When I was in college competing for the university rowing team, my coach, Carrie, was a mastermind at inventing new and creative torturous practices. I remember one land practice in particular. Our boathouse was located in Back Bay of Newport Beach, CA, nestled into the bluffs. We’d had a heavy rain the previous day and the water had cut trails down the bluffs. Carrie led us out to relatively shallow-sloped bluff and told us to sprint up the bluff, along one of the water cut paths. Then repeat that 30 times. And just to spice the practice up a bit, a few seconds after one person started up the hill, she started a second person. The purpose was the first person must reach the top without being caught; the second person must catch the first. And the person who fails must do N number of push-ups, squats, sit-ups, etc. where N is a large number. By construction one person must fail.
To this day, I can still remember every detail of that path up the bluff. I can remember sprinting up that hill, trying not to trip on the rugged terrain, focusing on this little patch of bushes that marked the end of the hill and thus salvation, hearing the pounding of my teammate’s footsteps behind me. The ears are remarkably bad at estimating the speed of an object behind you. In this case, it was impossible to judge if those pounding footsteps were approaching or retreating. And you dared not look back for fear of stumbling and losing precious seconds. All you could do was run as fast as you possibly could, knowing that you were being pursued but having no idea where your pursuer was.
So, how does this story relate to particle physics? Well, every time someone asks me about the interactions between ATLAS and CMS, the memory of this practice always inadvertently comes to my mind. Although it is rarely in the open, the fear of pursuit is always in the background. ATLAS and CMS both have the same experimental goals in mind: discovery of the Higgs, discovery of new physics. And they both want to be the first experiment to make those discoveries. It is not that as individuals people on ATLAS don’t associate or like people on CMS. There is plenty of interaction between the two experiments. But on the other hand, as an experiment there is the goal to be the first to discover new physics. And there is the fear that the other experiment is closer to making that discovery. But how much closer? That is the unknown.
This leads to the question, ‘Will the fear of pursuit, the pressure to be the first cause either ATLAS or CMS to publish before they are ready?’
Well…it probably wouldn’t be the first time something like that has happened in particle physics. Right now, though, we are all (ATLAS and CMS) focused more on just making it over the next hill—being ready to take data when the beam turns on. But who is to say what will happen when we have that almost-convincing Higgs plot in our hands? A peak in a mass plot that just might be evidence for supersymmetry, but might also be the miscalibration of our energy scale? And then you hear whispers in the CERN corridors that your rival is seeing “something” in their data. You hear your pursuer’s footsteps behind you and wonder if they are getting closer or further away.
I can relate to the first part of blog…simple me is lost for the rest. As I am sure you know the bluff are now an old folks apartment complex. No more tradition of rolling ankles,etc. to pass on to younger generations
I am glad that I am too young to remember that practice! But there are so many other practices that haunt my memories… Sometimes competition can cause more damage than we may realize.
Monica, when you ask whether “the pressure to be the first will cause either ATLAS or CMS to publish before they are ready”, another rowing analogy comes to mind, that of the “false start”, especially when the strat is visually controlled. You know you should push slightly before the “Go” order to give you an edge at the start yet cannot afford being too early. Achieving an acceptable and efficient “anticipated” start is a lot of fun, but requires much preparation, from ensuring that crew members follow the stroke’s blade movement rather than the starter’s order to getting used to that starter’s typical time lag between “Attention” and “Go”.
More generally, when reading presentations about the LHC and its experiments, I wondered to which extent ATLAS and CMS were complementary or competing. Are they pursuing essentially similar goals through different paths / technical means or do “the two crews row in similar boats at FISA standards”? If the latter, does it mean that some sort of duplicate investment is accepted or even organized in order to spur competition?
I know that high energy physics funding is a sensitive subject as is its misrepresentation by sports journalists venturing outside their area of expertise (and I am both an ex-journalist and a complete dummy when it comes to physics), so I hope we shall remain friends in spite of my silly questions.
This is by no means a silly question.
In terms of scientific goals ATLAS and CMS are similar. They both aim to discover the Higgs and search for new physics. But the detectors themselves are designed very differently. For example CMS has a very strong solenoid magnet whereas ATLAS has two magnet systems: a solenoid and toroid magnets. Also the detector technologies are different. Such as on ATLAS the electromagnetic calorimeter uses liquid argon whereas for CMS the electromagnetic calorimeter uses lead tungstate crystals.
There are several reasons to have two experiments. If one experiment observes the Higgs for example you want a second experiment to confirm the results. But also we are entering a new energy frontier, we are not sure what we will find. So we want to vary the detector technology as much as possible so that our discovery potential is not limited because of detector design.
Monica,
My question relates to the fear of pursuit. Sometimes, the fear of pursuit can lead us to pay more attention to our pursuers than to the precipice over which we may imminently plunge.
There’s an ethical consideration to all of this, and it is as follows: While the chances of a mishap are extremely small, some of the potential mishaps are pretty bad. Imagine that a black hole is created, and it does begin to accrete matter. I think we could call this catostrophic, in the range of possibilities, however remote.
I have no doubt that all of the folks involved are very smart, and have studied this thoroughly, but there are so many unknowns here that it raises a concern. Of what possible good is the experiment if it leads to the destruction of mankind?
Also, while one can dismiss the risk as miniscule, I am prompted to ask: By what right do these people decide to ignore that risk on behalf of 6 billion other people, most of whom could not care less about Higgs bosons or any of this?
Science sometimes forgets that it does have an end, and that end is not science itself. This is not a case of “ars gratia artis.” Science, if it does not serve mankind, has no purpose at all. I am not here speaking in collectivist terms, but merely in terms of purpose. If it’s not useful, why take the risk? If it’s merely your life or your laboratory or your collider you’re risking, that’s one thing. If you’re risking something potentially wider in scope, you’d better not do it.
Is leaving the power to inflict a potential disaster of this sort in the hands of very well-studied, well-meaning scientists any worse than leaving a nuclear weapon in the hands of a child? I worry that given the state of our knowledge in this area, there may be little difference.
Some people are now concerned enough to be contemplating law suits to shelve this testing until more is known.
Something to ponder.
Mark
The LHC is perfectly safe.
While the LHC is the most energetic man-made accelerator, it is not the first time energies of this magnitude have been experienced on Earth. Cosmic rays produced in outer space which are hitting Earth continually can have much greater energies than those produced at the LHC. The goal of the LHC is to reproduce these energies in a controlled laboratory environment.
I recommend the following website which addresses your question in greater detail.
http://askanexpert.web.cern.ch/AskAnExpert/en/Accelerators/LHCenvironment-en.html#3
Mark,
Your argument about the purpose of science seems to ignore the historical perception of science in favor of a political one. Yes, the goal of science is the eyes of government is to somehow advance technology in order to offer mankind a greater control of his universe. This is how governments justify funding science. But how can we know what advancements we will make before we discover them? No one thought, “man, I wish I had some sort of screen with projected electronic images. I’ll go discover the electron!” The discovery had to come first, and then the application was able to give us all the wonderful technologies we have today.
I trust that the discoveries we make today will lead to a better tomorrow. It just requires a little of that seeming antithesis to science: faith.