The liberal American media - the New York Times and the Washington Post - began to attack the sin of canceling a particle accelerator that was supposed to be 3 times more powerful than the LHC, which Congress defunded in 1992 after 2 billion dollars had already been invested
in the article entitled Why was the Higgs boson not discovered in America? Brad Plumber writes:
"Physicists have been searching for almost half a century for evidence of the existence of the Higgs, which according to the theory should give all other particles their mass, but it was impossible to start looking without the large hadron accelerator built at a cost of 10 billion dollars. This is the most powerful particle accelerator in the world located in a circular tunnel 27 kilometers long under the border between Switzerland and France."
"However, it turns out that the Higgs could have been discovered a decade earlier - in Texas instead of Switzerland. In the 3s, American physicists developed a particle accelerator 20 times more powerful than the LHC, but Congress stopped funding and the project collapsed. Steven Weinberg, a physicist and Nobel laureate who participated in the design of the Superconducting Super Collider (or SSC), says that we are talking about a proton accelerator with a power of up to 3 tera electron volts, XNUMX times what will be available at the LHC when it reaches its peak power."
"After a decade of work, the planning was completed and a site was chosen for construction in Texas. The land was purchased and work began on digging a trench and on the magnets to accelerate the protons. However, in 1992, the House of Representatives canceled the funding for the SSC, the funding was returned by a joint committee of Congress and the House of Representatives, but a year later, Congress canceled the funding again, and this time the joint committee decided not to intervene, and thus the project died."
In an article entitled "Our Political Black Hole" published on the New York Times website, Gail Collins writes: "Scientists in Geneva announced this week that they have found a new subatomic particle that they are 99.9999999% certain is the elusive Higgs boson, also known as "The God Particle".
"It gives us a lot of things to think about, how the universe began, the structure of the universe, the difference between bosons and fermions, and of course what it means about the presidential race.
"The first thing American patriots should ask themselves is why something of this importance is happening somewhere else. The Large Hadron Collider, where the physicists did their work, was built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research. We started building our own accelerator in Waxahachie, Texas, but Congress stopped funding for it in 1993. "It's disheartening that such a large group of smart people can do something like this," said Leon Lederman, a Nobel laureate in physics, when the House of Representatives canceled the project.
But it was at a time when they still carried out big and ambitious projects and believed that the House of Representatives was a place where smart people gathered.
Later, Collins conducted a simulation of a hypothetical exchange between presidential candidates Mitt Romney who promised that under his administration all the particles on Earth would be discovered in America by Americans for Americans, but did not allocate funding for this on the grounds that the physicists should try harder and get the most out of themselves without government money. Whereas Obama took comfort in the fact that all the physicists who discovered the Higgs had medical insurance (being European).
In contrast, Gary Sticks writes in the blog of Scientific American, because the American scientific leadership should not be eulogized, nevertheless most of the best universities in the world are still American, as are most of the Nobel Prize winners in physics and chemistry, and two thousand Americans worked on the Basran project, including those same Nobel Prize winners.
Styx also takes comfort in the fact that since the LHC particle accelerator is an international project, the best minds from all over the world were engaged in it, something that would not have been possible if the project had been under American control.
And in addition, in the suburbs of Geneva the project is much more respected than in the suburbs of Dallas, where suspicion against science is at its peak.
14 תגובות
goat,
It is incorrect to say that the Middle Ages began when the Church began to interfere in the activities of scientists. In fact, the Inquisition that was responsible for such things was established when the signs of the Renaissance began in the 13th century and reached the height of its power (in terms of interfering with science) at the height of the Italian Renaissance. I would say that when scientists began, the church began to interfere in their activities, while the Middle Ages did not begin because of science but because of politics (the fall of the Roman Empire).
In any case, there is no doubt that this intervention is not a positive sign
As usual, the "guessers" are right. It is very strange to find a chauvinist, narrow and nationalistic collection of opinions bordering on racism (Chinese, etc.) on a website named "Hidan".
The truth is that after about 200 years of intense capitalist and nationalist brainwashing, it's no wonder that there are such reactions in the American press (and there were undoubtedly also in Russia then and now) and on our website, and it's a shame.
The half-full glass:
A plan that today is clear to everyone that did not work led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union,
The USA is a single power at the top, a new world order.
All this for $2 billion.
Sounds like the best deal in history.
2 billion, not a million.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superconducting_Super_Collider
It is not at all clear that they should have built the super collider. And even if you say that it was appropriate to allocate those billions to basic scientific research, it is not at all clear that finding the Higgs boson is the best thing that can be done with the money (if you ask biologists, for example, you will get a completely different answer). In the end, the information obtained by the Europeans is available to all. Many American scientists were partners in the project. All this information is simply not clear.
What is so important (besides prestige/ego/bullshit)
That the most powerful computer will be in the USA
that the discoveries will be in the USA
That the accelerator will be in the US
After all, they are watching in the center anyway and receiving all the data.
Is the USA sinking?
The Middle Ages of Europe began when the Church began to interfere in the activities of scientists.
Today we see creationists introducing their theories in a scientific guise into biology studies, severe restrictions on embryonic stem cell experiments, the shuttle program that ended without the development of an alternative program. And also the issue of canceling the accelerator.
I hope this is not a negative initial sign of things to come.
The Europeans invested billions of dollars on the discovery of a particle that contributes nothing to science.
Such a large investment to prove a theory that is considered correct anyway and has been in use for decades is a very problematic investment. The Americans were wise to let the Europeans spend the money. The money saved can be translated into other research that will allow US universities to develop more practical patents and maintain their technological advantage.
As of a month ago, the most powerful supercomputer is located in the USA
To the respondent-
Keep up to date, God's most powerful computer is once again in the United States...
Scientists are interested in science.
Countries are interested in technology.
Science does not need huge budgets.
And again many thanks to Obama, thanks to whom the Chinese will reach Mars before the USA!
And of course the best example is the space program - Project Cancellation...
Cessation of massive investments in scientific development and infrastructure - progressive signs of the decline of an empire.
Even now the fastest supercomputer in the world is not in the USA. That says it all.