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Ten years after the Higgs, physicists face the nightmare of finding nothing else

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Re: Ten years after the Higgs, physicists face the nightmare of finding nothing else

#251

Post by analog31 »

dlsa wrote: post #27

At least they are finding nothing and confirming they are finding nothing. Less scrupulous operators might be always finding something even if its not there. So that's a sign of good science. Maybe there's something they haven't found because there's so much data? Mix things up and look again? Change assumptions? Or as someone I know likes to say to various smaller humans: have you looked around the couch? Really? Ar…

That's happening. I have a friend who did a physics + data science PhD for analyzing existing data in a new way.

Re: Ten years after the Higgs, physicists face the nightmare of finding nothing else

#252

Post by anigbrowl »

lokimedes wrote: post #129

These articles will be gold in 100 years. We found the bottom of reality, guys, no need to look further!

No. The nightmare here is physicists knowing the Standard Model can't possibly be the bottom, but lacking clues about where to find stairs.

Re: Ten years after the Higgs, physicists face the nightmare of finding nothing else

#253

Post by anigbrowl »

dlsa wrote: post #42
redler wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may find the Universal Paperclips game amusing. https://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/index2.html

I already did.

This reminds me of a joke you recently told.

Re: Ten years after the Higgs, physicists face the nightmare of finding nothing else

#254

Post by adamsmith143 »

iLoveOncall wrote: post #194
adamsmith143 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Stagnation of scientific fields is normal and can last many years. In that time, little anomalies pile up, are swept under the rug, and largely forgotten. To admit anomalies can ruin careers, after all. Could not be more wrong for Particle Physics. An Anomaly could define your career and herald a Nobel Prize. That's exactly what we're looking for. We desperately want to find anomalies, not hide them.

Really? Because the article seems to say the complete opposite in multiple instances. "Oh hey this thing doesn't match what is expected according to the standard model but yeah the standard model is tots fine bro." > For example, in 2017, physicists working with LHCb, one of four large particle detectors fed by the LHC, found that B mesons, particles that contain a heavy bottom quark, decay more often to an electron…

>Really? Because the article seems to say the complete opposite in multiple instances.

Where is it saying that Physicists are trying to avoid anomalous data?

>"Oh hey this thing doesn't match what is expected according to the standard model but yeah the standard model is tots fine bro."

No one in the Physics community thinks like this. As I said it's very nearly the complete opposite, that if major problems in the model were found via experiment the person who found it would be cheering because they just guaranteed themselves a Nobel Prize. The problems with the Standard Model are widely known and deeply studied.

>So why is the standard model not in the trashcan?

Because despite it's known shortcomings it can still calculate 99.99% of scenarios with arbitrary accuracy. There's a reason Newtonian Mechanics are still taught, because for the cast majority of cases it completely works.

Re: Ten years after the Higgs, physicists face the nightmare of finding nothing else

#255

Post by dragonwriter »

iLoveOncall wrote: post #194
adamsmith143 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Stagnation of scientific fields is normal and can last many years. In that time, little anomalies pile up, are swept under the rug, and largely forgotten. To admit anomalies can ruin careers, after all. Could not be more wrong for Particle Physics. An Anomaly could define your career and herald a Nobel Prize. That's exactly what we're looking for. We desperately want to find anomalies, not hide them.

Really? Because the article seems to say the complete opposite in multiple instances. "Oh hey this thing doesn't match what is expected according to the standard model but yeah the standard model is tots fine bro." > For example, in 2017, physicists working with LHCb, one of four large particle detectors fed by the LHC, found that B mesons, particles that contain a heavy bottom quark, decay more often to an electron…

> So why is the standard model not in the trashcan?

Because there's not a strictly superior replacement yet.

All models are wrong, some are useful.

Re: Ten years after the Higgs, physicists face the nightmare of finding nothing else

#256

Post by AussieWog93 »

dlsa wrote: post #27

At least they are finding nothing and confirming they are finding nothing. Less scrupulous operators might be always finding something even if its not there. So that's a sign of good science. Maybe there's something they haven't found because there's so much data? Mix things up and look again? Change assumptions? Or as someone I know likes to say to various smaller humans: have you looked around the couch? Really? Ar…

Just based on my experience in academia, there are probably plenty of people with good hunches about where to go next. Unfortunately, the system (grants system especially) is actively discouraging them from trying anything too new that would undermine the status of the incumbent experts.

If you banned every single influential scientist who hasn't contributed a major discovery in the last 10 years from participating in academia, we'd have colonised the galaxy decades ago.

Re: Ten years after the Higgs, physicists face the nightmare of finding nothing else

#257

Post by Coding_Cat »

morbia wrote: post #214
Coding_Cat wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue for particle physics specifically, is that they _hope_ to find something that breaks the theory. But so far, only find confirmations of the current Standard Model. Succesful experiments, yeah, but doing little for pushing our understanding of the universe unfortunately. The reason why they want to break the standard model is, simplified, two-fold: 1. While the theory is incredibly powerful in its domain, we…

(former PhD in Particle Physics in QCD here, far from an expert) > While the theory is incredibly powerful in its domain, we have been unable to unify it with gravity and other theories of matter. This is a problem because it's supposed to be a theory summarizing the fundamental building blocks of the universe and it should therefore describe _everything_. I think this is a misunderstanding of what the Standard Model…

I think we probably agree on the core issue, I just kept things a bit too brief.

There are people who feel like I described, and there are people who disagree to varying degrees (physicists, amitrite?). But I do think we all kind-of agree that we'd prefer to find experimental results that break the standard model vs proving it right now, but it seems unlikely we're going to find that smoking gun anytime soon. The model is an attempt at fitting data and like you said it works in the regime it was designed for, but it can't be _the_ theory of everything. It would be great if it broke somehow so we could investigate _why_ and drive new avenues of research based on that which might be more promising in resolving gravity and the other forces (or the anti-matter mystery, or shed some light on what dark-matter is)*

As the OP said, it's still good science if we prove that the current theory holds up, but no one is really happy with it at this point because everyone knows it's not going to be the final unified theory that we all want to see

---- * personaly I have a gut feeling those three are going to be resolved in rapid succesion if they're ever solved

Re: Ten years after the Higgs, physicists face the nightmare of finding nothing else

#258

Post by pfdietz »

gus_massa wrote: post #98
dlsa wrote: post #27

At least they are finding nothing and confirming they are finding nothing. Less scrupulous operators might be always finding something even if its not there. So that's a sign of good science. Maybe there's something they haven't found because there's so much data? Mix things up and look again? Change assumptions? Or as someone I know likes to say to various smaller humans: have you looked around the couch? Really? Ar…

> Have you had a good look? It's difficult to explain, but they[1] tried very hard. For example the electron has an electric charge but it's also like a small magnet. In an ideal elementary particle, the value of the magnet is 2 * something. In a real elementary particle the value is almost-2 * something, so they are measuring the almost-2, and it's call g [2]. For an electron, the measured value of g is 2.0023193043…

There have been various amazing "tabletop" experiments looking for effects that would imply new particles/forces. Electric dipole moment of the electron, electric dipole moment of the neutron, "fifth force" (deviations from 1/r^2 gravity at very short ranges), neutron oscillation. The cleverness of some of these experiments is astounding.

Re: Ten years after the Higgs, physicists face the nightmare of finding nothing else

#259

Post by smolder »

hamsand wrote: post #247
dang wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, can you please not fulminate on HN? It sounds like you might know quite a bit about the field (or some of it), but commenting like this degrades discussion and evokes worse from others. If you would make your substantive points thoughtfully, and share some of what you know, that would be much better. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

the more posts are banned and shadowbanned the more like reddit this website becomes, aka a boring place for boring people to say boring things. interesting people don’t like censorship

It's the opposite. The moderation is good, is very needed, and helps keeps discussion quality/signal-to-noise high, making this a site worth visiting. The thoughtless flamewars you can find everywhere else on the web are what bore me, personally. The rules of conduct on this site aren't even a high bar, and no one is preventing anyone from being jerks if they want to merely by keeping it outside of this forum.
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