Scientists are worried about the W Boson: 'Something is amiss'

Post by _y5hn » Thu, Apr 14, 2022, 11:00 AM UTC

godelski wrote: post #35

hprotagonist wrote: post #3

we'd have to change our understanding of how all the particles in the universe work. Well, remember the new paper? We're pretty much entering that worst case scenario. I believe you mean "best case"! There was much hue and cry after the Higgs discovery because the result, at least from the outside, seemed like "welp, we predicted a thing and found it and we don't have any new physics to disagree with; what a letdown!…

Definition of Science: 1 a : a study where participants seek to disprove their own conjectures b: the practice of getting excited when proven wrong because it means more work 2 : a complex study where everything that can go wrong will go wrong, often small or trivial errors (frequently difficult to observe) leading to insanity within participants as they have an existential crisis coming to terms with a new world par…

Post by pfdietz » Thu, Apr 14, 2022, 12:15 PM UTC

PeterisP wrote: post #24

brtkdotse wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the instrument deformed slowly under its own weight for the last decade and now we're 4 angstroms off This was hilarious and plausible at the same time. Nice work!

It's like the six-sigma result of CERN OPERA experiment showing neutrinos travaling slightly faster than speed of light - which was ultimately caused by a fiber cable between clocks not being fully tightened and thus causing a tiny delay and messing up the measurements. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster-than-light_neutrino_ano...

Post by regularfry » Thu, Apr 14, 2022, 1:03 PM UTC

ben_w wrote: post #47

Flankk wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was wondering the same thing. Dark matter has never been observed. Its existence is based entirely on equations.

It has been observed, by its effect on other things, and in particular because this effect isn’t always the same. Most galaxies’ stars orbit at the wrong speed, but some behave as expected. Most galaxies gravitationally lens the background more than expected, but in some cases (colliding groups) something that doesn’t shine or reflect any EM radiation is causing lensing next to the galaxy while the galaxy itself is c…

Post by pygy_ » Thu, Apr 14, 2022, 1:16 PM UTC

godelski wrote: post #35

hprotagonist wrote: post #3

we'd have to change our understanding of how all the particles in the universe work. Well, remember the new paper? We're pretty much entering that worst case scenario. I believe you mean "best case"! There was much hue and cry after the Higgs discovery because the result, at least from the outside, seemed like "welp, we predicted a thing and found it and we don't have any new physics to disagree with; what a letdown!…

Definition of Science: 1 a : a study where participants seek to disprove their own conjectures b: the practice of getting excited when proven wrong because it means more work 2 : a complex study where everything that can go wrong will go wrong, often small or trivial errors (frequently difficult to observe) leading to insanity within participants as they have an existential crisis coming to terms with a new world par…

Post by ISL » Thu, Apr 14, 2022, 3:51 PM UTC

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #54

ISL wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why you build another instrument that is demonstrably a factor of two more sensitive -- it either detects the new thing with much higher precision or credibly disproves the old measurement and makes forward progress at the same time. If you can't do that, then you build another instrument that uses a different technique but reaches similar sensitivity. If the two instruments disagree, this will tend to lead to…

"That's why you build another instrument that is demonstrably a factor of two more sensitive" This is not possible