New LHC monitoring portal LIVE DATA

[Xymox]

Well this is certainly a spirited discussion. I am trying my best :)

Just for the record again. I do not believe there are any more talented people then the ones working in every aspect of the LHC project. Are all of us human ? can any of us miss something or make a mistake ? Of course. Its human nature. Is that likely at the LHC ? hardly. BUT it -can- happen.

Well we do have our minds already made up don't we. So the answer is that no one from outside the established physics taught academia can come up with any news ideas ?

So anyone not already established can't come up with a new idea or a observation that other missed ? Its impossible that a novice could come up with a Earth shattering idea ?

Your saying its impossible is that correct ? mathematically infinitely impossible correct ?

As far as Einstein goes, I am not a expert as I said. I would personally consider a paper from a 15 year old fairly impressive and honestly think he would have to be considered a novice at 15 ? But I will concede defeat on that I suppose and just stick with math on this debate.

I think it -IS- mathematically possible that a random person could contribute in a positive way to the outcome of the experiment results from the LHC. I think it is also mathematically possible that the more people that contribute, the more the possibility goes up that someone might find something others did not.

Lets try that angle.

This is NOT disrespecting any of the fine and frankly awesome people at CERN.

You know, do not get me wrong either. I have great respect for you Vanadium.

I just wish some of the really experienced people here, like yourself, might come visit my forum now and then. I am -NOT- a expert and I have some people asking questions I can't answer and with the massive traffic the site is getting I really want to make sure answers get tended to correctly by people who know what they are talking about. I do not. I have stuff I do know, but physics I do NOT know. I feel a very compelling desire to help address the whole "The LHC is going to create a black hole and gobble the earth" issue. To combat this I need some experienced pros who can answer these debates to firmly address the fears of these lay people.

I hate to ask that here in the forum, in the middle of this debate, but its a pressing need. It would be good for CERN and for physics in general. I am getting 7000 new IP's a day. 90,000 hits / day. Not too many people on the forum, mostly the portal but the stats show people do look. This might be a good way to address the incorrect fear some people have of physics being something bad.

Just pointing that out...

We can just forget I said all that and continue with the debate if you desire

 

[Redbelly98]

Well, let's suppose for the sake of argument that it's possible for an amateur to discover something new, if given access to the data. On the other hand, it is also be possible for an amateur to:

• Believe he had discovered something, when he really hadn't
• Pester the LHC scientists about his "new discovery"
• Get some reporter or other news media to believe he has a "new discovery"
• Pester Physics Forums with his new discovery

Experience says the latter scenario is far more likely. So much, that it may not be just one amateur claiming a new discovery but tens or hundreds of them. Some of the professionals' time is then be taken up with dealing with the misinformation, distracting them from their own work of extracting physics from the raw data. In summary: a royal PITA for the LHC scientists.

It comes down to a risk-vs-reward analysis, and the result is that it isn't worth it to open up the data as you propose.

p.s. we deal with a similar issue at Physics Forums, and is the reason why we don't allow discussion of non-mainstream, personal theories here. We take a small risk of missing out on the next great revolution in physics, but the reward is that we don't have tons of misinformation getting posted here.

 

[Xymox]

Hehehe...

Well you do have a point... Along with a great smiley to make your point.

No dispute that the masses would produce masses of incorrect answers and waste time, resources and energy. But, what if,,, hahahaha,,, the real big answer was out there !.. hheheheh... Yes I know... Don't slap me...

Im tellin ya. I need some help over at the LHCPortal. I need pros. You guys are pros.. I am NOT. It is not in the best interests of physics that I try and answer any of these questions. You guys have to admit that's true ? No argument on that one right ? hehehehe

 

[Xymox]

There are almost no posts on my forum. Its easy. I set up a forum just to bring the "end of the world" people so I could address their fears. Its kinda worked. I have a very nice, concerned, intelligent person who has gone back and forth and its been fun. It has been a great thread to help lay people understand that particle colliders are nothing to fear.

BUT he/she is starting to ask questions I just can't handle. Not to mention my other answers might no be fully correct. NOTE I said in every answer I WAS NOT a expert and was going to try my best tho.

I am very patient and answered in ways she/he could follow..

 

[chroot]

Xymox,

If your purpose is to attract pros to your portal, you are working against yourself in this very thread. Instead of exciting people with your work, you are exasperating them with your words.

Your buddy Einstein once said "If A is a success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut."

- Warren

 

[Vanadium 50]

This is NOT disrespecting any of the fine and frankly awesome people at CERN.

Of course it is. It's showing utter contempt. You are arguing that they are sufficiently bad scientists that they will miss a major discovery, and sufficiently bad scientists that a bunch of amateurs would do a better job. Think about the football analogy - if you said that you've never played in the NFL, or even in college, but you could score ten touchdowns in one quarter against the Colts or the Saints, what do you think people's reactions would be?

Now imagine you making the same statement in the locker room of the Colts or Saints. Like Warren said, you will have a hard time attracting real scientists to your site if you treat them in such an exasperating manner.

I also note that there is a huge difference between "having ideas" and "discovering something in the data that the researchers missed".

There's another point that Redbelly could have mentioned. People can "rediscover" old wrong things. About once a month we have someone post here that they have a revolutionary new theory of gravity. Except that it's not true - it was first proposed in 1690.

If you want to discover something new, you need to learn what is already known. That means devoting the time to study it.

 

[arivero]

Perhaps the point is "contributing work". It should be some way to add amateur and undergraduate level work to the prof work. Of course it could imply a discovery coming from the amateur work, but it should be the same that a discovery done in the collisions collected during the night shift of researcher John Doe in Aleph... it should still be a discovery of Aleph@CERN, not a discovery of John Doe.

 

[daschaich]

... I believe that everyone should have fair access to data, then apply analysis tools suited for the job of finding experimentally predicted/unpredicted results...

To rephrase what Haelfix and Vanadium have been saying, there are no such "analysis tools" that can be applied out-of-the-box. Hundreds of scientists have already devoted years of their lives to performing LHC analyses, and will be devoting years more in the decades to come. There is no way an outsider can even begin to make sense of the data independently, even if it is "semi-processed" as Xymox suggested. Haelfix said it best:

There is literally zero chance that an amateur can spot something in the LHC data that the pros would miss.

Something that I think should be emphasized more than it has been so far is that the LHC experimental collaborations are not monolithic entities. I think this is being overlooked in comments like:

So I think having more people from outside the box look at LHC science might well have advantages.

You know... maybe just like they need a million computer CPUs all working on the collision data to detect interesting events.. Maybe they need millions of people looking at the data to find interesting events as well...

...

Maybe the LHC should become completely open in order to have better quality results quicker :) Maybe having just a small group of people working on the science is not the best idea.

The collaborations are not "small groups of people", but include hordes of (often fiercely competing) scientists spanning the range from "conservatives" to iconoclasts, each promoting their favored searches and analyses. They're not going to overlook anything that anybody else could discover.

 

[ninar]

wow... i had never before acknowledged this fierce side of physicists. i like it.