Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Did the W-boson just “break the standard model”?

backreaction.blogspot.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 282 posts

Re: Did the W-boson just “break the standard model”?

#111

Post by qsdf38100 »

robonerd wrote: post #49
paulpauper wrote: post #44

I dunno why this blog keeps be voted to the top. Yeah, current physics research is lacking in some areas .since when was it perfect?

The author has a popular (and imho pretty good) youtube channel.

I liked her content at first but now I’m tired of the way she implies that "scientists" are lying to us, stealing our money, and that she is here to reveal some truths that are kept hidden from us. After watching any of her video, I don’t feel like I’ve gained any insights, except that I shouldn’t trust "science".

Re: Did the W-boson just “break the standard model”?

#112

Post by cwillu »

stevenhuang wrote: post #86
SubiculumCode wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Judging a book by its cover is actually not the worst strategy for picking a book. And I WAS responding to the content; content like accusing scientists of lying, content like silly photos designed to get you to click. edit: To sum in Bayesian terms, the prior probability of reading a good book is greater if the publisher had sunk money into a high quality cover, because they believe in its content, while a trashy co…

Bayesian reasoning has its limits. If one is lazy and don't think to reconsider when warranted, it's often accidentally used as a crutch. Works in most cases I grant you that, just user beware. > "The man who has fed the chicken every day throughout its life at last wrings its neck instead, showing that more refined views as to the uniformity of nature would have been useful to the chicken" - Bertrand Russel

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/heuristics-that-almost...

Re: Did the W-boson just “break the standard model”?

#113

Post by robonerd »

XorNot wrote: post #46
photochemsyn wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a limited pool of resources available to do basic fundamental science and it's fair to argue that things like LHC have absorbed a disproportionate share of these scare resources, without a whole lot to show for it. Since it's the general public that ultimately funds these projects (unless the LHC can attract its own Jeff Bezos), I think it is OK to have a public discussion about it.

> LHC have absorbed a disproportionate share of these scare resources As opposed to? This sentiment was bandied around a lot before the LHC went online, but no one ever had a proposition of what the alternative was is the goal was to advance fundamental particle physics. You've got exactly 2 ways to probe subatomic interactions: (1) particle accelerator measurement and (2) incidental measurements of high-energy space…

> no one ever had a proposition of what the alternative was is the goal was to advance fundamental particle physics. You've got exactly 2 ways to probe subatomic interactions: (1) particle accelerator measurement and (2) incidental measurements of high-energy spaceborne collisions.

Sabine has recommended funding more telescopes to learn more about dark matter.

Re: Did the W-boson just “break the standard model”?

#114

Post by jfengel »

joseluis wrote: post #105

I really think this paper should be more widely known, because it's eye opening: https://physicsdetective.com/something-is-rotten-in-the-stat... It made me realize QED is the equivalent of a million lines spaghetti codebase that's been continually built upon, fudge after fudge since the 40s, while being sold as the best thing ever, the ultimate model of reality, etc. While it really started as a temporary solution li…

Every physicist knows about renormalization. It's not a secret.

An "independent researcher" might consider that a discovery, but you could learn a lot more just by picking up any textbook.

It's not "rotten". It's an open research question. One that every physicist already knew about.

Re: Did the W-boson just “break the standard model”?

#115

Post by dylan604 »

tambourine_man wrote: post #82
photochemsyn wrote: post #12

Well this is kind of funny and I mostly agree so TLDR: > "I’m afraid all of this sounds rather negative. Well. There’s a reason I left particle physics. Particle physics has degenerated into a paper production enterprise that is of virtually no relevance for societal progress or for progress in any other discipline of science. The only reason we still hear so much about it is that a lot of funding goes into it and so…

Sabine went on full rant/iconoclastic/grudge mode IMO recently. It's a shame, as she a good communicator, but I just see myself skipping her content when it pops up. “I left the field because it's a paper production machine that adds no value to society” without substantiation is simply a frustration ridden meme.

>without substantiation

Really? Pretty much every article in this field is some click bait title similar to "did this recent discovery break science?" and is quite tiresome. But a more accurate title like "Results from new experiment are so far out of norm for prior understanding that much more scrutiny is needed" doesn't gain attraction.

Re: Did the W-boson just “break the standard model”?

#116

Post by cwillu »

tambourine_man wrote: post #85
ralfn wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

She wrote a book about this topic. So the claim that there is no substantiation is false. You just didn't bother to find out.

Fair enough, I wasn't aware. I'll check it out. I think you mean this: “Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray” https://www.amazon.com/Lost-Math-Beauty-Physics-Astray/dp/04... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1KFTPqc0nQ I still find the tone off putting, reminds me of the fox and the grapes fable, not sure if it's known to most cultures. Nevertheless, I'll watch the video and reexamine my opinion.

If it's what I think it is, it's usually (in english at least) succinctly referred to as "Sour grapes"

Re: Did the W-boson just “break the standard model”?

#117

Post by evanb »

adrian_b wrote: post #31
d0mine wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This part also stand out to me. It is unfortunate that a science communicator would express her research preference in such a way. It is true there were no breakthrough in ages in the particle physics (standard model works extremely well), it is true "paper production" has disproportionate influence on funding (applicable to academia in general), personally I'm excited about the recent deployment of Webb space telesc…

Unfortunately the standard model does not work "extremely well". Even if we suppose that the standard model is completely correct, it does not allow the computation of the majority of the useful physical quantities. What is needed is a model that would be able to compute all the physical quantities that are important in practice, e.g. the masses of all hadrons and of all atomic nuclei, also their magnetic moments, th…

I think your comment is far behind the times. Directly from QCD we have: computed the low-lying parts of hadronic spectrum, computed the proton-neutron mass splitting, made _pre_dictions about hadronic masses that were then found at the LHC, computed the nucleon axial coupling g_A, vacuum polarization and light-by-light, and so on. It requires supercomputers. But so what? Nobody promised that physics should be easy.

We know how to match our effective field theory of protons and neutrons in nuclei to QCD observables. This project has been under way for 20 years. Expect major breakthroughs as the exascale machines mature. If we match our EFTs to QCD calculations then there would be no additional parameters fit to data, and our intellectual edifice will have quantitative predictivity from fundamental particles to neutron stars. It's hard. Nobody promised that physics should be easy.

Re: Did the W-boson just “break the standard model”?

#118

Post by jfengel »

spaetzleesser wrote: post #97
robonerd wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't the same be said for particle physics? The accelerators and detectors seem very high tech.

The LHC computing infrastructure is also quite impressive.

And CERN is literally the reason we're here on th Web right now.

Re: Did the W-boson just “break the standard model”?

#119

Post by folkrav »

dylan604 wrote: post #115
tambourine_man wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sabine went on full rant/iconoclastic/grudge mode IMO recently. It's a shame, as she a good communicator, but I just see myself skipping her content when it pops up. “I left the field because it's a paper production machine that adds no value to society” without substantiation is simply a frustration ridden meme.

>without substantiation Really? Pretty much every article in this field is some click bait title similar to "did this recent discovery break science?" and is quite tiresome. But a more accurate title like "Results from new experiment are so far out of norm for prior understanding that much more scrutiny is needed" doesn't gain attraction.

I wouldn't describe those pop-science articles as the scientific "papers" I assumed was talked about.

Re: Did the W-boson just “break the standard model”?

#120

Post by spekcular »

joseluis wrote: post #105

I really think this paper should be more widely known, because it's eye opening: https://physicsdetective.com/something-is-rotten-in-the-stat... It made me realize QED is the equivalent of a million lines spaghetti codebase that's been continually built upon, fudge after fudge since the 40s, while being sold as the best thing ever, the ultimate model of reality, etc. While it really started as a temporary solution li…

The person who wrote that paper doesn't understand the basics of the field that he's talking about.

For example (from the blog post): "Consa gives an analogy wherein Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan has claimed that the sum of all positive integers is not infinite, but is instead -1/12. It’s wrong, it’s absurd, but renormalization has now been accepted, and is even sold as a virtue."

One when performs zeta function regularization, one gets -1/12. This isn't some mystery; it's a perfectly reasonable thing to do. Analytic continuation has been understood since the 1800s.

Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeta_function_regularization

Edit: I read more of the linked paper. The claim that Karplus and Kroll committed "fraud" is basically libel, as can be seen by reading the complete account. The worst one can say is that people didn't publish full details of calculations due to page limitations or laziness, but this is hardly a special feature of QED. For instance, Onsager famously solved the 2-d Ising model exactly in 1944 but never provided details in print, just the final solution.

Post reply on HN