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A new experiment casts doubt on the leading theory of the nucleus

quantamagazine.org

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Re: A new experiment casts doubt on the leading theory of the nucleus

#51

Post by jiggawatts »

tsimionescu wrote: post #47
Sakos wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, somebody explain these downvotes, because afaik none of these statements in this comment or the other downvoted comments about the mass of water are incorrect. Somebody make it make sense.

I believe this one is downvoted for quoting Chat GPT. The other one is downvoted not so much for the claim about water molecule mass, but because of the combative tone and feeling that it is challenging established physics in a somewhat shallow way, most likely.

It cracks me up that my comment is seen as "challenging established physics" (and being downvoted into oblivion) when literally everything I stated is established physics.

I really don't see what's controversial about what I've said that's riled up people so much...

Re: A new experiment casts doubt on the leading theory of the nucleus

#52

Post by gsatic »

exmadscientist wrote: post #43
jjtheblunt wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it explains everything then why are experiments still ongoing? What is left to explain?

To oversimplify: the Standard Model is pretty great when you've got two particles. As soon as there's three , it's too hard to calculate most things people are interested in. Oh, or gravity. Gravity's a problem too.

Particles are similar to people that way.

Re: A new experiment casts doubt on the leading theory of the nucleus

#53

Post by chopin »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #32
dexwiz wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elegance is matter of perspective. Epicycles are a very elegant way to explain planetary orbits from a geocentric view point, but they are very wrong.

I would agree epicycles are elegant — if they worked. :-)

They work. It's just an approximation series.

Re: A new experiment casts doubt on the leading theory of the nucleus

#54

Post by akomtu »

version_five wrote: post #2

> Instead, at these scales, a new effective force emerges — the strong nuclear force, transmitted between nucleons by the exchange of pions. I'm admittedly ignorant, but I'm not convinced that a lot of theoretical physics is basically curve fitting where you've got a model with enough flexibility that you can make it fit the data. String theory always seemed like an egregious version of this, I think it's less popula…

String theory looks like a good math framework to describe possible universes. Physics today is hindered by the obsessive idea that what we see around - the observable universe - is all there is, rather than just one of many possible worlds. This is the good old geocentric model on steroids. And this is why physicists are puzzled by the lucky combination of constants that define our world.

Re: A new experiment casts doubt on the leading theory of the nucleus

#55

Post by tanepiper »

exmadscientist wrote: post #43
jjtheblunt wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it explains everything then why are experiments still ongoing? What is left to explain?

To oversimplify: the Standard Model is pretty great when you've got two particles. As soon as there's three , it's too hard to calculate most things people are interested in. Oh, or gravity. Gravity's a problem too.

Those damn 3-body problems

Re: A new experiment casts doubt on the leading theory of the nucleus

#56

Post by 6nf »

jjtheblunt wrote: post #34
andreareina wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The standard model has a number of free parameters [1] but the results of calculations are pretty sensitive to them, and this is what predicted (not just explained post-hoc) the Higgs. It's not incorrect to say there's curve fitting involved, but it severely understates the magnitude of the achievement that is the standard model, and its success in explaining everything that underpins everyday life[2], as well as mos…

If it explains everything then why are experiments still ongoing? What is left to explain?

'everything that underpins daily life' does not include everything in the universe, for example it excludes dark matter and dark energy, neither of which matter at planetary scales like here on earth.

Re: A new experiment casts doubt on the leading theory of the nucleus

#57

Post by raverbashing »

8bitsrule wrote: post #26

This is great news, if it holds up. There hasn't been a lot of remarkable advancement in physics since the Standard Model. "Another topic that comes up is simplicity. According to Feynman, nature is usually much simpler than our thoughts. Therefore, when trying to explain phenomena, we tend to overcomplicate things. Often, in the end, reality can be explained by much simpler terms. We just need to look at it from ano…

For real, I wonder if Physicists are not putting themselves in a corner by using equations that are in principle "easy to work with" (because they're pulled from similar phenomenon) but a pain to actually use

Feynman diagrams are a visual way of representing a boatload of very complex equations and the worse part is that they work! But maybe it's a failure of math more than physics

Re: A new experiment casts doubt on the leading theory of the nucleus

#58

Post by rcxdude »

jjtheblunt wrote: post #34
andreareina wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The standard model has a number of free parameters [1] but the results of calculations are pretty sensitive to them, and this is what predicted (not just explained post-hoc) the Higgs. It's not incorrect to say there's curve fitting involved, but it severely understates the magnitude of the achievement that is the standard model, and its success in explaining everything that underpins everyday life[2], as well as mos…

If it explains everything then why are experiments still ongoing? What is left to explain?

The operation of a D-type flip-flop and NAND gates explains everything in computers upwards of digital logic. What else is there to explain or explore in software?

Re: A new experiment casts doubt on the leading theory of the nucleus

#59

Post by fsh »

jxy wrote: post #28

The fundamental theories we have is Quantum Electrodynamics and Quantum Chromodynamics. This new experiment tells you that "modern nuclear forces, including those derived within chiral effective field theory" break down and cannot be used to describe what they observed. Here is the arxiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2112.10582 It just tells you that their effective theory is no longer effective in these circumstances. Unle…

The title says that the experiments diagree with "the leading theory of the nucleus", which is chiral effective field theory. I don't see anything wrong or "clickbaity" about this.

Re: A new experiment casts doubt on the leading theory of the nucleus

#60

Post by rcxdude »

jiggawatts wrote: post #51
tsimionescu wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe this one is downvoted for quoting Chat GPT. The other one is downvoted not so much for the claim about water molecule mass, but because of the combative tone and feeling that it is challenging established physics in a somewhat shallow way, most likely.

It cracks me up that my comment is seen as "challenging established physics" (and being downvoted into oblivion) when literally everything I stated is established physics. I really don't see what's controversial about what I've said that's riled up people so much...

It is factually incorrect in the assertion that the standard model can't explain the reduction in mass (special relativity and quantum mechanics work fine together. It's general relativity that is the problem). In fact mass-energy equivalence is a pretty core part of quantum mechanics.
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