Comedic "things you would ban": minor things that irritate you

dangie said:

From the BBC: ... Its aim is to discover new particles

Personally I think they are missing something a bit more basic. Something between the ears...

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I think you're onto something. Scientists have already discovered the boson, neuron, electron and positron. A quick look at some people, would rapidly detect the moron....

dangie said:

From the BBC:
Researchers at the world's biggest particle accelerator in Switzerland have submitted proposals for a new, much larger, supercollider.
Its aim is to discover new particles that would revolutionise physics and lead to a more complete understanding of how the Universe works. If approved, it will be three times larger than the current giant machine. But its £17bn price tag has raised some eyebrows, with one critic describing the expenditure as "reckless".

Now obviously I have no knowledge on what this is, what it does, or how it does it. But from what I can gather, the original Hadron Collider hasn’t done what it was designed to do, so let’s build a bigger one.

Prof Fabiola Gianotti, told BBC News that, if approved, it will be a "beautiful machine".
She added “We are missing something big,''

Personally I think they are missing something a bit more basic. Something between the ears…..

Huge atom-smasher bid to find missing 95% of Universe

Researchers want a new, much bigger supercollider but is it worth us paying the £12bn price tag?

www.bbc.co.uk

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Physicist here. It's not stupid. Here's the explanation:

Colliders can be thought of as a complicated, indirect kind of eye. Our eyes work by visible light (which have wavelength 450-700 nanometers, about 1/100x the size of a bacteria) bouncing off objects and entering our eyes. Our retina (i.e. sensor) can then detect the intensity, spectrum, etc. of said light, and reconstruct a picture of what the object the light bounced off of looks like. This is a basic example of a scattering process, which is to some extent what all physics experiments are. You bounce things off other things, measure the things that bounced off at some distance, and hence indirectly measure the things said things bounced off of.

Because of diffraction processes and other complicated reasons, this kind of scattering only works if the size of the object being measured is greater than the wavelength of the light being used to measure it. (One may think of it as, if the wavelength is greater than the object in the scattering process, the light or wave will kind of "miss" the object, similar to how a thin metal rod in the water will not noticeably perturb the waves going the other way.) And because of quantum mechanics, it turns out it's not only light that has a wavelength; massive particles also have a wavelength, called the de Broglie wavelength, which is inversely proportional to how big it is, and how fast it's going. For human-sized objects, this wavelength is so miniscule as to basically not exist, but for light and fast atomic or subatomic particles, the wavelength starts to reach the scale at which these particles exist (in the 0.1nm and smaller range, mostly.) So, hitting small and fast particles onto other small and fast particles help us understand what is going on inside said small and fast particles.

The problem, of course, with small and fast particles is that it takes quite a lot of energy to generate them. That is where the cyclotron and collider come in. The larger a collider is, the higher energy it can get up to, both because there is more space for the particle to accelerate, and because the energy loss associated in accelerating them is smaller (via a process called cyclotron radiation), and because the magnetic fields required to keep the particle in place will be smaller. And the larger energy we can get the thing up to, the smaller the wavelength will be, and the better we will be able to probe the smaller scales at which these particles live.

In short: the LHC did not fail at its job; it managed to find the particles and structures at the energy and wavelength it was designed at, and now research has moved on to higher energy scales and smaller wavelengths. That's why we need a bigger accelerator.

As an aside, particle physics is generally not very concerned about finding new particles, but much more concerned with probing the properties of existing ones. There are a limited combination of particles that can exist (and we know this because some math from group theory, which lets you derive some basic structures of particle models just by assuming that the universe is symmetric in different ways. Basically black magic.) and while a new particle or force makes the news, there are a lot of things we still don't understand about existing ones (such as, for example, things as simple as the mass of the particle), how they interact, etc. and these results can help prove or disprove various theories about things happening at far smaller scales than we can ever hope to probe by a reactor. A larger LHC won't solve physics; to directly experiment at the smallest scales physics allows, we would need a collider with a radius larger than the galaxy. But it certainly is not a white elephant, and has plenty of utility.

Sun Chariot said:

I think you're onto something. Scientists have already discovered the boson, neuron, electron and positron.

A quick look at some people, would rapidly detect the moron....

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And of course to be pedantic, the boson is not a particle, it is a type of particle which represent fundamental forces. The electron and positron are antiparticles ("two sides of the same coin") and the neutron is a composite particle, made out of two down quarks and one up quark. (The quarks were named by the Americans. Don't question it.)

Was it not the Hadron Collider where they admitted, probably reluctantly, when setting it up that they were not quite sure of the side-effects and, yes, there was a small chance that it might set off a reaction that led to the end of the world? I am absolutely no scientist, but I remember hearing on it the Radio 4 news, a much more sober source than TV or newspapers.

Gloster said:

Was it not the Hadron Collider where they admitted, probably reluctantly, when setting it up that they were not quite sure of the side-effects and, yes, there was a small chance that it might set off a reaction that led to the end of the world? I am absolutely no scientist, but I remember hearing on it the Radio 4 news, a much more sober source than TV or newspapers.

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I have a deep hatred of unqualified popular science coverage which I shall not get into, or else I will be typing here for over an hour. Virtually no mainstream source has even a passable record of science coverage, regularly committing very elementary mistakes like confusing distinct types of objects, distances and units, reading only the abstract of the paper (or not even that occasionally), failing to provide a link to the paper they are describing, cherrypicking quotes, and making contradictory claims that could be spotted by anyone with a degree.

In short, yes, there is a small chance that a black hole may be produced and things may go wrong from that, or something called "strange matter" would be produced which could induce a decay in all "normal" matter, in the same way there is also a small chance that by doing nothing at all the "false vacuum" may decay and permanently destroy the solar system tomorrow, the universe would suddenly enter an inflationary period and fling the Earth away from the Sun, protons may suddenly start decaying rapidly and destroy all matter, or a rogue planet travelling at close to the speed of light will suddenly strike the Earth head on.

Fermiboson said:

the boson is not a particle, it is a type of particle which represent fundamental forces. The electron and positron are antiparticles ("two sides of the same coin") and the neutron is a composite particle

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Absolutely. I deliberately avoided using the word "particle" in my post, which is entirely tongue in cheek.

Mind you, I'll support any machine which can bang morons together at high speed....

Sun Chariot said:

Mind you, I'll support any machine which can bang morons together at high speed....

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Don't we all?

75A said:

Don't we all?

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We have that already, - GB News.

Sun Chariot said:

Mind you, I'll support any machine which can bang morons together at high speed....

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We already have Tesla cars. \j

Fermiboson said:

We already have Tesla cars. \j

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Take a bow!

Fermiboson said:

Physicist here. It's not stupid. Here's the explanation:

Colliders can be thought of as a complicated, indirect kind of eye. Our eyes work by visible light (which have wavelength 450-700 nanometers, about 1/100x the size of a bacteria) bouncing off objects and entering our eyes. Our retina (i.e. sensor) can then detect the intensity, spectrum, etc. of said light, and reconstruct a picture of what the object the light bounced off of looks like. This is a basic example of a scattering process, which is to some extent what all physics experiments are. You bounce things off other things, measure the things that bounced off at some distance, and hence indirectly measure the things said things bounced off of.

Because of diffraction processes and other complicated reasons, this kind of scattering only works if the size of the object being measured is greater than the wavelength of the light being used to measure it. (One may think of it as, if the wavelength is greater than the object in the scattering process, the light or wave will kind of "miss" the object, similar to how a thin metal rod in the water will not noticeably perturb the waves going the other way.) And because of quantum mechanics, it turns out it's not only light that has a wavelength; massive particles also have a wavelength, called the de Broglie wavelength, which is inversely proportional to how big it is, and how fast it's going. For human-sized objects, this wavelength is so miniscule as to basically not exist, but for light and fast atomic or subatomic particles, the wavelength starts to reach the scale at which these particles exist (in the 0.1nm and smaller range, mostly.) So, hitting small and fast particles onto other small and fast particles help us understand what is going on inside said small and fast particles.

The problem, of course, with small and fast particles is that it takes quite a lot of energy to generate them. That is where the cyclotron and collider come in. The larger a collider is, the higher energy it can get up to, both because there is more space for the particle to accelerate, and because the energy loss associated in accelerating them is smaller (via a process called cyclotron radiation), and because the magnetic fields required to keep the particle in place will be smaller. And the larger energy we can get the thing up to, the smaller the wavelength will be, and the better we will be able to probe the smaller scales at which these particles live.

In short: the LHC did not fail at its job; it managed to find the particles and structures at the energy and wavelength it was designed at, and now research has moved on to higher energy scales and smaller wavelengths. That's why we need a bigger accelerator.

As an aside, particle physics is generally not very concerned about finding new particles, but much more concerned with probing the properties of existing ones. There are a limited combination of particles that can exist (and we know this because some math from group theory, which lets you derive some basic structures of particle models just by assuming that the universe is symmetric in different ways. Basically black magic.) and while a new particle or force makes the news, there are a lot of things we still don't understand about existing ones (such as, for example, things as simple as the mass of the particle), how they interact, etc. and these results can help prove or disprove various theories about things happening at far smaller scales than we can ever hope to probe by a reactor. A larger LHC won't solve physics; to directly experiment at the smallest scales physics allows, we would need a collider with a radius larger than the galaxy. But it certainly is not a white elephant, and has plenty of utility.

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I held the record at my school for the lowest marks ever in the GCE '0' level in Physics set by the Oxford and Cambridge Examination Board, so I am both in awe of your explanation and accepting it all. My only question is, how badly do we need to achieve the desired results, and are they worth spending £17 billion on? (the latter is the bit I don't believe, it would doubtless end up much more.)

Busaholic said:

I held the record at my school for the lowest marks ever in the GCE '0' level in Physics set by the Oxford and Cambridge Examination Board, so I am both in awe of your explanation and accepting it all. My only question is, how badly do we need to achieve the desired results, and are they worth spending £17 billion on? (the latter is the bit I don't believe, it would doubtless end up much more.)

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That is a very good question, and a hard one to answer. As a physicist I would naturally say that the questions in particle physics are essential to our understanding of nature etc. in the same way an USAF chief of staff would argue that the next range upgrade to the AMRAAM is absolutely essential. In a lot of other places it is much easier to point out this kind of bias, but the issue with a lot of fundamental research is that cost calculations don’t really work. This concept is known as blue sky research - knowledge must be pursued only for the sake of knowledge - and in fact there is a more than philosophical justification for this stance as well, because a lot of seemingly useless research becomes an economic cornerstone centuries or decades down the line. Einstein and Heisenberg were certainly not thinking of commercial applications when they developed relativity and quantum mechanics, but if we had denied their grants for research based on “no economic benefit”, we wouldn’t have computers and GPS and cellular networks and such. Who knows what advances in particle physics may bring in the medium to far future.

Busaholic said:

….. My only question is, how badly do we need to achieve the desired results, and are they worth spending £17 billion on? (the latter is the bit I don't believe, it would doubtless end up much more.)

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That is one bit I do understand.

dangie said:

That is one bit I do understand.

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It does usually end up over budget and delayed, as all infrastructure projects are. There is fair criticism to be made with regards to how this is handled.

Fermiboson said:

That is a very good question, and a hard one to answer. As a physicist I would naturally say that the questions in particle physics are essential to our understanding of nature etc. in the same way an USAF chief of staff would argue that the next range upgrade to the AMRAAM is absolutely essential. In a lot of other places it is much easier to point out this kind of bias, but the issue with a lot of fundamental research is that cost calculations don’t really work. This concept is known as blue sky research - knowledge must be pursued only for the sake of knowledge - and in fact there is a more than philosophical justification for this stance as well, because a lot of seemingly useless research becomes an economic cornerstone centuries or decades down the line. Einstein and Heisenberg were certainly not thinking of commercial applications when they developed relativity and quantum mechanics, but if we had denied their grants for research based on “no economic benefit”, we wouldn’t have computers and GPS and cellular networks and such. Who knows what advances in particle physics may bring in the medium to far future.

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Thank you for your very considered answer. I can totally understand the notion that all knowledge is crucial and we cannot have too much of it, but there has to be a limit as to how much human endeavour and expenditure can be devoted to it overall, particularly as we are apparently entering a phase in human society when discord and disharmony may be leading to another worldwide conflict, perhaps with catastrophic effects.

Fermiboson said:

That is a very good question, and a hard one to answer. As a physicist I would naturally say that the questions in particle physics are essential to our understanding of nature etc. in the same way an USAF chief of staff would argue that the next range upgrade to the AMRAAM is absolutely essential. In a lot of other places it is much easier to point out this kind of bias, but the issue with a lot of fundamental research is that cost calculations don’t really work. This concept is known as blue sky research - knowledge must be pursued only for the sake of knowledge - and in fact there is a more than philosophical justification for this stance as well, because a lot of seemingly useless research becomes an economic cornerstone centuries or decades down the line. Einstein and Heisenberg were certainly not thinking of commercial applications when they developed relativity and quantum mechanics, but if we had denied their grants for research based on “no economic benefit”, we wouldn’t have computers and GPS and cellular networks and such. Who knows what advances in particle physics may bring in the medium to far future.

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This is quite right, I used to work in the scientific civil service and I was responsible for spending tens of millions of pounds for advanced computer hardware and software. Some of the people tried to steer the direction of the work done on it towards "industrial impact" but it's a fool's pursuit ultimately - scientists aren't doing it for this reason and it's impossible to quantify, any predictions are less reliable than the Bank of England's inflation forecasts.
There has to be a role for the pursuit of knowledge in itself.
There will be immense "industrial impact" from this proposed collider, but we really can't know what they will be. So as a society we need to be prepared to invest in the pursuit of knowledge as well.
The role of the politicians, and the people who vote for them, is to determine what can and can't be afforded. They will always get the wrong answer, but it's one that has some accountability, and we can proceed or not.

Busaholic said:

Thank you for your very considered answer. I can totally understand the notion that all knowledge is crucial and we cannot have too much of it, but there has to be a limit as to how much human endeavour and expenditure can be devoted to it overall, particularly as we are apparently entering a phase in human society when discord and disharmony may be leading to another worldwide conflict, perhaps with catastrophic effects.

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Certainly, and there is not at all a consensus even among scientists as to what that limit is.

jfollows said:

This is quite right, I used to work in the scientific civil service and I was responsible for spending tens of millions of pounds for advanced computer hardware and software. Some of the people tried to steer the direction of the work done on it towards "industrial impact" but it's a fool's pursuit ultimately - scientists aren't doing it for this reason and it's impossible to quantify, any predictions are less reliable than the Bank of England's inflation forecasts.
There has to be a role for the pursuit of knowledge in itself.
There will be immense "industrial impact" from this proposed collider, but we really can't know what they will be. So as a society we need to be prepared to invest in the pursuit of knowledge as well.
The role of the politicians, and the people who vote for them, is to determine what can and can't be afforded. They will always get the wrong answer, but it's one that has some accountability, and we can proceed or not.

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Indeed. A professor of mine recently had to apply for funding from the EU for research on active galaxial cores, and was asked what his research had to do with artificial intelligence and big data! (Which I suppose brings us full circle back to the “minor things that irritate you” theme.)

I’m often a little sceptical whenever I see the words ’experts say…..’

Fermiboson said:

That is a very good question, and a hard one to answer. As a physicist I would naturally say that the questions in particle physics are essential to our understanding of nature etc. in the same way an USAF chief of staff would argue that the next range upgrade to the AMRAAM is absolutely essential. In a lot of other places it is much easier to point out this kind of bias, but the issue with a lot of fundamental research is that cost calculations don’t really work. This concept is known as blue sky research - knowledge must be pursued only for the sake of knowledge - and in fact there is a more than philosophical justification for this stance as well, because a lot of seemingly useless research becomes an economic cornerstone centuries or decades down the line. Einstein and Heisenberg were certainly not thinking of commercial applications when they developed relativity and quantum mechanics, but if we had denied their grants for research based on “no economic benefit”, we wouldn’t have computers and GPS and cellular networks and such. Who knows what advances in particle physics may bring in the medium to far future.

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Maybe the study of nuclear physics would have been regarded as 'unnecessary' in the early 20th century had the general public been alerted to it. If that continuous study in many countries had been killed, the phenomenom known as Nuclear Magnetic Resonance might never have been discovered in the '40s. Had that been so, we would not have had the tremendous advance, benefits and savings both in lives and money from Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI).

dangie said:

I’m often a little sceptical whenever I see the words ’experts say…..’

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I am concerned when politicians stand up and say "we don't trust experts", especially when there is no evidence as to why we don't of should trust them, - and I'm horrified when a significant proportion of the population take that as fact.

I do agree that an unnamed “experts say” is not to be considered reliable. After all, you’re not allowed to go “someone at my department said” in an academic paper, even if virtually everyone in said department would likely be qualified to make the concerned statement. And more often than not, said actual expert’s statement will be being misrepresented by the popular media when it’s not a direct quote.

From the ‘Urban Dictionary’. I think it explains ‘Experts say…..’ quite well.

‘A tired trope that is used in hundreds of headlines a day. The phrase that journalists deploy to be able to say whatever they want, without the need for proper sources. Most of the time, this phrase is used in the headline, or one time in the body text, without said experts ever being identified or mentioned again.’
‘As nobody has any idea which experts they were referring to, or what level or expertise they had, it is a great way to cover up not having a distinct source for the information.’

dangie said:

From the BBC:
Researchers at the world's biggest particle accelerator in Switzerland have submitted proposals for a new, much larger, supercollider.
Its aim is to discover new particles that would revolutionise physics and lead to a more complete understanding of how the Universe works. If approved, it will be three times larger than the current giant machine. But its £17bn price tag has raised some eyebrows, with one critic describing the expenditure as "reckless".

Now obviously I have no knowledge on what this is, what it does, or how it does it. But from what I can gather, the original Hadron Collider hasn’t done what it was designed to do, so let’s build a bigger one.

Prof Fabiola Gianotti, told BBC News that, if approved, it will be a "beautiful machine".
She added “We are missing something big,''

Personally I think they are missing something a bit more basic. Something between the ears…..

Huge atom-smasher bid to find missing 95% of Universe

Researchers want a new, much bigger supercollider but is it worth us paying the £12bn price tag?

www.bbc.co.uk

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I know people see this as physicists playing games but remember CERN gave us the Internet! Also superconducting magnets are required here and, I believe, important in machines such as MRI scanners. People researching what you may see as pointless areas of science has positive impacts on our lives. Very much same as space race has developed new materials and technology. Not such a waste after all.

dangie said:

From the ‘Urban Dictionary’. I think it explains ‘Experts say…..’ quite well.

‘A tired trope that is used in hundreds of headlines a day. The phrase that journalists deploy to be able to say whatever they want, without the need for proper sources. Most of the time, this phrase is used in the headline, or one time in the body text, without said experts ever being identified or mentioned again.’
‘As nobody has any idea which experts they were referring to, or what level or expertise they had, it is a great way to cover up not having a distinct source for the information.’

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And so often, the article that has a lack of clarity is part of a political campaign for or against something, rather than a piece of news being to inform the reader. The news media forever claims that it is for informing people, and denies the agenda harboured by its owners.

AM9 said:

Maybe the study of nuclear physics would have been regarded as 'unnecessary' in the early 20th century had the general public been alerted to it. If that continuous study in many countries had been killed, the phenomenom known as Nuclear Magnetic Resonance might never have been discovered in the '40s. Had that been so, we would not have had the tremendous advance, benefits and savings both in lives and money from Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI).

Click to expand...

I was reminded about this sort of thing today - I had a crown on a broken tooth this morning.
In the past there would have been a session of taking imprints in blue sticky stuff which hardened and was sent off to have a crown made, and a subsequent appointment to fit the crown.
Today it was all done in an hour, a bit of preparatory drilling followed by a machine which took a map of all my teeth, then the crown was created (presumably on some kind of 3D printer) and I went back to have it fitted, and it did so perfectly.
Probably significant feed-through from pure scientific research in recent years.

From the BBC:
The longest - and slowest - music composition in existence had a big day on Monday - it changed chord for the first time in two years.
Crowds gathered at a church in Germany to witness the rare moment, which is part of an artistic feat by avant-garde composer, John Cage.

Now I know I’m lacking in artistic talent, I have little culture, but this is something I totally don’t understand.

It’s a gimmick event, as with all other gimmick events, means little but also does little harm.

When you are walking along a narrow path, pavement or alley and stop in a doorway, gateway or the like so that a person coming towards you will have plenty of room to pass, rather than you both pushing past each other. The person then dawdles, stops to stare at something utterly fascinating like a bit of brickwork or a twig, or to make a ‘phone call. Meanwhile you can either wait or get a whining complaint (or worse) about why you didn’t wait. Worst are those with dogs, who will stand there letting them investigate the smells while you just wait.

Gloster said:

Worst are those with dogs, who will stand there letting them investigate the smells while you just wait.

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Dogs shouldn't have to wait while their owners investigate smells!

I'd ban retail parks being unnecessarily difficult for pedestrians to enter and exit. I've just had to go to a local one and even just a little sign saying 'pedestrian exit this way' would've been nice... or maybe a path around the edge of the car park, instead of making pedestrians walk through it all!

-Peter

Families who met other families supermarkets by chance. They promptly form a ring in the main aisle to bring each other up to date on their tedious lives and, even when other shoppers have managed to get past one side of the ring, still stand there chatting inanely while the shopper tries to get past, rather than moving slightly to let them get out of the circle.

Peter C said:

I'd ban retail parks being unnecessarily difficult for pedestrians to enter and exit. I've just had to go to a local one and even just a little sign saying 'pedestrian exit this way' would've been nice... or maybe a path around the edge of the car park, instead of making pedestrians walk through it all!

-Peter

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It not just pedestrians that have problems getting around retail parks but cyclists as well. My local retail park, there are no facilities to chain your bike securely to. It's wrongly assumed that everyone drives to these places.