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Particle mystery: physicists confirm the muon is more magnetic than predicted

sciencemag.org

71–80 of 301 posts

Re: Particle mystery: physicists confirm the muon is more magnetic than predicted

#71
post #70

>the strong force and the weak force. Is there a reason we're leaving "nuclear" off these forces' names now?

I have indeed often seen the names referred to without the term "nuclear".

Weird. This must have changed in the past 10 years or so, since I've been out of college.

Re: Particle mystery: physicists confirm the muon is more magnetic than predicted

#72
post #38

There was a nice explanation of the finding in comic format from APS & PhD Comics: https://physics.aps.org/articles/v14/47

Oh, so it's a bit like electron screening, but with virtual particles ? Fine structurally neat !

Re: Particle mystery: physicists confirm the muon is more magnetic than predicted

#73

Honestly feel sorry for particle physicists... Their entire gig is spending billions on fancy equipment, and hoping that observe something unexpected. If they see exactly what they expected to see, all that effort was basically wasted. Also, a lot of "discoveries" turn out to be equipment miscalibration - remember those particles which supposedly moved faster than light a few years back? Always struck me as an odd wa…

From a physicists standpoint, not seeing something unexpected is not a waste at all.

[deleted]

Re: Particle mystery: physicists confirm the muon is more magnetic than predicted

#74

Physics noob question: is there any physical framework that does away with the concept of "force"? I know a bit about how it is reconceptualized as space-time deformation in the context of general relativity, but that's about it. It just seems like one of those inherently anthropocentric concepts that (potentially) holds us back from exploring something different?

string theory?

Re: Particle mystery: physicists confirm the muon is more magnetic than predicted

#75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From a physicists standpoint, not seeing something unexpected is not a waste at all.

Can you expand on that? I was under the impression that many thought of it as a waste (Sabine Hossenfelder comes to mind, for example).

> Sabine Hossenfelder

Hossenfelder has a lot of... unique takes in the physics world, I don't think she should be used as a general barometer of the field.

Re: Particle mystery: physicists confirm the muon is more magnetic than predicted

#76
post #40

Nature seems to have this interesting property of always increasing in perceived complexity.

We're evolutionarily optimized for understanding slow, macro-scale, somewhat low-energy things.

Of course we'll perceive things as complex when we move outside of that regime.

Re: Particle mystery: physicists confirm the muon is more magnetic than predicted

#79

>the strong force and the weak force. Is there a reason we're leaving "nuclear" off these forces' names now?

They aren't tied to the nucleus of the atom in any way. It's just that they were discovered in phenomena involving atom nucleus.

Re: Particle mystery: physicists confirm the muon is more magnetic than predicted

#80

Honestly feel sorry for particle physicists... Their entire gig is spending billions on fancy equipment, and hoping that observe something unexpected. If they see exactly what they expected to see, all that effort was basically wasted. Also, a lot of "discoveries" turn out to be equipment miscalibration - remember those particles which supposedly moved faster than light a few years back? Always struck me as an odd wa…

From a physicists standpoint, not seeing something unexpected is not a waste at all.

From a physicist's standpoint, always being right is disheartening.

I think that every physicist hopes to see something that does not match and then a fantastic work begins.

I did not see anything like this during my studies, PhD and short career and moved to industry. I terribly miss the teaching, though.

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