Thread Rating:
  • 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5

Has the Large Hadron Collider accidentally thrown away evidence for New Physics?

#1
C C Offline
https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswitha...8272879270

EXCERPT: . . . Earlier this month, the LHC celebrated 10 years of operation, with the discovery of the Higgs boson marking its crowning achievement. Yet despite these successes, no new particles, interactions, decays, or fundamental physics has been found. [...] here is no indication of physics beyond the Standard Model in the results. [...] Worst of all is this: most of CERN's data from the LHC has been lost forever.

This is one of the least well-understood pieces of the high-energy physics puzzle, at least among the general public. The LHC hasn't just lost most of its data: it's lost a whopping 99.9999% of it. That's right; out of every one million collisions that occurs at the LHC, only one of them has all of its data written down and recorded.

It's something that happened out of necessity, due to the limitations imposed by the laws of nature themselves, as well as what technology can presently do. But in making that decision, there's a tremendous fear made all the more palpable by the fact that, other than the much-anticipated Higgs, nothing new has been discovered. The fear is this: that there is new physics waiting to be discovered, but we've missed it by throwing this data away.

We didn't have a choice in the matter, really. Something had to be thrown away. The way the LHC works is by accelerating protons as close to the speed of light as possible in opposite directions and smashing them together. This is how particle accelerators have worked best for generations. [...] The problem that then arises, however, is in taking all of that data and recording it. The detectors themselves are big [...] In order to record data, there are two steps that must occur:

The data has to be moved into the detector's memory, which is limited by the speed of your electronics. Even at the speed of light, we can only "remember" about 1-in-1,000 collisions.
The data in memory has to be written to disk (or some other permanent device), and that's a much slower process than storing data in memory. Only about 1-in-1,000 collisions that the memory stores can be written to disk.

That's why, with the necessity of taking both of these steps, only 0.0001% of the total data can be saved for analysis. [...] The total amount of data that's been collected by the LHC far outstrips the total amount of data sent-and-received over the internet over the last 10 years. But only 0.0001% of that data has been written down and saved; the rest is gone for good.

It's eminently possible that the LHC created new particles, saw evidence of new interactions, and observed and recorded all the signs of new physics. And it's also possible, due to our ignorance of what we were looking for, we've thrown it all away, and will continue to do so. The nightmare scenario — of no new physics beyond the Standard Model — appears to be coming true. But the real nightmare is the very real possibility that the new physics is there, we've built the perfect machine to find it, we've found it, and we'll never realize it because of the decisions and assumptions we've made....

MORE: https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswitha...8272879270
Reply
#2
Syne Offline
Sounds like an excuse to keep the hopes for scientism alive. "There is new physics that does answer some deep questions and disprove religion, but we lost it. I mean, it just can't end with the Standard Model." Rolleyes
Reply


Possibly Related Threads…
Thread Author Replies Views Last Post
  Research Testing quantum nature of large objects + Overlooked uncertainty in real world C C 1 71 Jan 16, 2024 06:51 PM
Last Post: Magical Realist
  A theory of everything that explains away the paradoxes of quantum mechanics C C 6 214 Feb 17, 2022 06:29 AM
Last Post: Kornee
  The Standard Model is not enough or "Should CERN build a larger collider or not?" C C 1 191 Oct 24, 2020 12:50 AM
Last Post: C C
  GR rebukes again + Quest for what bars Q superpositions from large scale objects C C 2 180 Oct 16, 2020 10:05 PM
Last Post: confused2
  What new evidence could revolutionize physics? + Idea of entropy has led us astray C C 0 186 Jul 3, 2020 07:30 PM
Last Post: C C
  Has reductionism run its course? + 'Quantum foam' may explain away huge cosmic energy C C 1 278 Oct 7, 2019 09:15 PM
Last Post: Magical Realist
  Thorny Question Of Whether To Build Another Particle Collider C C 0 342 Feb 5, 2019 08:03 PM
Last Post: C C
  Why some scientists say physics has gone off the rails C C 5 1,095 Jun 6, 2018 07:36 PM
Last Post: C C
  Why Physics Is Not a Discipline: Physics is not just what occurs in Dept of Physics C C 0 869 Apr 23, 2016 05:46 AM
Last Post: C C



Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)