Chapter 186: Ambition
In the proposal, the coalition of leading scientists likened the Super Hadron Collider to "the key to unlocking the door to truth."
"It is a walking cane on a rugged, dark road. It is a bridge to the other side, and humanity’s absolute best window to peer into the fundamental nature of the universe..." the report read. "Without it, our theoretical particle physics will stagnate. We will make no further progress. The ultimate mysteries of the cosmos can only be fully revealed within the rings of a Super Hadron Collider!"
This proposal was no mere gimmick; the mathematical data and projections were entirely real, without a single exaggeration.
Jason’s temples throbbed as he read it. At that moment, he could tangibly feel the sheer, unbridled ambition of the Federation. It was a pure, burning ambition to pursue science!
Without a doubt, these top-tier scientists were the outstanding representatives of their civilization. Their collective will basically represented the will of the entire human race. Now that scientists and engineers made up the vast majority of the population, they were the driving force of the Federation. They desperately wanted to explore the unknown and uncover the endless mysteries of the universe!
And the best tool for that job was the Super Hadron Collider.
However, Jason remained highly cautious. Having been in a leadership position for so long, he habitually over-analyzed everything, carefully weighing all the pros and cons. He wasn’t going to let a few paragraphs of ambitious, inspiring rhetoric make him act impulsively.
Having such ambition was certainly commendable, but his primary concern remained: the cost was simply astronomical! Both in terms of raw material resources and sheer manpower, the project was a behemoth. Could humanity truly afford to build this right now?
He looked across the desk at Lily, wanting to hear her professional opinion.
Lily thought about it for a long time, carefully analyzing the pros and cons in her head. Ultimately, the final decision still rested on Jason’s shoulders, but she needed to provide him with the right perspective.
"Our scientific community has essentially completed the Standard Model of physics, but that doesn’t mean science just stops there," Lily began. "While the Standard Model is incredibly accurate, it isn’t perfect. For one, it still completely fails to describe gravity."
"Furthermore, the particles described by our current Standard Model account for less than five percent of all the matter in the universe. That means ninety-five percent of the cosmos is entirely unknown to humanity. That is the primary motivation for building this massive collider. We need this instrument to discover and observe those unknown particles, which will allow us to improve our theoretical models and finally understand the universe as a whole."
Jason nodded. He was familiar with these basic scientific concepts. He waited for her to continue.
"Currently, we are searching for particle physics models that can supersede the Standard Model. Supersymmetry Theory is one of the leading candidates, and it has the best mathematical chance of being correct," Lily explained, her eyes gleaming slightly.
"It is just so mathematically perfect and elegant. If Supersymmetry can be physically verified, it will tell us exactly why particles have their specific masses, why atomic interactions produce different intensities, and why the universe formed the exact way it did. Only after proving that can we push further into string theory, refine M-theory, and so on."
She sighed. "The Super Hadron Collider is the only thing that can offer us the physical insights needed to prove this. Without it, it is highly likely that our theoretical physics will just hit a permanent brick wall."
Jason stroked his chin, finally grasping the true scientific weight of the project. In science, experimentation was everything. Without physical experimental verification, all the elegant math and theories were just wishful thinking. Of course, if the experimental verification failed, then the entire theory would collapse entirely. There was no room for negotiation. Science was brutally realistic. Whether a theory was right or wrong, the universe simply existed, and it wouldn’t change its laws just to satisfy human fantasies.
Lily paused, falling into a long, unusually heavy silence.
When she spoke again, her tone was somber and deeply dejected. "The fact that the old Earth LHC failed to discover supersymmetric particles at low energy scales was a massive disappointment to the community. It completely invalidated a large number of our theoretical models. So now, we are at a crossroads: we either abandon Supersymmetry Theory completely, or... we build a bigger machine and explore those models at much higher energy scales."
"But higher energy levels mean we need vastly more powerful instruments and staggering amounts of funding. And even if we build it, it doesn’t guarantee we’ll actually find anything. It is still just a hypothesis. It might be entirely wrong. But Earth-based colliders are simply no longer powerful enough to give us a definitive answer."
She looked directly at Jason. "So, this new collider might be the key that allows humanity to knock on the door of the universe. But it is equally likely to be a massive black hole for our resources, swallowing years of our time with zero return. Worse still... perhaps Supersymmetry is all just a mathematical illusion, a cruel joke played on us by the cosmos."
"...We might never discover any new particles with it! It could all be in vain. Decades of our life’s work could be completely meaningless."
Jason remained silent. The failure of the low-energy Supersymmetry models had clearly been a devastating psychological blow to physicists like Lily, Professor Hao Yu, Felix, and Arthur Lambert.
The theory had seemed so beautifully perfect that scientists around the globe had dedicated thirty years—or even their entire lifetimes—to studying it. Supersymmetry had almost become a religion within the physics community, with countless research papers and careers built entirely upon its hypothetical foundation.
If it turned out to be completely wrong, then all of those painstakingly written papers would instantly become worthless trash. If it was true, winning a Nobel Prize wouldn’t even begin to cover the magnitude of the achievement.
But no one knew if this path was actually correct. It was entirely possible that after spending millions of tons of resources, they would sadly discover the path was a dead end. The universe was notoriously stubborn, guarding its deepest secrets like a locked vault, never easily revealing the truth hidden within.
"If only the low-energy supersymmetry models had been correct..." Lily muttered in a low voice, clearly still haunted by the results of the old Earth experiments.
Surpassing classical physics was easier said than done. Humanity had always tried to find a single, unified theory to explain the laws governing the universe from the absolute most microscopic level.
Currently, the most accurate model was the "Standard Model." Back in the 21st century, the physical discovery of the Higgs boson had snapped the final missing piece of that specific puzzle into place. The Standard Model perfectly described three of the universe’s fundamental forces the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, and electromagnetism along with the basic particles that made up all visible matter.
To date, almost all experimental tests regarding those three forces had matched the theory’s predictions perfectly. It was a triumph of human intellect, the culmination of generations of brilliant minds.
However, the Standard Model was not a "Theory of Everything." It was fundamentally incomplete because it entirely failed to account for the fourth force: gravity. Therefore, the Standard Model was only a localized truth; it was not universally correct.
Every physicist knew it was incomplete, and that glaring flaw only fueled their burning desire to explore further. Just as Newton’s classical mechanics worked perfectly for slow, macroscopic objects, but failed at the speed of light (requiring Relativity) or at the atomic level (requiring Quantum Mechanics), the greatest minds of the Federation would never be satisfied with a theory that was only "partially correct."
They yearned to transcend the Standard Model, to completely overthrow it and build a grander, more accurate framework. This hypothetical ultimate framework was known as the "Grand Unified Theory." Scientists desperately wanted to unify all four fundamental forces and discover the ultimate equation that governed all things.
Supersymmetry Theory had long been considered the leading candidate to bridge that gap. But...
"It hasn’t completely failed yet," Lily said softly, her eyes hardening with resolve. "There will always be models to test at even higher energy levels!"