Comment by pfdietz
18 days ago
Look at it this way: they are investigating phenomena that require a collider-sized object to see. So unless your application involves a collider sized object, it won't use any effect they discover.
The problem is that fundamental physics has moved too far beyond the scales where we operate.
You're in an IT forum and can't imagine implementations of both the smallest and largest scales? ICs are built at nanoscale and have to deal with quantum effects. PNT systems are so large that they have to deal with the speed of light and relativistic effects.
Many things humanity builds are on the scale of colliders.
> The problem is that fundamental physics
I didn't know there was a problem. It seems like one of humanity's greatest successes.
You are mistating my argument. An honest reading, where you try to read what I wrote in the way that makes the most sense, would have concluded I was talking about large scale, not small scale.
Maybe it's not dishonesty; maybe people can disagree genuinely; maybe others add their own points, and communication is difficult; maybe you even miscommunicated - such certainty and judgement is always a signal of not seeing other people's perspectives. Maybe, on a large scale, the world doesn't revolve around what you intend to say.
As an example, I talked about both large and small scale.
I don't think that argument holds up. See quantum mechanics.
Quantum mechanics is demonstrable on a lab bench (or smaller), so your counterargument is completely wrong.
Any useful consequence of a physical effect is, in effect, an experiment that could test that effect. So if the smallest test is with a machine the size of a small country, no device using the effect can be smaller.
They’re using big things to do experiments. Maybe they discover some new physical effect. How do you know that that effect couldn’t be demonstrated in some smaller scale experiment after it’s understood better?
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The first working transistor was centimeter-scale, now billions of them fit in that space.
The first useful internal combustion engines were room-sized, now they fit on a moped.
The truck-sized hole in your argument is talking about "the smallest test". First discoveries/demonstrations of interesting phenomenons don't typically happen at the smallest scale (why would they?).
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