> For instance, the newest super collider project that some people are pushing for completely misses the opportunity cost of not funding other projects that could be far more impactful, like wakefield accelerators, which would reduce the size and cost of particle accelerators by orders of magnitude.
This is not true in many aspects. There are many problems with plasma and laser wakefield acceleration. First, the beam quality (emittance and stability) is orders of magnitude below collider requirements. They have demonstrated GeV-scale acceleration over centimeters, but scaling to multi-TeV and maintaining luminosity is not even close to solved. There are no concept for a full detector-ready experimental program exists using wakefield accelerators. But on the other hand, we have "FCC" being based on mature accelerator technologies, with well-understood cost scaling and detector integration that builds on decades on experience building accelerators. Actually it is much safer option than what you are saying.
But the important point is that you are making it binary choice, we can still investigate and work on wakefield accelerators while working on more mature projects. Remember than it takes decades of work and thousands of scientists to make any of these things work. And it is not the question of accelerator itself but what detector can use it and for what physics exactly. We can produce much more interesting physics colliding muons instead off protons but this is much more challenging task and will cost more efforts and will cost more.
Also I would say that Scientific value isn’t measured by compactness or cost alone. This is a VC mindset not a scientist pushing boundaries of knowledge.
> Right, defense can and has funded research for its own purposes, and sometimes those purposes can find wider commercial application (like the internet). That's all great, national defense is one of the government's primary purposes.
Well since we are here. I know it is a cliche by now and many people HN doesn't like to be reminded about that but guess that is the most beneficial CERN output ?
> But on the other hand, we have "FCC" being based on mature accelerator technologies, with well-understood cost scaling and detector integration that builds on decades on experience building accelerators. Actually it is much safer option than what you are saying.
The question is not whether wakefield accelerators are "ready" for something on the scale of a supercollider, the question is what is the expected return per dollar spend? From what I can see, there's very, very little we can expect from the energy levels achieved by the next radio frequency supercollider. It's basically "explore the Higgs sector a little better", and that's it, and we're not expecting to find much there. $20B is a high price tag for producing basically nothing new.
I'm saying that if you took $18B of $20B for the supercollider they've been tossing about and invest it into wakefield research, it's very plausible that we could solve all of the problems you describe, and with the $2B left over we could build a wakefield accelerator of comparable energy, and that we'd be better off in that world.
> But the important point is that you are making it binary choice, we can still investigate and work on wakefield accelerators while working on more mature projects.
Investment dollars are finite, therefore it often is a binary choice. You could fund tens of thousands of smaller experiments in domains where we have actual uncertainty for the cost of this one piece of equipment that's good for only a few experiments.
> Also I would say that Scientific value isn’t measured by compactness or cost alone. This is a VC mindset not a scientist pushing boundaries of knowledge.
If you want to expand knowledge faster then you should consider adopting the VC mindset: reduce costs per novel datum gathered. You can run more experiments in more diverse fields and uncover more surprises. Sounds like something a scientist should value frankly.
> I know it is a cliche by now and many people HN doesn't like to be reminded about that but guess that is the most beneficial CERN output ?
Direct military projects arguably haven't been a focus of CERN for 30+ years. They might benefit indirectly, but ask yourself whether the military would have still achieved the outcomes they needed by funding that research directly rather than indirectly in a way that accidentally produced things they needed. The direct funding is what I'm suggesting is well justified, the indirect maybe not so much.
This is not true in many aspects. There are many problems with plasma and laser wakefield acceleration. First, the beam quality (emittance and stability) is orders of magnitude below collider requirements. They have demonstrated GeV-scale acceleration over centimeters, but scaling to multi-TeV and maintaining luminosity is not even close to solved. There are no concept for a full detector-ready experimental program exists using wakefield accelerators. But on the other hand, we have "FCC" being based on mature accelerator technologies, with well-understood cost scaling and detector integration that builds on decades on experience building accelerators. Actually it is much safer option than what you are saying.
But the important point is that you are making it binary choice, we can still investigate and work on wakefield accelerators while working on more mature projects. Remember than it takes decades of work and thousands of scientists to make any of these things work. And it is not the question of accelerator itself but what detector can use it and for what physics exactly. We can produce much more interesting physics colliding muons instead off protons but this is much more challenging task and will cost more efforts and will cost more.
Also I would say that Scientific value isn’t measured by compactness or cost alone. This is a VC mindset not a scientist pushing boundaries of knowledge.
> Right, defense can and has funded research for its own purposes, and sometimes those purposes can find wider commercial application (like the internet). That's all great, national defense is one of the government's primary purposes.
Well since we are here. I know it is a cliche by now and many people HN doesn't like to be reminded about that but guess that is the most beneficial CERN output ?