Readit NewsHello? We have 17(!) federally funded national labs, full of scientists doing the work this article waxes nostalgic about. Through the Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) program they afford employee scientists the ability to pursue breakthrough research. However, they are facing major reductions in funding now due to the recent CR and the upcoming congressional budget!
It's an illusion that no-strings-attached funding exists. The government has an agenda and you're free to research anything you want, as long as it is one of the pre-determined topics. It's a very political process.
The shell games are:
1. claiming it is a proton collider[^1 source] designed to look for new particles [^2 comment].
2. false equivalence between China putting in their latest 5 year plan to make a plan to make something that will transition to being a proton collider. And it's worse than that:
If they immediately started after the plan was complete and on schedule, they'd be done in 2048 and transition from e/p to protons in 2066.
CERNs plan is to be done with e/p in 2042 and transition to protons in 2070. That's 4 years later, but it's comically irrelevant. That's not getting done sooner, that's just transitioning to doing stuff we already can do faster, the cool thing and why both are interested in building one is the electron/positron collider stuff, not scaled up proton collider stuff.
Content: - The project would transition to a proton collider at the end of its lifespan as a novel tool, in 2070.
- It is proposed to operate by 2042, assuming funds dispersed over 12 years, starting in 2030.
- It will operate as a electron-positron collider for the intervening ~3 decades before transitioning to essentially LHC with 4x power.
- Electron / positron is a unique collision form, chosen to allow for more precise measurement, such as the LHC discoveries of discrepancies in the Standard Model.
- This is very important work. The more precise you nail down these uncertainties, the more theorists can do to verify their work, allowing the experimentalists to know where to look for new stuff, if any.
[^1 source] Via Sabine link: "CERN wants to build a new particle collider which will smash protons together at roughly 6 times the energies seen at the Large Hadron Collider."
[^2 comment] This is the undercurrent of the whole criticism, I cannot explicitly source it to one sentence. It's also bizarre: I can't remember the last time experimentalists got to discover something without the theorists telling them where to look. It's cheaper that way! LHC was a failure too by that standard. There simply aren't any candidates in the theory that are accessible at humanities near-term energy levels, the Standard Model's worked beautifully, modulo these tantalizing discoveries at LHC of small discrepancies that electron/positron collisions let you explore.
Because if the answer is that we might incidentally create new useful technology in the build up of a new collider, why not just diversify the investment and put that money into a bunch of smaller projects? Hedge your bets sort of thing.
Why support this and not allocate more into high temperature superconductivity for example? I don't understand what is the justification that entitles such a large amount of money to a singular project.
For older, actually real vehicles, that information is more easily available. For modern, classified vehicles, and vehicles that were never actually produced, they have to make reasonable assumptions. Sometimes players get upset about these assumptions and how they impact the game balance, and post classified design documents on the forums to argue their points.
That's incredible!
Dead Comment
This isn't true at all, I know several people who have done it.
From this lens, the silver lining of the software layoffs going on may be to stem the bleeding of semiconductor workers to the field. If Intel were really smart, they’d be hiring more right now the people they couldn’t get or retain 3-5 years ago
How about paying more then?
Show me the incentive and I'll show you the outcome.
When I interviewed at intel the position they were offering was to be the "owner" of a tool and I'd be on call.... Yeah no thanks, I get a PhD just to be owned by some company?