Should China build the next generation of super colliders?

As a high-energy physics industry, Liu Feng, who wants to verify his ability through the collider, is definitely in favor of it with both hands and feet.

However, he also knew that wanting to build such a super collider was definitely not something that could be decided by patting his head.

In fact, if you look at the LHC in Europe, it took a total of 30 years from research to demonstration to completion, and it is no wonder that there are many opponents in China.

You must know that even the Beijing Positron Collider was built by Comrade Xiaoping against public opinion, and it has been decades before and after, including construction and operation, which has cost nearly 10 billion, and it is still 10 billion in that era!

The new super collider will naturally be larger and more advanced than the LHC, so the construction cost alone, some people estimate that it will cost at least 20 billion US dollars, so from the moment this idea was proposed, it caused controversy among a large number of physicists at home and abroad.

Those who support it argue:

In this regard, although Europe and the United States are temporarily ahead of China, China definitely has an excellent opportunity to become a world leader, and we cannot miss it.

Moreover, high-energy physics is an emerging field after World War II, and this field has made brilliant achievements in the past seven decades, validating the "Standard Model" and giving mankind an in-depth understanding of the three fundamental forces in the physical world.

However, two major problems remain unresolved: first, the in-depth understanding of the fourth remaining fundamental force, gravity, and the lack of understanding of how to unify power and quality.

Therefore, high-energy physicists hope to use the super-large collider to discover 'supersymmetric particles', so as to point out the direction of solving these two problems.

Liu Feng also agreed.

Because in his opinion, particle physics is definitely not a field that is on the verge of death, and it is completely different from what it looked like in the 80s, and since then, the Standard Model looks like it has been largely confirmed, which also gives the impression that the field is complete.

However, this is by no means the real situation!

There are still many phenomena in nature that cannot be explained by the Standard Model, including CP destruction, neutrino oscillations and dark matter, etc., which are just phenomena that cannot be explained by today's scientific community, but Liu Feng has also discovered many, many physical phenomena that are difficult to explain by controlling the energy of particles in the microscopic world, and once these phenomena are studied clearly, it will definitely bring a great leap to the human world!

As long as we seize this opportunity to build a super collider to explore these theories and discoveries, Huaguo will lead the development trend of high-energy physics in the next 50 years!

However, the views of those who oppose it cannot be ignored, and these people have always been not optimistic about the development of high-energy physics.

First of all, of course, there is the issue of funding.

In this regard, country M, which built the super collider in the ocean next door, has a painful experience:

Liu Feng learned that country M once began to build the world's largest collider in 1989, and the budget was estimated at $3 billion at the beginning, and then it was increased several times, reaching $8 billion, causing many objections, so that in 92 years, the Congress of country M terminated this plan, wasting the early $3 billion investment!

This experience of country M has led to the general belief that the construction of a super collider is a bottomless pit, and moreover, it is a super deep one!

Although China's GDP has jumped to the second place in the world, it is still only a developing country, with a per capita GDP less than that of Brazil and Malaysia, hundreds of millions of farmers and migrant workers, and urgent environmental problems, education problems, medical and health problems, etc.

The construction of a mega collider is extremely expensive, and it will inevitably greatly squeeze the space to solve these problems, and even squeeze the funding of other basic sciences, including life science, condensed matter physics, astrophysics, and so on, so it must be seriously considered.

Then there is the problem that in the past 70 years, the achievements of high-energy physics have basically brought little tangible benefits to human life, which is also a fatal problem that has been repeatedly attacked by proponents.

Because, even if the super-large collider can be built and realized, and it can really succeed in advancing high-energy physics by a big step, it will still not be of substantial benefit to human life, at least, not in the short and medium term, not even in 30 or 50 years!

Finally, and what is even more fatal is that it has been almost 30 years since the establishment of Huaguo's high-energy institute, but among the world's most important high-energy physicists, Huaguo's share is less than 2%!

The design of the construction of the super collider, as well as its operation and analysis after completion, will be led by 90% of non-Chinese people from the beginning, and even if it can win the explosives award, will the winners be Chinese?

In response to these problems, opponents have even planned two directions for the development of high-energy physics: not to build a super-large collider, to find the principle of a new accelerator for the future, or to find a beautiful theoretical geometry, such as string theory, etc., after all, both aspects are theoretical research, which is not so expensive and is also in line with the general trend of domestic economic development.

Among those who agreed, the dynamite award winners such as Yau Chengtong, Hawking, and David Gross were the mainstays, and of course, Academician Wang and others were also in favor, and even the address was chosen, just near Qinhuangdao and Shanhaiguan!

As for the opposing side, it also includes Yang Zhenning, Yang Lao, Philip Anderson and many other winners who won the explosives award.

Anyway, on this topic, there is no shortage of scientific bigwigs on both sides, and even quarreled with the world since the last century, and there has been no result of the quarrel so far.

As for Professor Ding Zhaozhong's attitude, Liu Feng has never heard of it, and perhaps, he guesses that Ding Lao is also very entangled.

It stands to reason that he must be inclined to build, after all, he himself is the leader of the high-energy physics community, and he also wants to figure out the problems that have plagued physicists for decades!

But intellectually, Ding Lao should also think that the opponents' opinions are not unreasonable, the super collider is indeed too expensive, and it really has little impact on human life in a short period of time, and Huaguo alone bears most of the construction costs, can it bear it? Even if Huaguo has money, can the physicists engaged in high-energy physics research in Huaguo carry this banner in time?

Anyway, Liu Feng himself muttered.

Thinking of this, he shook his head.

If he is not in his position, he will not be in charge, at least, at this time, this issue is not something he can worry about.

It's just that he can't help but be very concerned about this.

"Boss, there's a secret question I don't know if I can ask. ”

"You say. ”

"After you and Ding Lao were picked up yesterday, did you go to discuss our own super collider in Huaguo?

Liu Feng stared at Boss Wang directly, with expectation and curiosity in his eyes.

Academician Wang's hand drinking tea subconsciously stopped for a moment, only to see him look at Liu Feng as if he was looking at a monster, and said in surprise: "How do you know?" Liu Feng only smiled and did not speak.

Such a simple thing can be guessed!

When he came back to his senses, Academician Wang himself felt that he had asked a nonsense.

After a long time, he took a deep breath, put the teacup on the table casually, and said with a smile: "You kid, you can even guess this kind of thing, Ding Lao really didn't misunderstand you! No matter what, this matter is not a secret, it doesn't hurt to tell you, after consulting Professor Ding's attitude, the people above have reached the final stage of argumentation, maybe it won't be long before the news of agreeing to build will be announced to the world! You kid, it's really the right time!"