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Neutrinos, Muons and the Standard Model
scorp1us writes: "I can't believe I haven't seen this posted yet. Apparently experiments in particle physics aren't holding to theory. The result: a search for a new form of energy or matter. Read about it in the Post. No wonder witches weigh as much as a duck."
All science is based on "educated guesses." It's just that some guesses are much more educated than others, and turn out to fit the facts pretty well. Relativity is one of those very good guesses, along with Newton's laws (and no, Einstein didn't replace Newton, just refined Newtonian physics in a small but significant way), Darwinian evolution, plate tectonics, Boyle's law, etc. ...
But this is the defining characteristic of science: everything, always, is open to question. Hypotheses that are borne out by experiment and observation turn into theories, and those theories which stand the test of time are honored by being called laws, but none of them are "facts" in the sense that they can't be proven wrong. This is the principle of falsifiability, and it is the one thing which sets science apart from religion, philosophy, law, and other areas of human intellectual endeavor which seek to make statements about our world.
So relativity isn't a "hard fact." Neither is gravity. But that gravity, and relativity, and evolution, and plate tectonics, et bloody cetera, will operate the way the theories say they will, is the way to bet unless and until something dramatically better -- and by "better" I mean "backed by lots of reproducible evidence" -- comes along.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
I really wonder if we might not be better of throwing the physics textbooks out of the window and starting over again.
These are five 'states' of matter, each one obtained (at least for the first four you list), by adding more and more energy into the system. I am not very familiar with bose-einstein condensates, but I believe (someone please correct me if I am wrong) they are a state of matter that occurs at energies close to absolute zero, and are thus just another step on the continuum with which most of us are familiar.
I think that examples of different 'forms' (to which they are referring in the article) of matter might be regular matter and antimatter, but don't quote me on that.
This led Einstein on his investigation/theory which resulted in the foundation of modern physics.
Never throw away data...
Hold onto that thought, 'cause I'm about to blow a Mack truck-sized hole in it.
Do a google search on Alfred Wegener, and you'll see a guy who got his ass kicked all over the place for proposing a theory that contradicted scientific understanding at the time. And was harassed as vigorously as any religious heretic. Want more? Here's the frigging link.
Through the hoop, nothin' but net.
Do yourself a favor and check out Science's reaction to Darwin and doubters of Global Warning. Shocking behaviour all around, if you ask me.
--Fesh
Kill -9 'em all, let root@localhost sort 'em out.
What the hell, I'll answer it, AC post or not.
There are two reasons. The first is that evolution is uniquely under attack -- there are cranks who attack relativity, plate tectonics, and other major, well-supported scientific theories (in fact, I'd go so far as to call all of these "laws") but few of them have the numbers or the potential power the creationists do. So Dawkins, quite understandably, feels defensive.
Second, without exception, creationists fail to mount a scientific attack on evolution. They either just say it contradicts the Bible and so must be false (the old school) or they use pseudo-scientific language and deliberate misrepresentation of scientific evidence (the new school.) What they don't do is attack the theory the way real scientists attack a theory, with hard evidence, because they don't have any.
But the new-school creationists have very good PR, and an amazing number of otherwise rational people are fooled by their rhetoric into thinking that "evidence against evolution" actually exists. This, of course, gets Dawkins' goat. And although I think his "undisguised clarity" may be a bit counterproductive, the more dangerous creationism gets, the more I find myself in sympathy with his outspoken exasperation.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
It is not the first time that the Standard modell has been modified.
:-)
:-)
For example in the begining there has been only
one generation of quarks and leptons.
(namely: up and down) But on electron collision experiments showed that there must be new generations: (now called
strange - charmed and beauty - truth.)
Until 1995, where experimental evidence was found, the truth quark was only a postulate based on symmetry considerations.
The same applies to symmetry conservation. For a long time CP (Charge conjugation with Parity) was considered conserved. But an experiment on T (Time inversion) violation showed if CPT was to be conserved, CP must be violated. Again the standard model had to be adabted.
And at the CERN (Eruopean Nuclear Research Center) in Geneva they believe, that they have fond some evidence for the so called Higgs particle, which is the cause for the mass of particles. A proof for the Higgs particle would be an enhancement for the Standard Model
Those examples show that the Standard Model of Particles and Interactions is not a static one.
It is almost like the linux kernel - if you permit this comparision - people send in patches.
If a patch is useful it will be released for the masses
Maybe we are entering a odd release stage now
One of my university leacturers told me why he decided to go the mathematics route.
"Mathematics and Physics are the last true blood sports. Kill one bird an EVERYTHING goes."
Funny when you realise the ramifications of this since ALOT of work needs to be reevaluated, etc, even when the results are "statistically" correct, since the explinations and models of how things achieved some result are now totally different.
-Tim
- In June we got the news from the Sudbury Neutrino Oscilloscope that from the detection rates of muon-type and electron-type neutrino's coming from the Sun we should conclude that neutrinos oscillate (change type) and are therefore massive, which is in full contradiction with the SM.
- In March this year the results of the 1999 data of the muon g-2 measurement at Brookhaven National Laboratory showed that the (anomalous) magnetic moment of the muon is not described correctly by the SM. This 'magnetic moment' indicates how much the spin of a muon is affected by a magnetic field (a bit like how quickly a compass needle reacts to a new orientation of the compass). This measurement generated lots of theoretical ideas for mods of the SM and/or signs of supersymmetry and what not.
- The Standard Model is ugly.
And I am now probably also failing to mention other important failures of the SM.If you try to tell me that rocks fall up, you will need a lot better evidence than if you try to tell me that rocks fall down. This is a surprise?
... was it the early 1960s? ... thermal plumes were detected in the magma. Prior to that evidence had been accumulating, and people would periodically go back to the continental drift theory (I read about one of those in Science Digest), but every time it got dropped because there wasn't any mechanism, even though it would have explained a lot, and everyone knew that it would have explained a lot. Withing a few years of the discovery of the mechanism, the theory surfaced again. And this time it was accepted.
It it proper that unexpectable results demand a higher standard of proof. For many statements I don't require any proof at all. After all, I already believe them independantly. But if you try to tell me that Bill Gates invented the computer, then I will need quite a lot of evidence that I can personally check fairly easily before I even consider the idea seriously.
And the more time and effort I have put into learning (or creating) something, the less willing I am for someone else to blythly say "O, didn't you know that turtles can fly?", and the less willing I am to listen to that as other than fantasy (I had no objection when Terry Pratchett used that theme).
So when someone says that continents dance, it takes a good deal of evidence. Wegener didn't have it. He had an idea. It was an interesting idea, and matched a few geographic features. I made the same guess in grade school, though I didn't publish a paper about it. But all I had was an idea, and that's about all that Wegener had. His was more developed, but he didn't have any mechanism. He looked and couldn't find it. Neither could anyone else who was interested, until
Theories recognized as incomplete won't get accepted over current theories, even when the current theories are also known to be incomplete. Sorry, there are good reasons. There are also bad reasons, but there are a lot of good reasons, which mainly add up to "Why should I bother to learn a new bad idea to replace an old bad idea." It's too much work for no gain.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.