Alexander Unzicker | Particle physics is money thrown away

The sensational news that a fundamental particle had been discovered lies somewhere between a misuse of language and a lie. What was found did not solve a single problem in physics, and yet was immediately hailed as the discovery of the century. Whether this was deliberate misdirection, shameless puffery or foolish parroting remains to be seen.

The only thing that is certain is that great physicists such as Albert Einstein would have found the Higgs story completely ridiculous. They would not have believed for a second that this highly complicated model of elementary particle physics with its dozens of uncertain numbers could be a meaningful description of nature.

The claim that the “Higgs mechanism” contributes to the understanding of mass is particularly brazen. Paul Dirac, who spent years pondering the still puzzling mass ratio of protons and electrons, would turn in his grave if he heard about it.

High-energy physics has long since mutated from a science into a high-performance technical sport, driven by the same idea of higher collision energies. In terms of fundamental knowledge of nature, its results are completely worthless. The way they are sold as progress is dishonest and dangerous.

Particle physics is money thrown away
Anyone who has followed accelerator physics over the last few decades must have noticed that the strategy of filtering rare but ultimately banal signals out of the flood of data and explaining them as new particles apparently never ends. Just because the ring-shaped machines keep entire generations of researchers busy, it is no longer noticeable that the game is repeated every 10 to 15 years and that particle physics has literally been going round in circles for half a century.