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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

#261

Post by jug »

highwaylights wrote: post #41
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…

They haven't found nothing. They've found something, which is nothing. They've looked, been able to rule out some hypotheses of what they might find, and have established some evidence against others. Progress achieved, and the search continues.

This is indeed progress but as I understand the situation, it is progress in the shape of taking another step on the ladder but only to realize it looks like it was the final step, after having searched for billions of dollars during decades.

Maybe, scary thought, the theory of general relativity and the standard model is pretty much entirely self-contained and cannot per their design extend to encompass the quantum world?

Other theories maybe can, but then we need to look at even what we have from a completely different angle?

Like how we have colors. By watching a rainbow we can see them all. There can be nothing more. Until you realize they are mere wavelengths in the optical spectrum and there is so much more. But that is a quantum leap in viewing things. However, maybe this is what is needed?

Maybe this is just philosophical garbage though. :D

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

#262

Post by Koshkin »

jordanpg wrote: post #240
morbia wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(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 a lot of commentary on this thread is losing sight of what the world "model" really amounts to in a scientific context. It's an abstraction. A bunch of math that just-so-happens to result in accurate predictions. That's all it really is. How the universe really works (putting Tegmark aside) is a separate, ultimately philosophical question. Much of particle physics is simply exploring the parameter space in wh…

> It's an abstraction. A bunch of math that just-so-happens to result in accurate predictions. That's all it really is. How the universe really works (putting Tegmark aside) is a separate, ultimately philosophical question.

But philosophy is not knowledge, and it is in fact math that is the only form our knowledge can have in this area, whether we like it or not.

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

#263

Post by Koshkin »

supportengineer wrote: post #150
SkyBelow wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the alternatives? Better weapons, better ad targeting systems, better gambling hidden behind a veneer of gaming on mobile? We can look at where our government and our society currently allocates money and find that the allocations looks bad enough that even building a bigger particle accelerator that might not find anything is an improvement overall. As a singular species, I think we would be better for goin…

Huge fleets of space telescopes Multiple gravity wave detectors

These I'm afraid will only confirm what we already know.

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

#264

Post by louloulou »

bluGill wrote: post #224
SkyBelow wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the false dichotomy that if we spend €21 billion on a particle accelerator then we must take it from other research into advancing humanity instead of taking it from other areas that don't provide benefit to humanity as a whole (though they do provide benefit to some groups at equal or greater cost to others). >'is spending this much money disproving philosophical arguments justifiable right now?' should rightl…

Okay, we need to take that money from somewhere. There is only so much labor on the planet, and that is what the money is buying in the end. (I'm including corruption in labor here) Some labor is more valuable than others, and we can debate how much we want to spend, but in the end if we have someone do X they could do Y instead. Sometimes Y is sit around doing nothing, sometimes it is valuable. The problem here is w…

Better to just create trillions out of nothing and use them to buy financial assets, now that's a good use of money!

(https://www.ecb.europa.eu/mopo/implement/app/html/index.en.h...)

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

#265

Post by hombre_fatal »

nerdponx wrote: post #210
timdiggerm wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mathematically, yes. But in terms of value, no.

An economist might notate this as "0.000 ≻ 0.00". Curly comparison operators like "≻" (U+227B SUCCEEDS) are often used specifically to avoid ambiguity with traditional comparison operators like ">". See: https://www.oeconomist.com/blogs/daniel/wp-content/uploads/2...

Heh, I think a barely different glyph introduces more ambiguity than it solves. On my screen it’s effectively the same glyph but now with “oh, well it’s actually different.”

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

#266

Post by jordanpg »

Koshkin wrote: post #262
jordanpg wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot of commentary on this thread is losing sight of what the world "model" really amounts to in a scientific context. It's an abstraction. A bunch of math that just-so-happens to result in accurate predictions. That's all it really is. How the universe really works (putting Tegmark aside) is a separate, ultimately philosophical question. Much of particle physics is simply exploring the parameter space in wh…

> It's an abstraction. A bunch of math that just-so-happens to result in accurate predictions. That's all it really is. How the universe really works (putting Tegmark aside) is a separate, ultimately philosophical question. But philosophy is not knowledge, and it is in fact math that is the only form our knowledge can have in this area, whether we like it or not.

My point is that there is nothing magical about this model or that model.

HEP experimentation is just exploring parameter space and seeing if our models hold up.

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

#267

Post by Koshkin »

labrador wrote: post #245

Good. Now maybe physicists can start solving the riddle of consciousness.

The problem of consciousness is outside the subject area of physics. Chemistry - maybe, but more likely cell biology and information theory. Even more likely it will remain an issue of philosophy rather than (positive) science.

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

#268

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

Koshkin wrote: post #262
jordanpg wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a lot of commentary on this thread is losing sight of what the world "model" really amounts to in a scientific context. It's an abstraction. A bunch of math that just-so-happens to result in accurate predictions. That's all it really is. How the universe really works (putting Tegmark aside) is a separate, ultimately philosophical question. Much of particle physics is simply exploring the parameter space in wh…

> It's an abstraction. A bunch of math that just-so-happens to result in accurate predictions. That's all it really is. How the universe really works (putting Tegmark aside) is a separate, ultimately philosophical question. But philosophy is not knowledge, and it is in fact math that is the only form our knowledge can have in this area, whether we like it or not.

Physics is based on metaphor not math. We take common experiences like space, distance, speed, temperature, "energy", quantify them with other stable experiences we can use as reference units, then select the operations on them which happen to have predictive value. The operations have become more abstract over time, but they're still more complex variations on the same underlying concepts - for example generalising 3D Euclidean space to the abstract ideal of a set of relationships in a mathematical space defined by some metric.

There's nothing absolute about either the math or the metaphor. Both get good answers in relatively limited domains.

One obvious problem is that reality may use a completely different set of mechanisms. Physics is really pattern recognition of our interpretation of our experience of those mechanisms. It's not a description of reality at all. It can't be.

And if our system of metaphors is incomplete - quite likely, because our experiences are limited physically and intellectually - we won't be able to progress past those limits in our imagination.

We'll experience exactly what we're experiencing now - gaps between different areas of knowledge where the metaphors are contradictory and fail to connect.

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

#269

Post by ezekiel68 »

This attitude ("nightmare") is backwards. What is this clinging to sunk costs of money and career time? The point is not for scientists to figure out how to extend the life of their big toy; the point is to delve into the many, many unexplained mysteries such as a the true nature of what we call "gravity", harmless methods to observe intercellular activity during diet or substance interventions (not with markers after biopsy or necropsy), how to convert ocean water to drinking water without getting the project cancelled by those who cannot bear to countenance the death of a single marine life form, and on and on.

Truly Max Plank wrote well, when he penned, "A great scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it."[0]

[0] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/08/190829150642.h...

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

#270

Post by gus_massa »

lr1970 wrote: post #202
gus_massa wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly not an expert in that area. I only took a course of Nuclear Physics for a Major in Physics [1]. So I can read and understand that stuff, but the fine details pass over my head. Looking at a recent page of that course, the recomended books are * F. Halzen, A. Martin, “Quarks and Leptons: An introductory course in modern particle physics” (Wiley 1984) * D. Griffiths, “Introduction to elementary particles” (Wiley…

> Looking at a recent page of that course, the recomended books are * F. Halzen, A. Martin, “Quarks and Leptons: An introductory course in modern particle physics” (Wiley 1984) * D. Griffiths, “Introduction to elementary particles” (Wiley 1987) It is telling that for a recent course the recommended books are over 35 years old. Consistent with the OP proposition.

The complete list is

* F. Halzen, A. Martin, “Quarks and Leptons: An introductory course in modern particle physics” (Wiley 1984)

* D. Griffiths, “Introduction to elementary particles” (Wiley 1987)

* J.J. Sakurai, “Advanced quantum mechanics” (Addison Wesley 1967).

* P.E. Hodgson, et al., “Introductory nuclear physics” (Oxford 1997).

* H. Frauenfelder, E.M. Henley, “Sub-atomic Physics” (Prentice Hall 1992)

IIRC the Sakurai book is more about generic quantum mechanics, but he has two books, I'm not sure if this has more about particle physics. The other two are more modern, but I don't remember them. I also tried to keep the list short, because usually the main book of the course cover most of the topics.

Anyway, it's a mandatory undergraduate course for everyone that want to be a Physics. If you want to learn cutting edge particle physics, you should take one or two optative course about the topic, then make a one year undergraduate thesis, then take a 5 years PhD, and then perhaps 2 years of a postdocs. So the cutting edge is like 8 years away.

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