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Physicists Discover A Possible Break In the Standard Model of Physics (futurism.com)
Slashdot reader freddienumber13 write:
A series of experiments has shown that tau particles have decayed faster than predicted by the standard model. This has been observed at both CERN and SLAC. This suggests that the standard model for particle physics is incomplete and further research is required to understand this new area of physics.
Nature adds: One of the key assumptions of the standard model of particle physics is that the interactions of the charged leptons, namely electrons, muons and taus, differ only because of their different masses... recent studies of B-meson decays involving the higher-mass tau lepton have resulted in observations that challenge lepton universality at the level of four standard deviations. A confirmation of these results would point to new particles or interactions, and could have profound implications for our understanding of particle physics.
Nature adds: One of the key assumptions of the standard model of particle physics is that the interactions of the charged leptons, namely electrons, muons and taus, differ only because of their different masses... recent studies of B-meson decays involving the higher-mass tau lepton have resulted in observations that challenge lepton universality at the level of four standard deviations. A confirmation of these results would point to new particles or interactions, and could have profound implications for our understanding of particle physics.
How can you trust CERN when their own website keeps talking about hardons? I'm not under investigation for having a hardon, believe me!
These experiments in high energy particle physics are incredibly dangerous. There is already a small black hole that's been created at Kansas State. If this research isn't stopped, it's going to create more black holes and eventually destroy humanity. I support scientific research, but not to the point of these researchers endangering humanity to satisfy their curiosity. Besides, there's a massive amount of electricity needed to power these particle accelerators, and plenty of that comes from fossil fuels. If physicists don't destroy humanity with black holes, their experiments will contribute to climate change that will also destroy humanity.
Physics: 4 sigma error, question the model
Climate: 4 sigma error, jail those who dare to disagree
Moderation is, by definition, censorship. Of course, the buffoons on this site pretend it's not censorship when it helps them create an echo chamber. It's worth discussing the dangers posed by high energy particle physics research, but that post has already been censored by the moderators. Moderation IS censorship, though you people will deny it and use ad hominem attacks to defend your beloved censorship scheme at all costs. It's really quite sickening how far you people will go to create your highly biased echo chamber.
This is all just code for please send us more money. Do not want.
Yeah, knowledge is useless and has never solved any problem.
So, which is it?
There is still an enormous amount of stuff we don't know, and are only guessing about. So far, nobody has come up with a better guess, so the current guesses are the accepted theory. It's mostly very good theory, with evidence that it may be correct, but it's still just theory.
Is this really so surprising? I know quite a few physicists (and some armchair physicists) who have long believed the standard model to be incomplete. The measurement problem will always have us making theories that are very, very hard to prove correct.
Additionally (granted, non-scientifically) the standard model 'feels' wrong. The model may explain the behaviors that we see but it seems overly complex for nature. Much like relativity there may be more than meets the eye going on here.
It has seemed like we were in a bit of a stagnation lately and I'm glad there are some new experimental results making us look at the standard model critically. It's not only good science it's exciting science.
Apply me the creosote and call me a niggèr!
As soon as millennial scientists determined that you could have males and anti-males sharing the same transgender bathroom, it was clearly time to throw out the standard rules of physics.
Hmmm, that's odd. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, what's happening here?
What an amazing discovery! It points to a new missing piece of the puzzle.
Remember boys and girls, "Making just recently wandered in off of the Sarah and all our amazing facts can be classified as 'as far as we know'".
Assuming mankind is still here in 200 more years, I wonder what facts from today will be classified as, "I can't even believe they thought that back then."
Man's little brain will never, ever figure it all out, but it is fun to try. :)
If we are willing to wait a 100 years, the economy will be several times larger by then.
Particle smashing is not knowledge, nor knowledge-creating. But man playing tennis with the net down sure is profitable.
Now physicists will invent a new particle to account for the unexpected behavior and in a few years some static in the lab equipment will confirm the existence of this new particle.
Forget mass. Forget the 57 different varieties of fundamental particle that are added whenever a new hole in the model is found.
You have 2 particles, one is +ve, one is -ve. They have charge not mass.
Spread em around. Run the model, you get spinning dipoles, then twisting chains, then closed hoops. These closed hoops are the stable particles. They have two modes of spin, they twist along their length, and they rotate about their center. The twist wave defines their size because the hoop only closes if its a whole number of wavelengths.
The only thing you need to calculate is the net dipole binding force (which you can even resolve numerically). Two 'hoop' particles, have a net attractive force dependant on their twist and spin frequencies, the diameter of the dipole, the aspect to the other particle, their distance apart, and indirectly to their velocities (from the dopler effect on the component of the spin frequencies in the axis of travel). This attract force is their mass.
So there is no momentum. Momentum is the reduction in dipole attract force you get from the velocity (that doplar effect). Now trying increasing the velocity, notice its a limit function? Ever-increasing velocities correspond to ever smaller decreases in binding force. This is where C comes from. If there were only two dipoles in the world, you couldn't separate them faster than C.
There isn't a single post here that has anything to do with the subject of the article.
If I understood this correctly they're so tiny one of these micro black holes could plow through a proton and manage to miss the quarks inside.
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
The bigger you build particle accelerators and the more energy with which you slam things together, the smaller and more varied shape pieces you break things into. There is no lower limit.
Have gnu, will travel.
Caused by Dark Time.
Table-ized A.I.
" recent studies of B-meson decays involving the higher-mass tau lepton have resulted in observations that challenge lepton universality at the level of four standard deviations" So, basically the tau leptons have a behavior that is occasionally observed in roughly 0.006% of observations? Something akin to an isotopic variance, sort of? Wherein the vast majority of tau observed behave within expected criteria but a tiny percent break the model? Is that correct?
Maybe we won't go extinct, but we're slowly degrading. 20,000 years ago human skulls were 1500 cc in volume; now they're 1350 cc.
Does this impact the accuracy of the dating of the current dating methods such as radio carbon, caesium etc?
Is this really so surprising? I know quite a few physicists (and some armchair physicists) who have long believed the standard model to be incomplete.
We know for certain that the Standard Model is incomplete because it cannot explain gravity. It it also missing Dark Matter and a large enough asymmetry between matter and anti-matter to explain the universe being full of matter. However, none of these explains why this result is not surprising.
The reason that this result is not surprising is because of the number of Standard Model measurements which experiments like LHCb, Babar and Belle make. There are literally thousands of ways in which these experiments have tested the Standard Model and when you make 1000 measurements finding one that over 3 sigma from expectations is not at all unsurprising - in fact you would expect 3.
Now 4 sigma is better because only about 1 in 15,000 measurements will, on average, be this far apart if the Standard Model applies. However, here they have combined multiple experiments but without the respective collaborations being involved. This means it is highly possible that they have failed to combined systematic errors correctly because they are restricted to using only published data. Most combined results come from working groups involving all the collaborations involved e.g. ATLAS+CMS combined results at the LHC, D0+CDF combined results from the Tevatron etc. which can redo parts of the analysis to combine errors properly.
So while it is possible they may be on to something it is far from certain and this is hardly a major result that will elicit much excitement. This is probably why it was published in Nature! While I know this is an important journal for many fields, for particle physics it is largely irrelevant. All the important results in the field are published in journals like Phys Lett B, PRL, Phys Rev D, JHEP etc.
No.
Seriously, NO. Radioisotope dating relies on known measured values of isotope half life, models of "how" are completely irrelevant to their accuracy. Not that unexpected Tau particle decay rates would have anything to do with nuclei decay anyway. Tau particles are unstable exotic heavy electrons basically, they play no role in nuclei decay mechanisms.
We have known for a long time that the standard model isn't complete, not least since it does not incorporate gravity in any way. I think most physicists are surprised at how QM still seems to hold together - unlike GR, it is a really complicated theory, mathematically; it is all too often not well understood by the experimental physicists, and there are examples of techniques (like quantization) being applied as a set of rules thumb, a bit like 'first we caluculate the Hamiltonian for a classical system, then use the magical quantization rules'. Amazingly, it often works even if it is mathematically incorrect, but it is of course not going to last, I think; there must be cases where the cracks in the reasoning have been plastered over by the statistical noise in the measurements, and once we see clear evidence that the theory doesn't hold, we will have to go back over old data and discover the cracks we didn't spot back then.
This discrepancy in the decay of the tau lepton is probably one of these cracks, and I think it is quite exciting, but it isn't quite the sensation the editors want to make of it. I have already read about it several times, even on Scientific American and ScienceDaily, and I have heard it mentioned in recent BBC podcasts; Slashdot's editors would do well to stop reading the big-eyed, gawping articles in glossy magazines like futurism.com, and instead reading the slightly more sober stuff in news closer to the source. You guys should stop perpetuating the ideaa that science is some sort of cool entertainment and scientists are some sort of attention seeking rock-stars.
Checked in to see if there was an interesting discussion of the physics and found a could have been cut and pasted climate flame war thread. SAD
Well, wouldn't it be possible that they got absorbed as a supernova does to near stars?
Extinction may very well be a natural step along the evolutionary path to an eventual superior species. We need to be removed from the ecosystem to make room.
You first.
Who want's to bet it'll be another one of those faulty cables?
the way the universe actually works is not a constant.
No, Physics assumes that particles behave in consistent ways, at least statistically. Simplified, the observation here seems to be that tau particles decay a little faster than we predict they should. There's some uncertainty, because there are errors in our measurements, and the decay time itself is stochastic. As you collect more data you can put narrower limits on the average decay time and become more confident that it is really different from prediction.
Has said that we understand everything, so this can't be true
Warma wrote: "...for land-dwelling life to produce a sentient species"
MangoCats wrote: "...sentience includes industrial scale exploitation..."
Would you both please consider replacing "sentience" with "sapience" in such sentences? Those of us who are ourselves sapient would then find your comments make more sense.
A comparison of these words: http://casinerina.blogspot.com...
We have experimental evidence of the EM drive producing thrust, but it must be bad because that means physics is broken.
We have experimental evidence that Leptons aren't behaving as predicted, so that means physics is broken and we are eager to understand it.
Science can sometimes behave like a Junior High school girl.
Indeed. As this is published now, it is in the "likely, but not certain" class. This is a call for assistance, may it be with possible flaws in the measurement or mathematics, may it be with more experiments. Also keep in mind that "experiment" can mean some targeted searching though the absolute huge amounts of data a collider like the LHC produces. This is how particle physicists firm up things, this is a global cooperation and that is the only way it works.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Take two rocks, smash them together. Observe the pieces. Now, smash them together harder. Pieces do stranger things. Keep smashing harder. Always something new. Smash them harder and faster, wow new unexplained stuff. Ok, let's smash them even harder...
Physics: 4 sigma error, question the model
Climate: 4 sigma error, jail those who dare to disagree
Not quite.
Everything: 4 sigma error, question the model
Everything: shame those who think a 6 sigma error is the truth
I agree with where you're going, but in all fairness, the sigma-level that matters depends on the field.
Not all fields can gather very large amounts of data the way particle physics can. For example, psychological and drug-trial studies must live with small sample sizes for moral and practical reasons. Even astronomy sometimes has to cope with large error-bars in results, yet the conclusions they draw can be significant. I think climate science lies somewhere in the middle in this regard.
Climate science is so broad though that it arguably sits in mulitple places. The heat trapping of CO2 is known with extreme precision. Global climate models though still have known unknowns that significantly exceed the global energy imbalance.
Check the IPCC reports on climate models and the CERES and ERBE satellite data on Top of Atmosphere(TOA) energy balances.
Here's the short version. Climate models still model many things poorly because we still don't understand them fully, like clouds. Because of this, the TOA energy balance in the models is similarly poor. To correct for this the models use these poorly known parameters to 'tune' the model's TOA energy results, and the tuning isn't done to make cloud parameters give better matching cloud performance, but instead to give TOA energy a better match. It's all a necessary evil as we refine and improve our understanding. However, the imbalance corrected for by tuning these variables is GREATER than both the directly measured TOA imbalance AND any value of predicted TOA imbalance contribution from changing CO2 concentrations.
The CERES and ERBE direct satellite measurements make the problem even harder. The measurements we do have still have error bars that also exceed the signal of the year to year TOA imbalance and the expected contribution from changing CO2 concentrations.
No, but the creationists will point to this as evidence that scientists don't know what they are talking about, and measurements that say the dinosaurs lived millions of years are wrong and they did, in fact, live 5000 years ago.
A beautiful fallacy! Medical science is pseudoscience, too, because physicians are often wrong?
No, it is pseudoscience because it lacks proper repeatability and has only the barest elements of falsifiability.
In case there is any question, I am in fact referring to both Medical "sciences" and Climate "science".
That having been said, I would still think that it would be the best course of action to err on the side of caution and assume the "scientists" are correct given the extreme ramifications if they are... The venn diagram is pretty convincing:
option 1: They are wrong and we do nothing: No harm no foul.
option 2: They are wrong and we do everything in our power to stop something that wasnt going to happen anyways: Some short term economic losses, maybe.
option 3: They are right and we do everything in our power to stop it: We saved the planet.
option 4: They are right and we do nothing: Extinction.
Only one of those options is really bad. the rest are not that big a deal in the grand scheme of things. Anybody that isn't a gambling junky knows where to put their bet on that one.
Of course, when you define all the outcomes somehow your argument is compelling...
I'm afraid I can't agree with your views on what it means for us to "do everything in our power to stop it". Nor can I agree with your view on if we do nothing... extinction. So your handy and irrefutable Venn diagram is just a fancy way of declaring yourself the winner by definition, if we can start from assuming you are correct about everything, we can clearly see that you are correct...
If we do everything in our power to stop CO2 that's very extreme. We have the power after all to switch over to negative CO2 emissions if everyone on the planet simply agreed to. We'd turn off ALL fossil fuel based power generation, and start up CO2 capture schemes. Of course, millions and millions of people would die from starvation in this scenario as our ability to produce food would drop radically, and worse our ability to both store and distribute it would as well. The worse part, is humans aren't going to amiably agree to watch their children starve, so if we want some kind of government power to make sure we prevent extinction by acting, even more people are gonna have to be killed for trying to use fossil fuels. We are talking in practical terms of wealthy nations like the west and Europe that can maybe survive on renewables waging war on the developing world to enforce the zero emissions mandate on them.
As for doing 'nothing', it seems to me no stretch at all to say that by the year 2100, electric cars will have made gasoline engines an antique novelty item, and either fission power or renewable sources, or better still fusion will be well on the way to replacing fossil fuel power generation on a COST basis. So, if we do nothing, we've got our emissions globally dramatically dropping off by 2100 anyways. Our climate models have some wide ranging predictions and unknowns, but extinction level change does not result from our curbing our emissions prior to the year 2100.
There is a dinosaur sitting on top of the lamppost outside my house, shitting onto my car. They're not extinct today, and pretty unlikely to be extinct tomorrow.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"