I am far from an expert. But from the article, it seems to me to be more likely that it casts doubt on the approximations they're using to do the calculations.
A new experiment casts doubt on the leading theory of the nucleus
11–20 of 120 posts
Re: A new experiment casts doubt on the leading theory of the nucleus
#12> 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…
What passes the bar for "elegant enough"? Why would laws of nature care about such human principles? And, most of all, why treat elegance as a guiding principle when all it has done is produce models incapable of being accurate outside a narrow range?
Historically, haven't the more "elegant" models been shown to be correct? The various explanations for planetary motion come to mind as an example.
Re: A new experiment casts doubt on the leading theory of the nucleus
#13I am not a physicist but if I were to take a stab at simplifying things I’d assume that a neutron is probably just a proton and an electron… isn’t that what a neutron decays to once it has been ejected from a nucleus anyways?
Re: A new experiment casts doubt on the leading theory of the nucleus
#14Earlier quoted context omitted.
The standard model doesn’t explain GPS satellites.
But relativity explains GPS. And the two theories together explain practically everything to insane levels of precision. The only time they go wrong is when they both operate at once, in a narrow range around black holes or the very earliest universe.
They also go wrong with large scale phenomena like inflation, dark matter, and dark energy.
Re: A new experiment casts doubt on the leading theory of the nucleus
#15Earlier quoted context omitted.
What passes the bar for "elegant enough"? Why would laws of nature care about such human principles? And, most of all, why treat elegance as a guiding principle when all it has done is produce models incapable of being accurate outside a narrow range?
Historically, haven't the more "elegant" models been shown to be correct? The various explanations for planetary motion come to mind as an example.
Correct in a narrow range. Newton's elegance failed to accurately predict orbits of even our rather typical stellar system. Good for a start, but hardly something to strive for once we know better. So where do we go next? There is a real chance of artificially keeping ourselves in a local minimum if we don't seriously consider inelegant theories. It'd be neat if someone came up with an elegant theory that accurately described nature from quantum fields to stars. It'd also be neat if someone did that with an inelegant theory.
Re: A new experiment casts doubt on the leading theory of the nucleus
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
The standard model doesn’t explain GPS satellites.
But relativity explains GPS. And the two theories together explain practically everything to insane levels of precision. The only time they go wrong is when they both operate at once, in a narrow range around black holes or the very earliest universe.
General Relativity doesn’t end just above the atmosphere and quantum mechanics ought to apply to everything, not just experiments.
The current microscopic models don’t even attempt to explain how a molecule of water is lighter than the oxygen and two hydrogen atoms that went into making it.
Oh sure, we can wave our hands at it and invoke the mass-energy relation from GR, but this doesn’t “pop out” of the Standard Model in any sense.
This isn’t some exotic phenomena only found in deep space!
We have a long way to go before we can par ourselves on the back and claim to truly understand what’s going on.
Re: A new experiment casts doubt on the leading theory of the nucleus
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
What passes the bar for "elegant enough"? Why would laws of nature care about such human principles? And, most of all, why treat elegance as a guiding principle when all it has done is produce models incapable of being accurate outside a narrow range?
Historically, haven't the more "elegant" models been shown to be correct? The various explanations for planetary motion come to mind as an example.
No.. In fact by the standards of the day, an circular orbit is more elegant. Think about circles within circles and the entire universe revolving around you.
To some extent, models that made less assumptions tend to be more correct.. but I think those are few and far between. We are now trying to explain very small discrepancies (by human scale) and the models are necessarily more complex.
Re: A new experiment casts doubt on the leading theory of the nucleus
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
What passes the bar for "elegant enough"? Why would laws of nature care about such human principles? And, most of all, why treat elegance as a guiding principle when all it has done is produce models incapable of being accurate outside a narrow range?
Historically, haven't the more "elegant" models been shown to be correct? The various explanations for planetary motion come to mind as an example.
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.
Re: A new experiment casts doubt on the leading theory of the nucleus
#19I am far from an expert. But from the article, it seems to me to be more likely that it casts doubt on the approximations they're using to do the calculations.
That's my understanding: the math required to get a concrete prediction of a model is complicated enough that “either the theory, or the experiment, is wrong” excludes the most likely possibility: that too much error is being introduced by the approximations that they're (necessarily) using to get a tractable computation out of the model.
Re: A new experiment casts doubt on the leading theory of the nucleus
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
But relativity explains GPS. And the two theories together explain practically everything to insane levels of precision. The only time they go wrong is when they both operate at once, in a narrow range around black holes or the very earliest universe.
General Relativity doesn’t end just above the atmosphere and quantum mechanics ought to apply to everything, not just experiments. The current microscopic models don’t even attempt to explain how a molecule of water is lighter than the oxygen and two hydrogen atoms that went into making it. Oh sure, we can wave our hands at it and invoke the mass-energy relation from GR, but this doesn’t “pop out” of the Standard Mod…
> General Relativity doesn’t end just above the atmosphere and quantum mechanics ought to apply to everything, not just experiments.
No one disagrees, but if it were that easy to just jump straight to the final theory we would have done it long ago. For now, effective theories are all we've got.
> Oh sure, we can wave our hands at it and invoke the mass-energy relation from GR, but this doesn’t “pop out” of the Standard Model in any sense.
Yes, it does. You don't need GR for mass-energy equivalence, just special relativity. And the Standard Model is fully special-relativistic.