It seems accurate that this is an expensive proposed experiment with less expensive alternatives, with very real debate about costs and benefits.
I'm in the "spend more money on theory first" camp. You keep saying that theorists should guide experimenters, but you seem to mean that in the limited sense of poking a little harder at the Standard Model and hoping it breaks.
Meanwhile there are all kinds of open questions where fundamental theory around and parallel to the Standard Model is underdeveloped.
It might well be better to spend a few billion on doing something about that first, then designing experiments to test whatever falls out.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00793-x
It seems accurate that this is an expensive proposed experiment with less expensive alternatives, with very real debate about costs and benefits.
I'm in the "spend more money on theory first" camp. You keep saying that theorists should guide experimenters, but you seem to mean that in the limited sense of poking a little harder at the Standard Model and hoping it breaks.
Meanwhile there are all kinds of open questions where fundamental theory around and parallel to the Standard Model is underdeveloped.
It might well be better to spend a few billion on doing something about that first, then designing experiments to test whatever falls out.