chelle wrote:Sure, colliders have been great … but like Ethan said they aren't going to reveal any new physics.
And you know that because some magical fairy told you so?
2010: The proton ridge is discovered
2011: An early clear confirmation of quark-gluon plasma.
2011: Observation of χb (3P), a baryon that helps a lot understanding the bottom quark states.
2012: Discovery of the Higgs boson.
2013: P'5 shows a ~4 sigma deviation from the standard model prediction. Maybe new physics, maybe something we can learn about the standard model.
2014: Observation of tetraquarks, where it was unclear if those exist at all
2015: Observations of pentaquarks, where it was unclear if those exist at all
2016: Further analysis of P'5 and improved theory predictions still lead to a notable deviation.
2012-2016: Several 2-3 sigma deviations from lepton flavor universality in various decay channels appeared. Maybe a statistical fluctuation, maybe new physics.
Summary: The LHC found something new and surprising in every year so far. Note that I just covered unexpected things in this list (and I'm sure I missed several things) - we also have the hundreds of important measurements improving the precision of everything known. There is no reason to expect this series to end exactly in this year, where the first analyses of a large dataset at a higher energy will be released in three months.
I don't say you should know all those things. But you should know them if you want to judge the use of the LHC.
Regarding CERN giving us the internet
Don't misquote me. I said world wide web.