In 2019, Academician Wang Yifang, director of the Institute of High Energy Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, proposed to spend 200 billion yuan to build a giant particle collider to prevent European and American countries from taking the lead, which was resolutely opposed by the 97-year-old Yang Zhenning: This is a wedding dress for foreign countries for nothing, and too little consideration is given......
(Source: China News Weekly, all the content of this article is stated by reliable information sources, and it is repeated at the end of the article)
Regarding the construction of the giant particle collider, many people have different opinions, Yau Chengtong and Wang Yifang are more supportive, but Yang Zhenning is not very willing.
Because professionals who are also physicists have an uncertain future in the field of high-energy physics, after all, many conclusions can be overturned with time and reality.
Something that may be affected by reality at any time cannot have a fixed day, and spend a lot of manpower, material and financial resources to study a thing that is not necessary, if it is not obtained, the result or the result is completely overturned, and the cost performance is very low.
Many people are very clear about Yang Zhenning's contribution and credit to the country, but why did Yang Zhenning insist on stopping the construction of the giant collider this time?
According to Yau Chengtong's point of view, although he is engaged in mathematics, he is also very close to some theories of physics, and Harvard University has hired him to teach physics.
He agrees with the construction of the Giant Collider, because he believes that although he is linked to mathematics and physics, the direction he is studying is not too similar to the direction that the collider can study.
On the other hand, Yang Zhenning himself, some of the things he studied are related to the collider, and he obviously has the opportunity to prove what he has studied or the theory he has proposed, but Yang Zhenning chose not to support the construction of the collider, and there are many subtle considerations in it.
First of all, there are some theoretical considerations, although the colliders of other countries have indeed discovered the things proposed in the theory, but the things proposed in the theory are not so good, the time of observation is not right, the place is wrong, and it is very likely that there is no way to discover what is possible and real in the theory in this life.
The second is that the collider has a service life, and all the funds invested in the collider itself are wasted if it is not found during the service life.
The state and some people want to put their energy into the collider, obviously trying to get something out of the project, or find something, but what if the input is not proportional to the output?
Even many people abroad say that China wants to build a giant collider, which is a great leap forward in science, which is not unreasonable, and Yang Zhenning also considered other reasons.
The service life of the collider is not very high, but the construction of the collider itself requires a lot of financial, manpower, and material resources, and it often costs tens of billions of yuan in equipment.
In addition, many people have high expectations for the collider, and after spending a huge amount of money to build such a project, if there is nothing, it is a bamboo basket for nothing, and what project is not suitable for this fund?
It spends a lot of money to prove that a certain hard-to-observe substance may or may not exist in theory, and it is better to invest these funds in projects that are more in line with the development of the times.
Although Yang Zhenning disturbed the dream of the country's collider, what he considered was also in line with common sense.
Information sources:
1. China News Weekly——2019-12-09 18:06 Yang Zhenning has disturbed China's dream of a big collider
2. China's network agriculture——2023-06-25 14:21 Yang Zhenning resolutely opposes spending 200 billion yuan to build a large particle collider: it is also a "wedding dress" for foreigners, otherwise spend money on basic education!
