Dr. Neil Tyson Insults United States on its Birthday?!?!?!
July 4th, 2012
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In case you have not heard, scientists at CERN have released data which indicates that they have likely detected the Higgs Boson, the illusive particle whose discovery would prove much of the underlying theory of the Standard Model. It’s a great achievement and, assuming this is the real deal, which it certainly appears to be, will be remembered as a major milestone in science.
On the day we reserve to tell ourselves America is great – July 4 – Europe reminds us that we suck at science. #HiggsBoson
Sorry but I call BS on this. While it’s certainly true that the US could do a lot more to further science and should invest more in scientific research, but this event in no way signals the end of US science or demonstrates that the United States “sucks” at science at all.
Reasons:
- CERN is an international organization and the LHC is an international facility. It’s located in France and Switzerland, but many others contributed too, including much of the European Union, as well as Japan, South Korea and the United States. Yes, the US was not absent from the construction of the LHC. Both Fermilab and the Brookhaven National Laboratory contributed to the project by providing detector technology integral to the facility. The US government contributed well over half a billion dollars to the project.
- There have been many many major discoveries in particle physics made in the United States, even fairly recently. It would be ridiculous to expect that 100% of major discoveries would come from US research facilities.
- Data from Fermilab’s Tevaton had previously indicate that the Higgs boson may have been detected, but the error on the measurements was too high to say so for sure. None the less, the pioneering work of those at Fermilab should not be diminished by this discovery.
- The reason the LHC was able to do what others could not is that it is bigger and more powerful than previous colliding particle accelerators. Each time a new accelerator was built at a scale larger than predecessors, new discoveries have been made and more data generated. Many, but not all of those accelerators have been in the United States. Given the expense of the construction of super-large particle collides it is not reasonable to expect one nation to monopolize the field of record-breaking accelerators.
You can visit the US at LHC website for more info
This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 4th, 2012 at 8:10 pm and is filed under Bad Science, Culture, Good Science, History, Misc, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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July 5th, 2012 at 4:58 am
What about the SSC?
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July 5th, 2012 at 6:25 am
Dr.Tyson is showing some of the attitude that has been noticeable in its absence of late, but was once common with Americans in the days when they did stuff like telling the world they were going to the Moon inside of ten years and then pulling it off. Some found it arrogant and annoying but I suspect only because they knew it was founded on a national self confidence that no other culture could maintain. The U.S. has lost this brashness and in my opinion, is diminished for that.
Perhaps it’s time that some like Dr. Tyson remind you Yanks just who you are and stir up some of the competitive feelings that have gone dormant, and what better time to do it than your national day.
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July 5th, 2012 at 8:00 am
DV82XL said:
Yes, you have a point. It seems a little over the top to me, just the same.
I’m not bothered by this discovery not being American, but I am that the United States does not seem to be leading the world in science in general.
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July 5th, 2012 at 8:21 am
Anon said:
I would have voted to continue the SSC, because I think it was worth the cost. It was canceled because of cost overruns. After spending two billion dollars it became apparent that it would cost another ten billion to finish. That’s actually not horrible, because if you spread it over a period of ten years then that’s one billion a year. There are other things that might have been possible to save the project. Other nations could have been invited to join the project.
I’d suggest that the United States should really consider building a massive particle colider greater in size that the LHC.
One idea I had for making it a LOT cheaper would be to build it above ground. Large particle accelerators like the LHC are built underground for two reasons: to provide shielding from the high energy gamma radiation they produce and to make them less disruptive to the surface. Since they are so massive, many miles across, they would need a lot of realestate and get in the way of things if above ground. Also, there is the issue of topography and keeping it level.
The scale of such large underground projects adds a lot of expense. It necessitates things like tunnel boring machines be used in some cases, such as with the SSC.
There are plenty of areas of the US where we have ample space for such a facility and where there’s really nobody using the land anyway. Nevada, for example, possibly on or near the Nevada Test Site has plenty of ground, and much of it is pretty close to level. There would need to be minimal ground work to level the area.
As for shielding, it could be accomplished, to some extent, by building a concrete structure and piling up berms of dirt on the sides of it, which would not be expensive at all. That might not be enough to make it 100% safe during times of operation at high energies, in terms of radiation exposure to a passerby, but that’s no problem, because it’s not like we don’t have experience keeping people out of large areas of desert and conducting radiation-related experiments in such areas.
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July 5th, 2012 at 11:52 am
I think you are underestimating the labour cost associated with building concrete forms for pouring those structures. Not to mention the amount of groundwork needed to construct foundations. If we’re talking about building a structure large enough for a particle collider it probably would be cheaper to use a TBM to construct it underground.
Building the next big particle accelerator will happen at some point, when the Return On Investment for getting new results from the LHC starts diminishing. (And it will. Predictions are the LHC has about 20 years total useful life, including upgrades, until she no longer returns enough new data to be worth running).
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July 5th, 2012 at 1:01 pm
Boring does not eliminate your need for foundations. Miles of tunnel will likely traverse many different soil profiles, each requiring site-specific foundation design to ensure that differential movement is within whatever tolerances are necessary.
If cost is the only issue, it would be better to open-cut the entire trench and partially bury the collider. You would set the depth of the bury to displace enough dirt for use in whatever shielding you need. Nevada deserts would have the advantage of limited soil movement owing to no freeze-thaw and presumably non-expansive and well drained sandy soils.
Access to the interior of the ring would require bridges or tunnels. It would impose an impediment to surface water runoff, and that would have to be accounted for. If it’s habitat for any desert wildlife, migration routes would have to be maintained.
But the LHC is something like 500-600 ft deep. It that’s what’s required for shielding, piling a few feet of dirt on top of the ring isn’t going to do anything.
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July 5th, 2012 at 2:53 pm
“Others are doing the research” is one of the best reasons for not imitating them.
If nobody is researching X, it might make sense to try doing X just to see if it can be done (Example: the Manhattan project). If just one nation is researching X, it might make sense to follow them to prevent a monopoly. (Example: the space race). If everybody is researching X, then we can buy X (if it’s applied) from a variety of sources and learn about from more sources. In the applied case, we’ll be competing with lots of subsidized industries, which is a good way to lose money. (Example: solar panels.)
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July 5th, 2012 at 3:39 pm
Shafe said:
The lhc ranges in depth from about 50 meters to 200 meters. It was built in a tunnel previous used for an electron-positron collider. The reason for the depth isn’t so much shielding as it is topography and stability. The land above it varies and is not perfectly flat, so it is necessary to bore through it at a level that it remains straight and level at all areas.
One reason for going so far underground was apparently because of the area it is in. They had to go under any potential places where it could hit utilities or a subbasement or something.
If you did one in a place like the Nevada Test Site, where large areas of ground are mostly (but not perfectly) flat, you’d probably end up burring some parts of it, building others up on berms or causways and cutting others into the ground. If you started on the ground and then ran into a hill, you’d either tunnel through the hell or cut a pass through it, like is done with highways and railroads. The difference being that while highways and railroads cave some grade to them, this has to be perfectly true and straight.
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July 5th, 2012 at 3:44 pm
Joseph Hertzlinger said:
Actually the Manhattan project is an example of the second type, not the first (Germany and Japan very much were researching it).
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July 7th, 2012 at 1:55 pm
Neil Degrasse Tyson’s statement comes from his argument about Americas refusal to participate in the major financial commitment to facilitate discovery. His speeches to the senate subcommittee to commerce and transportation and to the National space symposium attest to this feeling of we’re getting left behind. The LHC was a project first thought up to be built in Texas but congress shut it down and now Europe is discovering. I think that is his point. This video posted by the Big Think in 2009 is Tyson answering a question that I think explains his recent push for scientific literacy. (such as his recent tweet)
http://bigthink.com/ideas/13149
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July 8th, 2012 at 10:40 am
I think presentation Tyson gave in 2011 can place his comments into context a bit. http://youtu.be/BCz1NuzfFnM
The US is falling behind in terms of research. And that’s a problem.
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July 17th, 2012 at 5:50 pm
A bit sensitive there Dr. I hope you grow thicker skin if you plan on being successful in politics. The tweet appeared to be an off-the-cuff comment which rightly praised one of the greatest scientific discoveries of all time, and expressed a wish that the discovery had occurred in the writer’s home country.
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