CERN, the Centre Europeen de Recherche Nucleaire, one of Europe’s greatest successes, proposes to make a new collider, the Future Circular Collider, with a circumference of up to 100 kilometers. The present largest accelerator at CERN, the Large Hadron Collider, or LHC, is 27 kilometers around (at a depth of up to 175 meters, to shield from radiation). The new machine would use the existing particle injectors (worth billions of dollars). It would be mostly south of the present one, mostly under France.
One aim? Searching for Dark Matter. Dark Matter seems to constitute about 25% of the mass-energy in the universe. Most of the rest is “Dark Energy”. The physics some claimed to understand, the TOE, the grotesquely named Theory Of Everything, including the much ballyhooed “Higgs” are only about the remaining 4%. Never, ever, has physics being in such a crisis: it has no idea what 96% of the universe even looks like!
The loud mouth celebrity physicists, explain everything with their nothing theories. “Big Bang” theorists create universes out of nothing. Yet, they had not seen Dark Matter coming, nor, a fortiori guess it could exist. Dark Matter is, so far, a purely astronomical discovery. “Theories Of everything” bang everything big time, but only within the 4%.
At least I have a theory for Dark Matter. But it is in a completely different explanatory universe: it goes back to the Foundations of Quantum Physics, and it asks: What if? What if Quantum Theory was incomplete? What would be the simplest way in which it would be completed?
This is how Dirac invented Quantum Field Theory and predicted both spin and antimatter. Dirac started from the general Quantum Principle of De Broglie: all and any particle is associated to a wave. De Broglie has also came up with the idea that said wave ought to be compatible, somehow, with Special Relativity.
Special Relativity is the Poincare’-Lorentz theory of a mechanic compatible with electromagnetism (which was splendidly abstracted by Albert Einstein a bit later). Dirac guessed an equation for the electron that was relativistic. There was already such an equation (“Klein-Gordon”), but it was a second order Partial Differential Equation (“PDE”), and, for reasons I forgot, it was not satisfying. Dirac got the bizarre idea of taking the square root of the equation, so to speak.
A reason is that the most general wave equation is actually simply a First Order PDE. So Dirac wrote his guess. There was just a problem: it lived in a four dimensional space one had never seen before. That was spin space. So guessing the equation led to guessing the space. a space were spin was natural.
Then Dirac invented an even weirder space, full of some stuff, with holes therein, of opposite charge. At some point it was guessed one could view these holes as anti-electrons, and it was much simpler that way, philosophically speaking.
It was completely unexpected triumph: spin and antimatter were soon discovered, as predicted by Dirac’s equation. Philosophically speaking, the big idea extended further (Huyghens-)De Broglie’s big idea, that waves with frequencies determined by Energy-Momentum were what nature was all about.
It was also the inception of Quantum Field Theory. The next big idea there, at least big idea that I understand, was renormalization. That was also a far-fetched idea, a non-linear feedback of the Field (whatever the Field was) on particle creation, modifying the Field.
(To this day what this all these computations really mean is hotly debated: the philosophy in power was called “shut-up and calculate”. even if it’s not clear what it is one calculates!)
There have been many proposals to “explain” Dark Matter. One of the most spectacular is “Supersymmetry” (“SUSY”). That postulates a symmetry between bosons and fermions. So all the bosons and fermions we know would have a “supersymmetric” partner. As there are lots of bosons, SUSY would create a lot of mass, a lot of Dark Matter.
LHC found no evidence of SUSY. However, SUSY solves neatly other difficulties in QFT (Quantum Field Theory), so even if the giant successor to LHC found no SUSY, SUSY believers would still believe (and they said as much already).
That is, except if someone comes up with a completely unexpected, completely shattering explanation. And the proof thereof, like Dark Energy and Dark Matter, could come from astronomy. So build those giant telescopes!
Some will object about the colossal spending (at least 20 billion Euros for the FCC). But it’s only new science and the new tech it will produce and necessitate, that will avoid the incoming catastrophe and feed the mouths.
The LHC is the largest, most powerful superconducting machine in the world. That led to progress in basic superconducting tech (including safety mechanisms, as the energies involved are huge)
Those who ask to curb spending in science and the futuristic tech enabling it are not just idiots, they are accomplices of the world’s greatest criminals, those who defend the party of obscurantism (like BHL).
Governments and the clueless who vote for them have entrusted, in recent decades, the so called “bankers”, who are, in volume of stolen goods the greatest criminals ever. And this will go on as long as the ring leader banksters don’t do very hard time, after seeing their assets and properties confiscated as is done for drug dealers (drug dealers are a subset of the banksters community, as banks launder drug cash).
In the very latest scandal, revealed today, most of the world’s largest banks manipulated foreign currency exchanges. If you had told that to the New York Times a year ago, it would have censored the comment (and he did). Krugman, that big leftist, at least from the Wall Street’s point of view, was all for “Quantitative Easing”. What’s that? Sending banksters ever more money, they will save civilization. No wonder Krugman is fat: he probably eats too much caviar.
Yet, don’t be afraid for the banksters, and their caviar stores: this latest massive, multitrillion dollar heist, is not going to send them to jail. Their boy is in the White House, Oblabla his name, feels all self-important, especially when he golfs with, or serves, banksters. The thrill of it.
What can people do? Well, ask for more money, for science and education, pointing out that, whereas Obama and his Republican Congress give their co-conspirator Elon Musk $7,500 each time Musk sells a coal-electric car, the Tesla Model S, they suggested to cut Thermonuclear Fusion research. months after inertial confinement fusion has achieved break-even.
How did the Allies win in World War Two? Because they had more advanced science and technology (radar, more advanced computers and computer scientists/code breakers, more advanced practical plane tech, such as self-sealing tanks, and electronics for proximity fuse inside artillery shells, resisting to 20,000 gs).
Now we can see living corpses of old time fascism: Juan Carlos of Spain, head of a corrupt family put in place by the guy, Franco, that Hitler, Mussolini and USA plutocrats had put in place.
is another living skeleton, inaugurating the most expensive Olympic games, ever, exactly where the last great battle of the Caucasus happened, 150 years ago.
For those who don’t know, Putin led a war that killed 150,000, officially, in Chechnya (said war was started with 5 mysterious hugely lethal bombings of apartment buildings, never elucidated, in the late 1990s. probably the work of Mr. Putin’s KGB). Putin had the Olympic torch carried by famous warriors of the war against Georgia, a few years ago. The region of Georgia annexed by Putin starts 15 kilometers from Sochi. War games or Olympic games? The answer is obvious.
To displace Pluto, we have to displace Pluto’s activities. Spending in physics means indulging in the Enlightenment. If we do not do this, economic activity will happen nevertheless. Somewhere else, less productive. Pluto will find servants, and it’s his activities, not the activities conducive to the Enlightenment, that will dominate.
The Enlightenment is a curious thing. When strong, it dominates. Even those who reject it.
The present president of Algeria, Bouteflika, long a top general, is original FNL stock. The FNL conducted an enraged, hyper cruel war against France, to “free” Algeria (15% of the population succeeded to flee when it was “freed”). OK, I am not denying that (part of) the French government had started (some of) it. It’s besides the subject.
In recent years, Bouteflika has been sick. What did he do? Get the world’s best, most enlightened medical care he could find. He spent months at the Val De Grace, a military hospital, next to Paris. Yes, French military, exactly the fiend the FNL fought like crazy for 10 years or so, now a friend.
So the Enlightenment can win. But it has to be fed. Fund CERN.
Patrice Ayme
