251–260 of 301 posts
There was a nice explanation of the finding in comic format from APS & PhD Comics: https://physics.aps.org/articles/v14/47
why did they move the magnet from Brookhaven to Chicago?
Amusingly - fittingly for our times - in the same issue of the exact same journal (Nature) another paper has been published that indicates that the prior, so much "hyped" discrepancy might be due to the theory having being applied inaccurately in the past. When computed with the new method, the experimental and theoretical models align far more accurately. So now all that matters is what kind of article do your want…
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how many potheads did you have in your quantum mechanics class?
Hmm probably about a third of my graduate level QED class and considerably less in my undergraduate QM but you'd be surprised at the cross over between potheads and high level physics.
There was a nice explanation of the finding in comic format from APS & PhD Comics: https://physics.aps.org/articles/v14/47
This sound like the hypothesized „subtle-matter“ as proposed by Dr. Klaus Volkamer [1]? - still looking for a better link than the Book… I’ll update this later [1] https://amzn.to/3mvvsWW
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I have a theory about how well educated the mass of humans are, could be and should be. Bear with me. Roughly 2000 years ago, the number of people who could do arithmetic and writing was Now it is 95% of the world population, and 99.9% of 'Western' world. Lets say that Alexey Petrov is about as highly educated and trained as any human so far. (A Physics PhD represents pretty much 25 years of full-time full-on educati…
Everyone being as trained as an astronaut would definitely make a difference, if only because they would appreciate the importance of science, technology, innovation... And not believe stupid conspiracy theories about vaccines.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edgar_Mitchell#Post-NASA_caree...
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The creation of new particles, is that bremsstrahlung?? I’m trying to find more info on it.
Bremsstrahlung is not the creation of virtual particles, though it does involve a virtual photon. It is rather the radiation of (real) photons by electrons when they suddenly "decelerate" (i.e. collide with other charged particles). In fact the name "bremsstrahlung" means "braking radiation," if memory serves.
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I used to read the Cartoon Guide to... books as a kid: https://www.amazon.com/Cartoon-Guide-Physics/dp/0062731009 . They were great.
Cartoon History of the Universe is probably the best "nonfiction" comic ever made. (it's not inaccurate but it's kind of psychedelic and retells more than one religious founding text as if it actually happened)
I still remember finding part 1 in the used books store with my dad around the age of 10-11 for like $2. Now I'm in my early 30's and all 3 parts are just a handful of books away from my physics and philosophy books on my book shelf :)
Don't they measure the difference in the direction of the particle as determined by its virtual cloud? more energy emitted from the cloud = forward and vice-versa.
Loved the explanation and accompanying illustrations.
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I am not sure I follow the logic. The new computation aligns with the experiment. Why is it more likely for it to be wrong than the calculation that shows the theory deviating from experiment.
The old calculation relies on older experimental results that have been verified by multiple experiments - so if the older value is wrong, it means either the calculation was done wrong (possible), or the experiments all have had a significant correlated systematic error that has never been caught (also possible). However, I’d say both of those things are relatively unlikely, when compared to the probability of some…
They're also cut-throat competitive, which is very divisive. Grad students and postdocs are forced to sign NDAs to work on the hot stuff. That's insane.
What's worse, from my point of view (as an actual LQCD practitioner) is: they're not very open about the actual details of their computation. It's tricky, because they treat their code as their 'secret sauce'. (Most of the community co-develops at least the base-level libraries; BMW goes it alone.)
OK, so they don't want to share their source code; that's fine. But they ALSO don't want to share any of their gauge configurations (read: monte carlo samples) because they're expensive to produce and can be reused for other calculations. So it'd be frustrating to share your own resource-intensive products and have someone else scoop you with them. I disagree with that, but I get it at least.
My biggest problem, and the one that I do not understand, is their reluctance to share the individual measurements they've made on each Monte Carlo sample. Then, at least, a motivated critic could develop their own statistical analysis (even if they can't develop their whole from-scratch computation).
Because of the structure and workflow of a LQCD calculation it's very difficult to blind. So, the only thing I know to do is to say "here are all the inputs, at the bit-exact level, to our analysis, here are our analysis scripts, here's the result we get; see if you agree."
This is the approach my collaborators and I took when we published a 1% determination of the nucleon axial coupling g_A [Nature 558, 91-94 (2018)]: we put the raw correlation functions as well as scripts on github https://github.com/callat-qcd/project_gA and said "look, here's literally exactly what we do; if you run this you will get the numbers in the paper." It's not great because our analysis code isn't the cleanest thing in the world (we're more interested in results than in nice software engineering). But at least the raw data is right there, we tell you what each data set is, and you're free to analyze it.
BMW does nothing of the sort. They (meaning those with power to dictate how the collaboration operates) seem to not want to adopt principles of nothing-up-my-sleeve really-honestly-truly open science. So their results need to be treated with care. That said, they themselves are extremely rigorous, top-notch scientists. They want you to trust them. Not that you shouldn't. Trust---but verify. That's currently not possible. I bet they're vindicated. But I can't check for myself.