I was impressed (like Mark Trodden) by the lovely pictures, good PR, and even some lyrical prose on CERN’s coming Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in the New York Times. But I was annoyed by this statement:
For the past generation, physics has been in something of a rut. There have been plenty of findings from smaller colliders, but the results have mostly been expected.There’s more to physics than just experimental particle physics: cosmology, for example, which has certainly not been in a rut (and let’s hope we’re not about to get into one).
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Andrew
an argument could be made that particle physics and cosmology are in fact in a very similar state - standard models defined by exquisitely measured parameters that really can't go much further, but with fundamental things completely unexplained - where do those quark masses come from ? what is the vacuum energy ? Some grand theory awaits .. but meanwhile we are running up against a brick wall.
Contrast this with other areas of physics - quantum optics, extrasolar planets, soft condensed matter - which are still a mess, but at least there are still surprises ...