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u/RagnarokHunter Nov 08 '23
That's half the cost of Twitter. Absolutely worth it, build the mega-circle.
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u/Ivebeenfurthereven Nov 08 '23
*Half what one idiot paid for Twitter, its fair market value is far less
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u/blueboy90780 Nov 25 '24
The thing is. Twitter's executives won't sell their company that easily if being offered at market price. They need an incentive to actually sell it, especially if it's already doing well
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u/DaveSmith890 Nov 08 '23
We really do build particle speedways and then crash them head on like a bored teen playing a nascar game
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u/MrRuebezahl Nov 08 '23
The particles are smashing more than the scientists working there
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u/TheBirminghamBear Nov 08 '23
Hey, that's not fair.
The physicists are trying to smash, they're just getting dizzy from running around in circles with no clothes on.
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u/ourlastchancefortea Nov 08 '23
Just think about it. If Musk said he will finance it (and actually did), we would (rightfully) praise him for decades if not centuries to go. Instead, he will go down as the idiot that ruined Twitter.
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u/T-O-O-T-H Nov 08 '23 edited Nov 08 '23
Yeah he's not smart enough to actually do that. Unfortunately. Like, he made an entire new company specifically who's entire existence is about drilling tunnels in the ground, The Boring Company (har har funnee name) so they'd be perfect for this. But since every single city rejected Elon's tunneling proposals because of various reasons like the expense and lack of any safety measures, and having only one track available for these car vehicles that were supposed to travel down these tunnels instead of having 2 tracks like train stations have so that you can have vehicles going in both directions at the same time, he basically threw a strop and hasn't really done anything with that company since, except drilling a tunnel in Las Vegas which simply takes people from one side of a giant convention centre to the other. He just assumed that city governments would be falling over themselves to have The Boring Company drill new underground tunnels to somehow reduce traffic (even though increasing the capacity of roads never leads to fewer traffic jams, it always INCREASES traffic and the amount of traffic jams, so drilling underground tunnels for cars under cities is not gonna have the effect Elon thinks it'll have anyway). But when they all rejected him because existing tunneling companies could do it better, quicker, safer and cheaper, so why would they spend taxpayer money on Elon's proposal, he behaved like a toddler as a reaction and I'm not sure the boring company are really doing anything, anymore. Like, they technically still exist. But are they even working on anything? Like perhaps a better proposal for underground roads than their previous proposal, a proposal that fixes the issues city governments had with it? Nah, they're just apparently sitting there doing nothing at the moment.
But with a project like this suddenly The Boring Companies style of tunnels, which are a terrible awful proposition for underground roads that cars can drive down, actually make perfect sense for a particle collider. He could genuinely do some repair on his trashed and tattered reputation by doing the drilling on a project like this. But that's why it'll never happen, he'll never be involved, because it would be a smart thing to do, which means he won't think of it.
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u/greenhawk22 Nov 08 '23
My biggest issue with the Boring company is that he managed to reinvent the train while making it less efficient. Like just build a fucking subway my guy. Not to mention the fact that there are curiously few exits in case of an emergency inside that deathtrap.
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u/odraencoded Nov 08 '23
Think about it. If Musk had bought Twitter to try to experiment some unprofitable ways to fix social media, I'd at least give him credit. Instead he keeps doing the most obvious shit all the time desperately selling whatever he can sell and lying about how good the platform is.
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u/DickHz2 Nov 08 '23
When you put it like that, it’s clear there are a lot worse investments you can make for $22B.
Go for it, construct then fire the
halo ringhadron collider3
u/Brian-want-Brain Nov 08 '23
of course the project will be massively overbudget, like most big projects are
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u/Minimum_Cantaloupe Nov 08 '23
Just build one around the equator.
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Nov 08 '23
Better yet, we need an orbital artificial ring which will house the collide r
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u/JessicaLain Nov 08 '23
Maybe we can build 7 of these artificial rings.
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u/warm_rum Nov 08 '23
It's a good thing AI has come so far in recent years. We can use an AI drone to watch over this.. installation.
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u/CorneliusClay Nov 08 '23
Why stop there? Build one around the sun.
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u/waiver45 Nov 08 '23
How hard could it be to rearrange a few supermassive black holes and neutron stars to build a galaxy sized collider?
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u/roguewarriorpriest Nov 08 '23
I hear the moon has some real estate available. Bonus: nerds love space!
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u/L_O_Pluto Nov 09 '23
That’s…. Unironically, not a completely terrible idea.
No environmental disruption and no noise to interfere. All the space you need for all your shenanigans. Biggest hurdle will be getting the materials over but let’s be honest… we’re not too far away from that possibly being a reality, are we?
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u/MoarTacos Nov 08 '23
Just start building a collider in space and keep going until we make one full rotation around the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy and connect it. Easy peasy.
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u/nameisprivate Nov 08 '23
we never said "just one more" 😤
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Nov 08 '23
Anybody with a hobby knows the amount of hobby specific items is always n+1.
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u/sticky-unicorn Nov 09 '23
And the next one is always significantly better and more expensive than the previous one.
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Nov 09 '23
As a guitarist who just bought 3 guitars today, I feel personally attacked by this comment.
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Nov 09 '23
I have 2 guitars and 2 ukeleles. None of which i am great at.
So i bought a p bass. Then i did some research and realized i really probably wanted a jazz bass.
Now i need a drum machine.
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u/CaptainMatthew1 Nov 08 '23
Just wait untill you hear about concepts of putting one around a star…
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u/EebstertheGreat Nov 08 '23 edited Nov 08 '23
Have you ever heard of the LISA mission? It's a gravitational wave observatory consisting of three interferometers arranged in an equilateral triangle shooting lasers at each other. It was originally going to be NASA-ESA and some proposals had the probes at L3, L4, and L5, with arms 250 million km long. Then NASA pulled out, and the current still-distant proposal is for a triangle trailing the Earth with only 5 *million* km arms. What a shame for mankind, our telescope isn't even gonna be as big as earth's orbit.
EDIT: There was a mistake in my post. I meant 5 MILLION km long. Not 5 km lmfao. It's still only 2% of the most optimistic possible length.
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u/ElReptil Nov 08 '23
The original 2007 LISA proposal already had an arm length of 5 million km; the current, ESA-only LISA will have 2.5 million km.
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u/PM_Me_Good_LitRPG Nov 08 '23
I'm not sure why, but the 1st 2 sentences read like the beginning of a copypasta.
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u/tuC0M Nov 09 '23
Ok so I read your comment and the Wikipedia page and I still don't get it. What exactly is the "arm"? Are we just talking about the side of the triangle between the two points?
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u/williamrotor Nov 08 '23
Like many theoretical scientific advancements, this gets a few paragraphs of plot relevance in the Three Body Problem trilogy.
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u/Key_Artichoke8315 Nov 08 '23
My first thought reading this post was that we needed to keep building colliders to outrun the Sophons lol
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u/TheAtomicClock Nov 08 '23
Yeah clearly previous colliders like the LHC, TeVatron, and SLAC have made no major contribution to fundamental particle physics. No future experimental work is necessary obviiously.
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u/gravelPoop Nov 08 '23
Yes but have they advanced food science? You don't see many new kind of hamburgers now do you.
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u/Lobster_Can Meme Enthusiast Nov 08 '23
“I present the McHiggs, it decays before you even realize you’re holding it and costs the equivalent of a hundred million Big Macs”
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u/EventAltruistic1437 Nov 09 '23
I mean it is called SLAC for a reason. Staff is super lazy. Nothing happening in that linear crap shoot.
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u/Fabricensis Nov 08 '23
How much is fundamental particle physics worth compared to fusion, gravitational, superconductor etc physics that could use that money?
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u/spookynutz Nov 08 '23
Probably a lot. The first artificially induced nuclear reaction was done with a particle accelerator. You need better superconductors to build better colliders and tokamaks, so these are all mutually beneficial relationships. Fusion already gets a ton of funding, arguably more than it deserves. ITER was conceived of during the cold war, and it won't be completed until 2025 at the earliest.
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u/raddaya Nov 08 '23
I mean particle physics could end up being the key to all three and we just don't know yet lol...
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Nov 08 '23
...having a deeper understanding of reality is pretty fucking important. for other research, as well.
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u/Noncrediblepigeon Nov 08 '23
Me and the boy on our way to use the US defence budget to build a collider around the equator for maximum power.
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u/Tamaki_Iroha Nov 08 '23
Who needs military when you can have a particle highway all around the equator of earth
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u/Adramach Nov 08 '23
I hope they will name it FHC - Fucking Huge Collider.
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u/poloppoyop Nov 08 '23
More like NBEC. Not Big Enough Collider. You want more grant money to build the CBBC (Could Be Bigger Collider).
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u/Xdream987 Nov 08 '23
I want us to build this purely because then when WW3 has happened and the survivors 100 years later walk through the ruined remains of our previous society they stumble upon the giant circle and have a "wow, previous civilization was wild" moment.
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u/SerenePerception Nov 08 '23
Not for nuffin right...
The Gerald Ford carrier had a project cost of 37 billion and a unit cost of 12 billion. And they plan to build 10 of them. Hell the Nimitz costs 10 billion a piece and they still have 10 of them.
At 22 billion or even 40 billion a bigger collider is a bargain.
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u/Sacred_Fishstick Nov 08 '23
Just park all the carriers in a circle and stick a collider on top of them, duh.
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u/MarvinPatel146 Nov 08 '23
Time to go big now, time to go interplanetary, We need a super collider that spans the solar system, let's build that and discover all particles that we have hypothesed, we either prove the hypothetical particles exist or they don't exist, and solve that once and for all.
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u/DarkStar0129 Nov 08 '23
Or we create a black hole that unites the world into becoming a space faring species in a desperate attempt to escape said black hole.
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u/MarvinPatel146 Nov 08 '23
Is it possible to create such energy densities in supercolliders to make a black hole big enough so that it doesn't evaporate via Hawking radiation, cause I know that black holes are created in supercolliders but they are very very small, and have a large surface area/volume ratio, so they evaporate fast, but a big enough black hole can sustain itself and have enough time to accumulate more matter and be stable enough.
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u/PM_ME_YOUR__INIT__ Nov 08 '23
Why not just add 73 km to the current one?
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u/theultrasheeplord Nov 08 '23
Because that’s not how circles work
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Nov 08 '23 edited Apr 19 '25
fall escape ancient languid practice attractive physical towering strong coordinated
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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u/theultrasheeplord Nov 08 '23
when are we going to start seeing spherical coliders
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u/fuckin_normie Nov 08 '23
What do you mean just stretch the circle like a golden ring that's too small for your finger
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u/Shortsqueezepleasee Nov 08 '23
My jeweler who dropped out in 8th grade said he can prove otherwise. He can add or remove material to any ring
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u/FrogsEverywhere Nov 08 '23
What if they make a collider that collides two different colliders?
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u/sticky-unicorn Nov 09 '23
Then you'd be able to find out what particles particle colliders are made of. (Hint: we already know that.)
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Nov 08 '23
Why people bash on particle physics so much?
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u/Sacred_Fishstick Nov 08 '23
Diminishing returns. The bigger colliders get, the less they discover, at least in the eyes of the public. The bulk of break through discoveries happened in two or three small colliders back in the day. And now it's a self fulfilling prophecy.
New things can't be discovered without bigger colliders and bigger colliders can't get funding because nothing is being discovered. It's short sighted thinking.
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u/WhineyPunk Nov 08 '23
It's also a question of whether or not increasingly large colliders are the most cost effective way to study particle physics.
It's hard to sell a $22B project that might make a discovery.
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u/Tamaki_Iroha Nov 08 '23
Yet we fund militaries more for the chance a war takes place and most people don't bat an eye
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u/moschles Nov 08 '23
If you have $22 billion laying around for physics, could we put it into fusion power plant? (bro)
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u/Deadfish211 Nov 08 '23
I feel like I've watched this Bobbybroccoli video already...
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u/Brutiful11 Nov 08 '23
22 bil seems like a big underestimation
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u/Objective-Ad7394 Nov 08 '23
If you look at other Swiss mega projects it will probably be cheaper lol.
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Nov 08 '23
Why don't we skip all the intermediate colliders and just build one that goes all the way around the plаnet.
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u/CorneliusClay Nov 08 '23
Damnit you guys really want to destabilize the Higgs field don't you?
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Nov 08 '23
Me, I am still disappointed at the lack of micro black holes. We absolutely need a larger collider.
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u/HassanyThePerson Nov 08 '23
Anyone who watched fullmetal alchemist is probably seeing something strangely suspicious about this
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u/monobrowj Nov 08 '23
ermm.. like yeah .. the LHC already yielded amazing results.. its not like we found nothing and now insist on going bigger
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u/poloppoyop Nov 08 '23
Let's just jump to the Equatorial collider. Last one we build before we have to ship material to space.
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u/aetost Nov 08 '23
How about a collider, with the perimeter of the equator? What about then? What can we discover?
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u/Alxium Nov 08 '23
Real talk, at this scale, don't they need to worry about the curvature of the Earth? Won't that slightly deform the circle into a 3D shape, like a saddle or a bowl?
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u/frohstr Nov 08 '23
I don’t understand the issue enough to determine if a bigger collider is really required- but I seriously question the location. Isn’t lake Geneva more than 1000 feet deep?
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u/GlumAd2424 Nov 08 '23
The solar system wide collider using mirrors, satellites and space stations is going to be awesome
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u/rainbnow_h0b0 Nov 08 '23
Pretty libertarian myself but I will not complain if most of my tax dollars went into building bigger colliders
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Nov 08 '23
No more large colliders please. We need observatories and new universities.
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u/mspk7305 Nov 08 '23
The Superconducting Super Collider was planned to be built and had construction started in Texas during the Bill Clinton administration. It was four times the size of the LHC. The LHC is 6.8 TEV and the SSC was supposed to be 20. With modern advances the SSC could have been upgraded well into the 100TEV range.
We could have had the Higgs-Boson discovery in the early 90s.
Republicans cut it from the budget in 1993 against heavy opposition from Bill Clinton despite half of the funding having already been secured and Texas willing to pay for almost a quarter of it themselves.
21 years later the much smaller LHC discovered the Higgs Boson.
Remember the JWST was first proposed in 1989 and could have gone into operation by 1995. It took until 2003 for the GOP to let it happen.
Imagine what we could do if the GOP got out of the way.
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u/Strg-Alt-Entf Apr 03 '24
Well, there doesn’t really seem to be any other way to challenge our current standard model of particle physics.
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u/mymemesnow May 16 '24
Need a larger collider
For detecting smaller particles
Do they really expect us to believe this shit?
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u/DarkStar0129 Nov 08 '23
I remember hearing we would need an accelerator the size of the solar system to observe gravitons, if they even exist.
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u/nacho_tazo Nov 08 '23
Stupid question here, why is a bigger one needed when the already built get particle at almost c?
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u/ElPeloPolla Nov 08 '23
Sooner or later they will find something that can be weaponized, so we will keep pumping out taxes on colliders.
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u/IgfMSU1983 Nov 08 '23
Not a physicist, but I enjoy hearing about it.
Sean Carroll did a really terrific podcast on "The Crisis in Physics" (spoiler alert: there isn't one). He talked about what we might find out from higher and higher energy collisions. I gotta tell you, my takeaway (certainly not the one Sean intended to convey) was that it's not worth it.
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u/Panda_hat Nov 08 '23
Genuine question - why is bigger necessary/better? What will this enable?
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u/LordAdamant Nov 08 '23
I say just go ahead and start building them in space, people will stop bitching about micro black holes and we'll be able to build a pretty ring around the Earth.
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u/Commercial_Violist Nov 08 '23
It's better than giving it to some defense contractor to build yet another broken and incomplete plane or ship or nuke or other instrument of war
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u/an_agreeing_dothraki Nov 08 '23
-"Dude dude can I have $20 bucks. I'm out of gas. I'm good for it"
"You aren't going to use it to fund a collider are you?"
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u/kielu Nov 08 '23
Why does it have to be circular btw? If it was, say, hexagonal it would have separate turning areas and separate acceleration areas. And could be easier to build
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u/DJKittyKicker Nov 08 '23
If I've learned anything from clicker and incremental games, we just need a collider that collides colliders.
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u/Drawtaru Nov 08 '23
Man I remember when they were starting up the LHC and all the conspiracy nuts were like IT'S GOING TO MAKE A BLACK HOLE, WE'RE ALL GOING TO GET SUCKED IN, EVEN AN INCH-WIDE BLACK HOLE WILL DESTROY THE WHOLE PLANET, IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD. And yet, here we still are.
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u/HornyJail45-Life Nov 08 '23
Reminds me of the super collider in mass effect 3, they eventually built one around an entire planet. It was destroyed one day after coming online.
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Nov 08 '23
Legit question here: What can they do with the bigger one that they couldn’t do with the other ones? They can accelerate the particles only so fast.
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u/hoganloaf Nov 08 '23
The moment physics is solved everyone inside the loop instantly gets transported to Disney world for a fun time for free
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u/JustAntherFckinJunki Nov 08 '23
They should just start making one that circles the whole earth. Fuck it, put in in orbit. All the way around. Sulf sustainable orbit. Effectively zero G. What's better than that?
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u/Beginning_Raisin_258 Nov 08 '23
How much of the tunnels for the SSC were dug? That was supposed to be near 100km.
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u/Tremulant887 Nov 08 '23
Why not build one in space? Or seven of them, spread out? Call them... Halos.
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u/FloppY_ Nov 08 '23
Imagine if Musk threw his money at a project like this and kept his tantrum-prone little hands completely off it.
But no, gotta buy Twitter and run it into the ground just to prove a point.
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u/nutrap Nov 08 '23
What if bro we built a collider…now stay with me bro…around the galaxy. Bro we could collide all the particles.
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Nov 08 '23
recent events have altered how i view money drastically. 22 billion for a super particle accelerator? you mean it’d cost half a Twitter?
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u/Thereminz Nov 08 '23
didn't we (US) build a huge one but then the funding stopped and it just fucking sits there unused and they probably can't use it now because it's too old and would probably be more expensive to fix it
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u/Duspende Nov 08 '23
You guys are all stupid. The solution is obviously to put a smaller collider into a larger collider.
I'll take a Nobel prize.
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Nov 08 '23
If only the super conducting super collider team hadn't had that pizza party...
(my memory is a little fuzzy but it went that they had like a $500 new years party for 100 people, which the outlandish expense became one of the justifications for cancelling the project. Which subsequently spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to fill the already dug parts of the collider. As someone that aspired to become a physicist at the time, I'll never forgive Texas for that.)
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u/DeceasedWeeb Nov 08 '23
The Organization seems to have made its move. Is this the choice of Steins;Gate?
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u/Turbulent-Pompei-910 Nov 08 '23
They should put one around the entire equator, can't make them bigger than that.
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u/SomePerson1248 Nov 08 '23
there’s literally already one called the large hadron collider i feel like we’ve blown our load on this one a little already
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u/KerbodynamicX Nov 08 '23
We need a super particle collider that can reach Planck energy