How many years until we've discovered "everything"?
Biggest dark matter detector spots a single weird particle
91–100 of 152 posts
Re: Biggest dark matter detector spots a single weird particle
#92I think it's cool that there's still unconfirmed hypothesizes, and still unexplained phenomena in the science that's investigating these hypothesizes. I hope this turns into a real discovery about something; but even if it's an equipment malfunction, hopefully it's a lesson that can be turned into improving the detector.
The moment there are no more unconfirmed hypotheses you can assume something is wrong with sciences. All provable models (theories, explanations) that we have, or could have, are by definition wrong or incomplete.
Re: Biggest dark matter detector spots a single weird particle
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or this[2] 2007 Science paper on ultra high energy cosmic ray source candidates ("anisotropy") that we had to retract because significance started dropping almost the day the paper was approved. It was a fascinating experience as a junior member to follow the collaboration internal conversation and investigation on this, because a lot of extremely principled scientists were clearly deeply worried about losing their h…
Wow haha, that is a lot of authors! Never seen this before!
Most horrifying is a 2014 Science paper on Ebola with 58 authors, 5 of whom died of Ebola before publication.
https://www.science.org/content/article/ebolas-heavy-toll-st...
Re: Biggest dark matter detector spots a single weird particle
#94How many years until we've discovered "everything"?
Probably never. We've only mapped like 29% of the seafloor, actually explored like %5 of it, and we've barely pierced the earth's crust.
Re: Biggest dark matter detector spots a single weird particle
#95Why couldn't it be just a weirdly energetic neutrino originating from the neighborhood of some black hole?
I actually saw one of the authors present the data yesterday, one of the audience comments was indeed that this could be explained by an astrophysical neutrino striking the detector (all other neutrino sources have energy thresholds much lower than the detected data), but the data on astrophysical neutrinos is sparse (in part why detectors like IceCube exist), so I believe the argument is that the chances that an ast…
Thank you very much for this first hand info. One might argue that chances of theoretical particle existing and showing up are at least as negligible.
Re: Biggest dark matter detector spots a single weird particle
#96How many years until we've discovered "everything"?
You can know all the whats and hows and still have no clue about why
Re: Biggest dark matter detector spots a single weird particle
#97I think it's cool that there's still unconfirmed hypothesizes, and still unexplained phenomena in the science that's investigating these hypothesizes. I hope this turns into a real discovery about something; but even if it's an equipment malfunction, hopefully it's a lesson that can be turned into improving the detector.
The moment there are no more unconfirmed hypotheses you can assume something is wrong with sciences. All provable models (theories, explanations) that we have, or could have, are by definition wrong or incomplete.
I'm guessing you're alluding to Goedel's incompleteness theorem, but that really doesn't apply to physics. It's a statement about certain properties of formal systems - basically it tells us that for any formal system that's at least as powerful as arithmetic, it's impossible to prove every statement that is true in that system.
This doesn't in any way mean that you can't in principle describe with perfect accuracy with such a system, in a provable way, every aspect of physics. Sure, you might need a theorem that can't be proved and be stuck because of that, but it's not a given. Physics certainly doesn't depend on all possible statements in that formal system to accurately model the real world, and so Goedel's theorem can't prove that the subset that physics needs might not be all probable.
Re: Biggest dark matter detector spots a single weird particle
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
This sort of thing is really useful for helping people to understand what the purpose of scientific publication is. It's not about presenting finished products to society, it's more like a Discord where you communicate new findings with other authors. Often the reason for a communication is because you found something weird, and you want other people to know about it so they can help you confirm or rule it out as bad…
You have accurately described a email mailing list. Where in the value-add here?
It’s a special purpose mailing list. The value (your motivations for asking notwithstanding) is in the special purpose, not in the mailing list.
Re: Biggest dark matter detector spots a single weird particle
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
The moment there are no more unconfirmed hypotheses you can assume something is wrong with sciences. All provable models (theories, explanations) that we have, or could have, are by definition wrong or incomplete.
I'm guessing you're alluding to Goedel's incompleteness theorem, but that really doesn't apply to physics. It's a statement about certain properties of formal systems - basically it tells us that for any formal system that's at least as powerful as arithmetic, it's impossible to prove every statement that is true in that system. This doesn't in any way mean that you can't in principle describe with perfect accuracy w…
I don't think Gödel is necessarily what is meant here, there are very good information theoretical(and other) reasons you can never describe a system with truly perfect accuracy. The map has to be become the territory for genuinely perfect accuracy.
Re: Biggest dark matter detector spots a single weird particle
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
> they have a pretty good handle on why atoms decay Oh, they actually don't. Radioactive decay, AFAIK, is still an open physics mystery. We know it happens, we don't know why, what causes it, or if there even is a cause. We can predict factors that make it more likely. > to the point they can predict some to be radioactive before it's actually observed to be (like Bismuth-209). Right, but Xenon 124 wasn't predicted t…
Where is the mystery? Any system can spontaneously transform into a new state with a probability greater than zero unless some conservation law prevents it. In a sense it's just quantum tunneling.
The mystery is the details, not in that it happens at all. Feel free to submit a paper if you have all the answers.