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Tsung-Dao Lee, physicist who challenged a law of nature, has died

nytimes.com

21–30 of 81 posts

Re: Tsung-Dao Lee, physicist who challenged a law of nature, has died

#21
“subatomic particles, contrary to what scientists thought, are always symmetrical.”

This cannot be called challenging a law of nature. He questions what his colleagues generally believed. He challenges a convention of physics profession not a law of nature. But we know that media must exaggerate to sell papers.

Re: Tsung-Dao Lee, physicist who challenged a law of nature, has died

#22
post #10

This headline would suggest Tsung-Dao Lee challenged the law of gravity by jumping from a building and failing to make his point.

I don't think anybody understood the headline like that.

That was my first thought… I thought it was silly, but it was my first thought.

Re: Tsung-Dao Lee, physicist who challenged a law of nature, has died

#23

Feynman wrote a exceptionally clear explanation of this experiment and what it meant: - "To illustrate the whole problem still more clearly, imagine that we were talking to a Martian, or someone very far away, by telephone. We are not allowed to send him any actual samples to inspect; for instance, if we could send light, we could send him right-hand circularly polarized light and say, “That is right-hand light—just…

[deleted]

Re: Tsung-Dao Lee, physicist who challenged a law of nature, has died

#24
post #8

Chien-Shiung Wu, who conducted the experiment that proved Lee’s (and Yang’s) theory didn’t share the Nobel Prize with them in 1956. When I read people lamenting the fact that Rosalind Franklin didn’t get the Nobel due to sexism I wonder why Wu is not mentioned. For more information on the circumstances see https://physicsworld.com/a/overlooked-for-the-nobel-chien-sh...

> the fact that Rosalind Franklin didn’t get the Nobel due to sexism

The primary reason why Rosalind Franklin didn't get a Nobel is that she died in 1958. It's maybe not easy to speculate what would have happened in the alternate timeline where she had lived until the Nobel nominations started to happen.

Re: Tsung-Dao Lee, physicist who challenged a law of nature, has died

#26
post #21

“subatomic particles, contrary to what scientists thought, are always symmetrical.” This cannot be called challenging a law of nature. He questions what his colleagues generally believed. He challenges a convention of physics profession not a law of nature. But we know that media must exaggerate to sell papers.

No. What he challenged was an assumed law of nature. All laws of nature are assumed, as you cannot prove them, or only proof them in the context of a theory (which you then have to assume). It was not a convention.

Re: Tsung-Dao Lee, physicist who challenged a law of nature, has died

#28

Feynman wrote a exceptionally clear explanation of this experiment and what it meant: - "To illustrate the whole problem still more clearly, imagine that we were talking to a Martian, or someone very far away, by telephone. We are not allowed to send him any actual samples to inspect; for instance, if we could send light, we could send him right-hand circularly polarized light and say, “That is right-hand light—just…

I thought about this for a bit. One easy to use explanation for left and right is a number line. Smaller numbers are on the left and larger numbers are on the right. It's still an assumption that alien species would count that way.

Re: Tsung-Dao Lee, physicist who challenged a law of nature, has died

#29
post #28

Feynman wrote a exceptionally clear explanation of this experiment and what it meant: - "To illustrate the whole problem still more clearly, imagine that we were talking to a Martian, or someone very far away, by telephone. We are not allowed to send him any actual samples to inspect; for instance, if we could send light, we could send him right-hand circularly polarized light and say, “That is right-hand light—just…

I thought about this for a bit. One easy to use explanation for left and right is a number line. Smaller numbers are on the left and larger numbers are on the right. It's still an assumption that alien species would count that way.

I think this still illustrates the problem, though: where is the start of the number line? Perhaps this alien species has a right-to-left written language. Or top to bottom. How would one help orient the alien to the left to right numbering system used in this language?

Very interesting thought experiment while drinking my coffee this morning!

Re: Tsung-Dao Lee, physicist who challenged a law of nature, has died

#30
post #28

Feynman wrote a exceptionally clear explanation of this experiment and what it meant: - "To illustrate the whole problem still more clearly, imagine that we were talking to a Martian, or someone very far away, by telephone. We are not allowed to send him any actual samples to inspect; for instance, if we could send light, we could send him right-hand circularly polarized light and say, “That is right-hand light—just…

I thought about this for a bit. One easy to use explanation for left and right is a number line. Smaller numbers are on the left and larger numbers are on the right. It's still an assumption that alien species would count that way.

What if they draw a number line with smaller numbers on the right and larger numbers on the left?
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