There is no evidence at this point in time that we know all there is to be known at the next level energetic collisions. The whole idea that we are at the end of the line for particle accelerators smacks of huge hubris: we know all there is to be known. A similar sentiment pervaded the physics discipline about a hundred years ago and look where we've gone since then.
The worst part is that the LHC has been a success. You don't stop after a success. You stop because you've hit a dead end. The only way to know if we need a bigger particle accelerator is by building it and then either seeing or not seeing any results. After doing this we can definitively agree on never building another accelerator. Giving up after finding the higgs boson is like winning a bronze medal and quitting instead of going after the silver medal.
It's like saying, we landed on the moon by flying less than 400,000km into space, so why don't we fly 800,000km into space and see if we can land on something else? When in reality, everything we know about astronomy tells us the next nearest thing we could expect to land on is Mars, and that's 77,000,000km away.
I know we don't understand particle physics as well as we understand astronomy, but, taking Dr. Hossenfelder at her word that the Higgs boson "completes" the "picture" and that the theoretical "loose ends" would actually require "energies at least ten billion times higher than what even the FCC could test", it sounds like we're a lot closer to Mars than to the next breakthrough in terms of particle colliders.
There were theoretical reasons to expect new results with previous colliders. I don't know that any similar reasons have been named here.
> There is no evidence at this point in time that we know all there is to be known at the next level energetic collisions. The whole idea that we are at the end of the line for particle accelerators smacks of huge hubris: we know all there is to be known.
This is a massive strawman argument to use, especially against someone like Dr. Hossenfelder who is a working physicist.
Did we read the same article?
> New measurements brought up new puzzles, and they built bigger colliders until, in 2012, the picture was complete. The Standard Model still has some loose ends, but experimentally testing those would require energies at least ten billion times higher than what even the FCC could test. The scientific case for a next larger collider is therefore presently slim.
> Yes, one can hope. But there is no reason why the particles that make up dark matter or dark energy should show up in the new device’s energy range. And that is assuming they are particles to begin with, for which there no evidence. Even if they are particles, moreover, highly energetic collisions may not be the best way to look for them. Weakly interacting particles with tiny masses, for example, are not something one looks for with large colliders.
> And there are entirely different types of experiments that could lead to breakthroughs at far smaller costs, such as high precision measurements at low energies or increasing the masses of objects in quantum states. Going to higher energies is not the only way to make progress in the foundations of physics; it’s just the most expensive one.