Is it particle physics or a fairytale? PART 2 | Sabine Hossenfelder, Gavin Salam, Bjørn Ekeberg

Sabine Hossenfelder, Gavin Salam, and Bjørn Ekeberg conclude their discussion on particle physics and whether or not scientists should continue pursuing it.

Is there a future for particle exploration?

At the heart of physics is the search for ultimate particles. The Standard Model sets out the current framework. But many argue that all is not well in the particle physics zoo. A central prediction was the existence of supersymmetry particles, but none have been found. At the same time, huge experiments have failed to find the particles that account for dark matter and dark energy, which make up 95% of the universe. Moreover, it is not even clear what a particle is, since some have no dimension and others no mass. Yet physics is rife with proposals for new 'particles'.

While there are positive spin-offs from the technology created to carry out particle experiments, has the theory itself run out of road? Would we be better describing reality as the product of quantum fields, information, or mathematics, rather than particles? Or does the Standard Model not actually describe the ultimate nature of reality at all, and do its particles just represent a useful fiction?

#physics #particles #quantumphysics

Sabine Hossenfelder is a theoretical physicist, author, musician, and science communicator who researches quantum gravity. Gavin Salam is an Oxford-based theoretical physicist celebrated for his groundbreaking work in quantum chromodynamics, the theory describing the strong nuclear force. He was formerly a Senior Research Scientist at CERN and the European Organization for Nuclear Research. Bjørn Ekeberg is a philosopher of science whose main interests lie in the limits of scientific knowledge. He argues that our current understanding of the universe, the Big Bang, and nearly all of Big Bang cosmology is based on faith rather than experimental evidence.

00:00 Introduction
00:24 We have never found dark matter
01:35 Why we're building a collider
03:45 Atomism is a narrative
06:03 Big colliders are too much money
10:20 Why particle physicists are important
13:19 The problem is money and people
17:57 The mystery of particles
19:29 Will there be big shifts in physics research?

[pwagzzz]

Sabine is correct. ROI is important in any decision on what to fund. Bigger colliders are offering little in the way of guarantees on what will be found and/or how that could lead to applied benefits.

[TropicOfCancer]

Sabine : How large should be your particle collider??

Particle physicists : YES.

[BrianFedirko]

Sabine is one of my favorite minds of today. Along with Sean Carroll, I find these two worthy of their criticisms and their support of theories. Sabine has a great sense of humor, and that is something to be said about a top mind, as it shows invention and understanding and a window into truth. Gr8! Peace ☮💜Love

[wellingtoncrescent]

In 2020, China graduated 1.38 million engineers. India graduated 1.2 million. In the same year, the US graduated 198, 000 engineers + software developers. Moreover, 20% of US degrees are in business. After adding law, you can see how we've abandoned STEM for the black arts of management. Scientific literacy is necessary, and as a (now retired) scientist, I think this is a mistake.

[HugoAlexandreFerreiraMD]

Gavin actually conviced me that a new particle collider is NOT a good investment

[MrZantas]

Sabine is all about efficiency and fast progress. I like her train of thought and her solid logic!

[dantescalona]

"The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence." Charles Bukowski

[nathangrinalds]

Despite being rather polite, the tension during this conversation was palpable. I really wish Gavin could concede at least one of Sabine's points regarding how a bigger collider is not a good investment, YET. There is really no disagreement fundamentally, it is a matter of what is the best of money right now. All physicists like bigger colliders, more energy is always more fun. It would be great to spend some of that money and brain power trying to understand wavefunction collapse, consciousness, quantum computing, etc. Go back to a collider when we have room temperature superconductors at least.

[intergalacticangler]

I just have a high school education. But always try and learn a bit. I always notice when sabine talks she silences a room.

[tristanmills]

As a non-physicist who's interested in it, there are three areas in the fundamentals which need more research:
- the measurement problem in quantum mechanics: how can we experimentally probe it?
- quantization of gravity (and will this give insight into the dark matter hypothesis)
- what on earth is up with neutrino masses?

[romado]

Diminishing returns vs theories of wave-particles or wave-resonances theories.

[btmillack]

If the only way to go forward in physics is higher energies, physics is at its end. Science will not end, because physics is not everything (even if physicists like to think so).
But as humans we can not afford to go to higher energies, the costs in Ressource (money and people) is much too high. Especially as the expected outcome for humankind is minuscule compared to the effort.
I think there are other ways to go forward in physics except higher energies. Physics has simply to go for it.

[basvet]

An important argument that is missing in my poiny of view is the following.
It is about the scale at which we extend the energy range of our experiments. We may extende de range by a factor of 2 or 3 or maybe 10 (hugely expensive). That may sound like a lot. However, energy scale we are probing is not at all close to the natural scale for particle physics, which is the Planck scale (10^28eV(. This is about 20 orders of magnitude higher than the scale we currently probe physics on. So in that respect this is a puny extension of the search range. The fact that we have discovered all kinds of particles in this extremely low energy range (compared to the planck scale) is because all the particles we have seen so far are fundamentally massless particles. The only reason they have mass is because of their interaction with the Higgs field. But there is no guarantee or even indication that we should find further particles in this range. And extending our search to the full range would require building an accelerator as large as the galaxy. So this is a fundamentally hopeless pursuit.

[delavan]

So the argument boils down to how much effort, time, and resources should be expended on chasing every little question someone comes up with, no matter how practical it may seem, or do we invest more into questions that we know have immense meaning to our understanding of the universe?

To those who want to explore their own tiny little question they came up with, I say "Do it on your own dime" and let the adults drive physics forward by exploring the big practical questions.

[KaiseruSoze]

A good investment has a return on that investment. And a newer bigger collider has an unknown return on investment. I'm with Sabine on this one. I am convinced we can do better than the standard model.

[NickyD-]

For almost a hundred years physicists have been excusing their existence by pretending they solved The Cosmological Constant, even though they haven't. They sure have written a lot of peer-reviewed papers though.

It only took 1 year of James Webb Telescope for astronomers to start rethinking their theories because they found galaxies that shouldn't exist. The difference is, they found something.

[antoineroquentin]

I wish political discussions were as cultivated as this one.

[zyxzevn]

How did we come up with particle physics in the first place? The particles represent both space-restriced entities (Fermions) and force-FIELDS (bosons). And yet they are treated exactly the same, using the same quantum formula.
Looking in all experiments of particle physics, I have not seen any real evidence for the existence of bosons. It is always a field. So why did we start with particles in the first place? Because the people involved believed in force-particles. And projected that believe into the experiments. The particle idea is also where all quantum magic comes from. And if there is "magic", there may be something wrong with the whole idea.

Photons were first seen as "bullets" that shoot away "electrons-balls" from an atom. Only later we realized that the electrons are not even at one single place or time. We also did not know about how electron-shells have certain resonance frequencies.
The "quantum-jumps" can easily be replaced with thresholds that initially have random values. It was Planck's first hypothesis lost in history, because he assumed zero starting values. And because he believed in light particles, like most people.
With well designed experiments we can see that with a single "photon", the "quantum-jumps" can appear at "random" places at the same time. Or no place at all. That is because the light-energy transfers to all places, following the conservation of energy and momentum. When reaching enough energy, the "quantum jump" can take place. But that simply means that an energy threshold has been reached. (youtube videos by Eric Reiter have full details on these experiments)
Getting rid of force-particles, also removes of layers of very complex mathematics, which were invented to compensate for this mistake.
The thresholds also gives us insight in how place-restricted entities (fermions) work. They have somehow similar rules. Are they entities independent of the force-fields? Or are they made up of the same fields on some way? They could just be the connection between 2 different force-fields.
Whatever this is, it is scientific progress. It can be tested with well designed experiments. And it is far simpler. With Occam's razor, we get rid of all quantum magic.

[LuisAldamiz]

I for one am OK about considering fundamental particles some kind of "faeries". At the very least it may help to teach physics to kids and also entice their interest in science as the most powerful "magic" there actually is.

[Jimmy-pn]

So the possibility is that there is a flaw to the model rather than trying to find the particles.