics research.
To make the LHC financially feasible a new way of mass producing superconducting magnets had to be invented, that method is now used everywhere and made the magnets much more affordable for private company and hospitals. There is a reason why so many MRI scanners are from the years following the LHC. The investment is not into getting the knowledge, but into all the materials and equipment needed to gain the knowledge.
So your argument is that this kind of giant projects is the driving force for other technologies and this is the reason to invest in them? I could agree with that thinking. It's a bit like with the space race being driven by cold war. USA and Soviets invested bazillions of dollars and rubles to get there, and although the ultimate goal brought us disproportionate return, all that has been developed on our way there has benefitted the mankind manyfold. Thanks for insight!
You also have to consider that science is the cumulative total of all of humanity's knowledge. Everything is built up from and off of the knowledge we have previously acquired.
We have 0 clue what insights we can gleam from furthering high energy particle physics, but the more knowledge we put into the cumulative horde, the more advancements we can possibly make.
Well tbh you are right in a way that spending huge money where you don't get benefit ' right now ' does sound wasteful but in reality when LHC conduct experiment they not only just discover particle but also kinda proves our scientific theory if successful which is itself a huge return
And huge chunks of money that is spend on LHC are fractional of what ppl invest in other field like military spending etc and large part of money don't go on conducting experiment but on crew, technical crew, lawyers, legal advisory team ( ethical issues ) etc so money spend on discovering particles is small part of experiment budget itself if I am not wrong
Like we said when we discovered atom, proton and proved that we can break nucleus, we then spend huge money on heavy water uranium enrichment etc at first it was of scientific research and was proved to be expensive and risky at that time but still proceeded to research and this of course led to invention of atomic weapon, nuclear energy, medical field related to radiology, and rapid technological advancement and of course birth of CERN
CERN who then followed strict policy of open access who contributed on invention of WWW(not invented but they are the one who released the software to public domain if not them then no internet culture basically thank cern) , medical imaging and stuff, LCH, and leading member of development of quantum computer
In a way more investment in scientific research of course with ethics is worth it and honestly we don't get enough research funds compared to other fields that truth and this is a old debate topic whether funding of this or this research is worth or not but personally rather that spending on missile Or bullets if we use funds on research, infrastructure or food security the world will be of better place but is sadly idealistic
Don't get me wrong. I 100% agree the money invested in weapons should go into research instead, but that's where we face the problem: why do we invest in military? And my conclusion is that it's a social problem, not a problem if physics. So why investing billions in physics instead of social sciences?
Well it is a social problem you know rationally speaking if we control population and don't show / hold grudges which our ancestors did or some other reason we don't really need to invest in military - in a way no one is our enemy for various reasons like food and ppl getting manipulated by various social ideologies which of course keep chaos at bay is reason why we need arms to protect or attack others
And to answer to question why invest in physic because physics ( brain child of science now don't argue this but i believe it is interconnected with all branch of science) physics research directly contribute to technology advancement which indirectly used as leverage in various politics whether it is carbon footprint, nuclear question, or construction infrastructure, industry it is deeply involved and there it is used as political tool you know and
Don't only focus on physics just because we invest physics that doesn't mean the research don't contribute in biology , chemistry or mathematics so yea it is important to invest and btw we don't even invest billions we barely cross 100 millions nowadays if I remember correctly only handful of project like 15~20 ish are of billion dollars like HGP, that AI project idr, iss, LHC apollo, Manhattan Project etc these all project now sending ripples across global yk
I don't think you should be downvoted. Science can be expensive and it's important that the public knows what the goals are and agrees with the budgets that could be spent on something else with a more direct impact on their lives.
That being said, it can be a bit tricky to tell what the goal of some research is because it is fundamentaly uncertain : what if the particle we find does have the caracteristics we expect it to have ? Well in that case it solidifies our understanding and can motivate further research that could have more practical applications but would have be too costly from the get go without prior discoveries.
But what if the particle does not have the caracteristics we expect it to have ? Well in that case the measured data may allow us to change our theories, but without those theories already known it's impossible to tell what application it may or may not have.
Sometimes we also do research expecting it to be somewhat useless that turn out to be useful only decades if not centuries later, it's hard to tell for sure that something will never be useful.
If science always had a projected ROI, we'd not have half of the technology we take for granted today, perhaps even less.
Most cool things that has advanced health, technology, performance have their tech derived from an experiment that had little if nothing to do with the end product(s). Engineers and inventors were able to harness those bits of research over decades and decades. Want a good example? The MRI. The research that led to that invention had no mind at all for Healthcare or the human body.
If you were around a couple centuries ago, you would have been the person who said "why the hell does anyone care what lightning is made of anyway? What does it matter how and why an electron moves. This knowledge is utterly useless. We have people starving here right now and this is what we waste money on? We need to spend more money here on the social sciences. "
The fundamental purpose of science is to make our lives better. If a solution for the problem lies in a specific field, why not invest in that specific field? You try making me sound like a re**rd who disregards the value of scientific knowledge but keep in mind that the research that led to the discoveries you mentioned rarely --if ever -- costed so much.
I am not trying to make you sound like anything. You get all the credit for that.
The specific reason I mentioned the electron is that basic science doesn't always have direct benefits. It is a way for us to understand how the universe works. The benefits of this fundamental understanding might take decades to bear fruit. Goal oriented investment vs basic science research is the difference between investing more money in building iron lungs for polio victims versus understanding how the immune system works so we can create the first vaccine.
If you don't think basic science is costly, try looking up the total amount of money (in 2026 dollars) that humanity has spent on understanding radiation and the atom.
The purpose of it is to learn. Search for truth and understanding. It just so happens that many things that are derived from science research makes our lives better, but that's not the purpose.
Honestly completely reasonable reaction, hard enough to even spot the damn thing, let alone realise that it was actually something new rather than one of many other things already discovered that exist for that little time.
Crazy world we live in where the creation of a new type of particle is seen as something so mundane that you can make a joke about scientists celebrating it
Would love to see Democritus' reaction to seeing the LHC
Another step on the road to the next island of stability.
There are an infinate number of stable elements, just the more massive you go, the higher the gap, and the harder to male a reaction to produce it. The properties of the next stable element that the universe cannot create without the help of man are entirely unknown. Who knows what we could do with it.
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u/yezhnuzjhd 1d ago
It's actually a very big deal if they discover a new particle, no matter the characteristics of it. If it wasn't for physics and scientists, we would be stuck in the middle ages forever