Slashdot Mirror
The Proton Is Lighter Than We Thought (sciencemag.org)
sciencehabit writes from a report via Science Magazine: You can't weigh the universe's smallest particles on a bathroom scale. But in a clever new experiment, physicists have found one such particle -- the proton -- is lighter than previously thought. The researchers found the mass to be 1.007276466583 atomic mass units. That's roughly 30 billionths of a percent lower than the average value from past experiments -- a seemingly tiny difference that is actually significant by three standard deviations. The result both creates and clears up mysteries, and could help explain the universe as we know it. The findings have been published in the journal Physical Review Letters.
Perfect avoidance of parent's point. Which is that the standard model is so borked, it doesn't even explain what Newton did 500 years ago.
Talking about the implications of mass, while avoiding the grand pooh bah theory...that doesn't understand mass...is spectacular misdirection. You just might be a physicist.
No, it is not "avoidance of parent's point". I was simply responding to the claim that "Standard model doesn't cover gravity so a change in mass means fuck all." I countered this claim by providing an example of a physical phenomenon that would be affected by a change in the proton's mass. This invalidates the claim "a change in mass means fuck all".
As for this paragraph:
"But then what is mass, what actually happens when mass turns to photons? What is energy in photons different from kinetic energy in particles? Why does light travel at C in a vacuum. What's special about C? Even before we get onto the train wreck that is QM."
This is simply a lack of knowledge on the author's part, along with some epistemological masturbation. I don't deal with that kind of stuff. And QM is not a train wreck. It is supported very well by experiment, and it can be expressed in a mathematically consistent, rigorous form.
Now, back to you and your statement "Which is that the standard model is so borked, it doesn't even explain what Newton did 500 years ago."
This is incorrect (excluding gravity).
Also: "Talking about the implications of mass, while avoiding the grand pooh bah theory...that doesn't understand mass...is spectacular misdirection."
The standard model doesn't explain everything, but it is very good at what it does explain. It most certainly understands mass. The main problems are with things like the matter/antimatter asymmetry issue. But we need to find something we can experimentally measure to fix things like that. Also, it obviously lacks a quantum theory of gravitation.