The Electron-Positron Collider
On the topic of a new electron-positron collider in response to people saying they should spend money on something 'more important'! (I am open to differing opinions from my own - this is my own view and the evidence I formed it from!) This comes after a press release today from CERN on https://home.cern/news/news/physics/particle-physicists-update-strategy-future-field-europe
This has caused quite a bit of controversy within the scientific community - that we’re in the middle of a global pandemic, a climate crisis, why should we care about particle physics and a new expensive project that could just prove the standard model is more or less complete, and maybe ‘just fill in the odd gap’?
Firstly: in response to people saying the money should be sent on climate change or pandemic management, the tech that is developed to make such a particle collider, such as the LHC, causes huge tech advancements which can even be used in medical fields eg https://t.co/kwun6K7H6t?amp=1
Secondly: a high-profile project such as this, and the results it could bring, will be great for future research funding for all science, not to mention the job opportunities for scientists and engineers (eg, ATLAS has ~3000 authors from 181 institutions! https://atlas.cern/discover/collaboration)
Thirdly: although 'the Large Hadron collider' is one collider, it isn't just one experiment! There are 7 experiments at the LHC: ATLAS, CMS, ALICE, LHCb, TOTEM, LHCf and MoEDAL! There have been over 2725 papers published from the LHC experiment: see this article on what 10 years of the LHC have achieved: https://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/10-years-of-lhc-physics-in-numbers
Finally, all I have to finish with is a quote from Stephen Hawking: “It surprises me how disinterested we are today about things like physics, space, the universe and philosophy of our existence, our purpose, our final destination. Its a crazy world out there. Be curious.”
Let me know your views on this - I’m open to other opinions.











