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Published online 3 July 2008 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2008.933
Column: Muse
Behind the mask of the LHC
The physics that the Large Hadron Collider will explore has tentative philosophical foundations. But that's a good thing, says Philip Ball.
Physicists, and indeed all scientists, should rejoice that the advent of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has become a significant cultural event. Dubbed the 'Big Bang machine', the new particle accelerator at CERN — the European centre for particle physics near Geneva — should answer some of the most profound questions in fundamental physics and may open up a new chapter in our exploration of why the world is the way it is.
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"So let’s acknowledge and even celebrate our ignorance" Our ignorance also prevents us from knowing with reasonable certainty if the warnings of possible risk from the Large Hadron Collider might be valid or not. CERN's SPC Committee wrote of the neutron star and cosmic ray argument found in the 2008 LSAG Safety Report: "A powerful argument applicable also to higher energies is formulated making reference to observed neutron stars, but this argument relies on properties of cosmic rays and neutrinos that, while highly plausible, do require confirmation, as can be expected in the coming years."(indico.cern.ch/getFile.py/access?contribId=20&resId=0&materialId=0&confId=35065) We tend to not think twice about going forward with this experiment while ignoring the subtle warnings that might be valid if all of the following are in the end confirmed. - Micro black holes would need to be creatable at collider energies. This is unknown. - Micro black holes would need to be stable and not decay. This is unknown. - Micro black holes would need to grow quickly. This is also unknown. Unfortunately cosmic ray impacts with Earth do not prove safety as results of cosmic rays pass through Earth and into space at nearly the speed of light. If colliders create micro black holes, some will move too slowly to escape Earth's gravity. The legal action currently before US Federal Courts estimates high risk, but acknowledges that the true risk is unknown. Learn more from LHCFacts.org or en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safety_of_the_Large_Hadron_Collider
(1) "Physics Nobel laureate David Gross has pointed out the apparent paradox in that latter approach: "The search for new symmetries of nature is based on the possibility of finding mechanisms, such as spontaneous symmetry breaking, that hide the new symmetry"". OK, Philip, this time let's try to think a little about what we are putting on pages of a central information source of science, such as Nature. So, you personally, being a reasonable and educated Englishman (and even a professional and highly experienced science journalist and writer), you consider, following the Nobel Laureate David Gross and other "officially great" sages of modern science, that there is a real-object property called "symmetry" that can simultaneously be and not be true (providing a new solution to the famous Hamlet hesitation!), and even give rise, due to such "peculiar" feature, to essential progress of science. But if such perpetuated statements of the "officially great" science are "logical" and "reasonable", then what can be called a foolish delirium, abracadabra or simply nonsense? Another philosophical problem you would say. Or maybe not. Maybe it's just persisting evident trickery of "our great science" that cannot explain the observed reality but instead of honestly acknowledging it and looking for another, consistent explanation, its high priests continue, with your essential help, to impose their evidently absurd "theories" leading to ever greater impasses and new "mysteries" ("dark matters", "hidden dimensions", "multiverses",...). And they even use those great revelations as a basis for creation of extremely expensive, industrial-scale experimental projects that are being SPECIALLY designed - let's not forget about it, Philip! - for "confirmation" of those evidently inconsistent concepts, full of major contradictions already in theory and with respect to well-known, undoubtful observations. (2) So, you say, following Nobel Laureates, that, for example, a square is but a circle whose symmetry has been broken, so that a square is simultaneously like a circle and not like a circle. And this is a great philosophical truth, exactly as great as their other "broken symmetries", "hidden dimensions", "dark matters", "quantum mysteries", and other fraudulent "landscapes" behind huge new accelerators, hyper-sophisticated satellites and underground mega-labs. And you, an educated Englishman and scientific knowledge professional of the 21st century, you want to imply that this kind of science is looking for the objective truth about the real world we live in?! Then I propose to change the title of our preferred source of information about THAT kind of science, from Nature to something like Rupture (of logic and common sense, for example). (3) Electromagnetic and weak forces are as different between them as one can ever imagine and stating that there is still a (formal, abstract) "symmetry" between them, but which is just "broken a little, you know", isn't it the evident rupture of any consistency, let alone scientific rigour and logic? In addition, as you certainly know, Philip, both their "standard" and "non-standard" theories full of those logical ruptures and "broken" reason but still imposed in all science sources as the unique, uniquely possible kind of scientific truth, all those "officially accepted" theories of unitary science cannot (and even don't try to!) explain what is the real, tangible, physical (rather than "abstract-mathematical" or "model") structure of elementary particles, origin of their properties, forces of their interaction and "embedding" entities of space and time. Where do they come from in nature, Philip, those electromagnetic, weak and other interactions whose "officially broken" symmetry you so obediently describe in Nature? (4) The situation is the same, of course, for the notorious "supersymmetry" and all its "strangely absent" ("hidden", as usually!) "superpartners": just an infinite series of evident lies used as a justification for ever greater investment in ever more expensive experimental enterprises that only lead official science (the only supported one!) ever deeper into its evident modern impasse... (5) Of course we'd like nature to be symmetric and especially that this, desirably universal, symmetry could give rise to all other observed properties and laws, thus directly underlying (and unifying!) the real world structure and dynamics. And of course, we want it to be a reasonable, unbroken symmetry or else why talking about any "symmetry" at all, if it is so definitely, permanently "broken"?! And you know what, Philip, such symmetry DOES EXIST, possess all the expected properties and provide the intrinsically unified and causally complete (realistic and consistent) explanation for the totality of observations! I call it the (universal) SYMMETRY OF COMPLEXITY and you can find further details e.g. at http://arXiv.org/abs/physics/0601140 and http://arXiv.org/abs/physics/0404006. No, I don't force you to abandon the "officially great" kingdom of postulated supernatural "mysteries", broken common sense and absent logic, irreducibly separated from reality and giving rise to ever growing number of "unsolvable" problems. It's your bread, I understand, and much more than bread, for you and so many other devoted servants to the Rupture. I just think that you and other honest and educated gentlemen (as well as ladies, honest or simply curious :)) have the right to know about this other, unbroken and practically efficient symmetry (because it solves problems, the real ones, and provides a holistic world picture, with its provably reliable research programme). (6) "The really exciting fact is that the LHC should mark the end of one era — defined by the Standard Model — and the beginning of the next. And at this point, we do not even know the appropriate language to describe what will follow — whether, for example, it will be rooted in new symmetry principles (such as supersymmetry, which relates hitherto distinct particles), or extra dimensions, or something else." Well, and now, Philip, you DO KNOW what those "new symmetry principles", that "something else" could actually be, and it is not difficult to see that the properties of the universal symmetry of complexity are (provably) far beyond the evidently false (and already falsified rather than "broken"!) "supersymmetry", "hidden dimensions", and all other definitely broken abstractions of the dead official doctrine (but which is always disproportionally, uniquely imposed in all officially supported science sources). (7) "So let’s acknowledge and even celebrate our ignorance, which is after all the springboard of the most creative science." No, Philip, you don't need to celebrate that century-old ignorance any more (unless it's your preferred pleasure). Really creative science just STARTS from replacing ignorance with explicit problem solutions (as opposed to century-long promises of such solutions!), and that's exactly why it is very thoroughly expelled from all official science labs, universities and media. They don't need creativity, Philip, only their "stable" and well-paid "positions", and it's an evident fact, not "philosophy" (respective references aren't missing, are they?). But if you and hopefully some of your readers do need that genuine, problem-solving, anti-ignorance creativity in science and the resulting unreduced truth about reality, then you have the right to know that it not only can but has been realised and that it needs, without much surprise, quite another kind of scientific knowledge and research practice (see http://arxiv.org/abs/0705.4562 for further discussion).
"... the LHC is no model of 'normal' science." - What precisely do you mean by 'normal' science? Does science become 'abnormal' when the scale is increased? In the ultimate analysis science tests theories and predictions, which is precisely what the LHC is set out to do. " .. we don't truly know what role symmetry does and should play in physical theory." – A truly elegant scientific theory should be concise, succinct, simple and encompassing. The string theory is elegant in this manner. It would explain both the quantum theory and the relativity theory, and everything in between, in one elegant theory. No need for any adjustments or fudge factors. No need, indeed for the big bang or the breakdown of causality in a black hole. So elegant indeed that it must be true. Allegedly it has made no predictions - no tests that could test the theory, but it allows for the escape of energy into the extra dimensions under special circumstances. That sounds mighty like a prediction to me. If indeed it is found that there is less energy at the start of the collisions than there is at the start, then hello, hello! Sit up and take notice. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
That should be less energy at the end of the collisions than at the start
PS - When I said no need for the Big Bang, what I meant was no need for the Big Bang to be the start of the creation of the Universe. Hoyles and Narlikars theory of the Steady State Universe was immensely satisfying as it didn't have to explain any beginning of the Universe. This suffered an ignominious demise with the evidence of the Big Bang. Suddenly the Universe had a beginning and no one had a clue as to what came before. Now all of a sudden this unsatisfactory state of affairs need not be. We need not be completely befuddled at time 0. The steady state could be reincarnated into a pulsating state.
Philip defines the Standard Model as the "summation of all we currently know about this branch of reality". It would be more accurate to say that it is a summation of what people currently believe, rather what they know, about reality. The difference being that the standard model clearly can't be true when it claims that quarks have colour. This whole notion was introduced to explain how you could have Delta baryons that contain three down quarks, or that contain three up quarks without violating the exclusion principle. The idea was that the quarks had colour and weren't therfore identical and hence that there was no violation of the principle. But if this argument is true it follows that just as there are four delta baryons there should also be four spin half nucleons. Besides the proton and neutron there should also be a negatively charged neutron and a doubly charged proton and their masses would be comparable to the proton. The n- has a mass charge ratio almost identical to the antiproton and might be missed but the p++ should stand out. These particles should show up all over the place - in particle accelerators, in cosmic ray showers, in nuclear decays, in the big bang, and in astronomy with, e.g., helium 2 isotopes. Yet we've never seen them. Clearly they don't exist. According to the Particle Data Group many of the excited nucleon multiplets also only contain two members rather than four, and there is no spin half version of the Omega minus particle, even though there should be if quarks had colour. Obviously there is an exclusion principle at work and part of the SM is wrong. I complained about this to the Nobel Prize committe when Wilczek et al won but never heard back from them.
Philip defines the Standard Model as the "summation of all we currently know about this branch of reality". It would be more accurate to say that it is a summation of what people currently believe, rather what they know, about reality. The difference being that the standard model clearly can't be true when it claims that quarks have colour. This whole notion was introduced to explain how you could have Delta baryons that contain three down quarks, or that contain three up quarks without violating the exclusion principle. The idea was that the quarks had colour and weren't therfore identical and hence that there was no violation of the principle. But if this argument is true it follows that just as there are four delta baryons there should also be four spin half nucleons. Besides the proton and neutron there should also be a negatively charged neutron and a doubly charged proton and their masses would be comparable to the proton. The n- has a mass charge ratio almost identical to the antiproton and might be missed but the p++ should stand out. These particles should show up all over the place - in particle accelerators, in cosmic ray showers, in nuclear decays, in the big bang, and in astronomy with, e.g., helium 2 isotopes. Yet we've never seen them. Clearly they don't exist. According to the Particle Data Group many of the excited nucleon multiplets also only contain two members rather than four, and there is no spin half version of the Omega minus particle, even though there should be if quarks had colour. Obviously there is an exclusion principle at work and part of the SM is wrong. I complained about this to the Nobel Prize committe when Wilczek et al won but never heard back from them.