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China unveils design for $5 billion particle smasher
The center of gravity in high energy physics could move to Asia if either of two grand plans is realized. At a workshop here last week, Chinese scientists unveiled the full conceptual design for the proposed Circular Electron Positron Collider (CEPC), a $5 billion machine to tackle the next big challenge in particle physics: studying the Higgs boson. (Part of the design was published in the summer.) Now, they’re ready to develop detailed plans, start construction in 2022, and launch operations around 2030—if the Chinese government agrees to fund it.
Meanwhile, Japan’s government is due to decide by the end of December whether to host an equally costly machine to study the Higgs, the International Linear Collider (ILC). How Japan’s decision might affect China’s, which is a few years away, is unclear. But it seems increasingly likely that most of the future action around the Higgs will be in Asia. Proposed “Higgs factories” in Europe are decades away and the United States has no serious plans.
The Higgs boson, key to explaining how other particles gain mass, was discovered at CERN, the European particle physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland, in 2012—more than 40 years after being theoretically predicted. Now, scientists want to confirm the particle’s properties, how it interacts with other particles, and whether it contributes to dark matter. Having only mass but no spin and no charge, the Higgs is really a “new kind of elementary particle” that is both “a special part of the standard model” and a “harbinger of some profound new principles,” says Nima Arkani-Hamed, a theorist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. Answering the most important questions in particle physics today “involves studying the Higgs to death,” he says.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 18 2018, @10:18PM (2 children)
I'm not a fan of dark matter but the problem we observe is that galaxies behave as if they have more matter generating gravity than we are able to observe. Since we can't find any problem with the theories it is reasonable to assume there might be something else out there.
Besides, people have still been trying to find new theories. Every theory is a bunch of nonsense until it is proven, that is the scientific process at work.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Monday November 19 2018, @12:24AM
Except dark matter has no scientific process attached to it: you have to arbitrarily add dark matter to each and every galaxy by hand.
To make this galaxy not fly apart we need to add, let's see...100 dark matters....no...250, no 234 dark matters!
But THIS galaxy takes 234....no...259.....no...421....no...420.5....close, do we'll say 420.3 dark matters.
No scientific process at all, just hand waving. Too much money is being pumped into 'magic'.
I think this guy is MUCH closer to the scientific process:
https://physicsfromtheedge.blogspot.com/ [blogspot.com]
His equation actually fits without arbitrariness and hand waving.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 19 2018, @04:46AM
Umm... what kind of doublethink is this? In science a discrepancy between observation and theoretical predictions is either some sort of measurement error or a problem with the theory. You dont consider predicting the wrong behavior of galaxies to be a problem with the theory?