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Physicists Solve a Muon Mystery. Now, Old Results Don't Add Up

quantamagazine.org

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Re: Physicists Solve a Muon Mystery. Now, Old Results Don't Add Up

#151

Post by inigyou »

podocarp wrote: post #100
whatsThisBtn4 wrote: post #68

9 years of philosophy and I'm over platonic realism and reading contemporary philosophy of science. The thing is, we are wrong, but this stuff is useful to make predictions. Everyone knows about the copernican revolution. But when it first happened, the old models(earth at the center of the solar system) were more accurate at predicting where the plenets would be. Scientists pragmatically spend their time doing best…

The difference with the Copernican stuff is that you can fly a satellite (e.g. Voyager) to the edge of the solar system, look back, and see the planets orbiting the sun. There is no sane way to put the earth in the center once you do that. If I do a push up the Earth moves beneath me but no reasonable person says I'm pushing the Earth away. Hence I feel heliocentrism is simply an observable fact. It's not a mathemati…

We can't even see an electron. But we can see the effect of a beam of electrons on a low-pressure gas quite easily.

We can't even see a table. We can only see the nerve impulses resulting from the photons resulting from the sunlight bouncing off the table.

A computer can't play sound either, it can only send bits to a DAC.

Re: Physicists Solve a Muon Mystery. Now, Old Results Don't Add Up

#152

Post by inigyou »

exmadscientist wrote: post #122
HappMacDonald wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the real litmus test is and always has been "can a theory predict the results of empirical measurements (such as controlled experiments) more accurately than its competitors". The Danish-interpretation quantum physicists might urge you to shut up and calculate, but what we lack is any model capable of both describing why and how the wave function collapses and simultaneously offering more accurate predictions tha…

Yes, this, exactly. The moment someone has a theory that's experimentally testable somehow (somehow possible, anyway), there will be plenty of interest. There has never been such a theory to date. Until that arrives, it's all just hot air.

A new theory could also explain known observations using fewer assumptions. The standard model has a lot of odd things baked into it - why these specific quarks and leptons? Why no right-handed neutrinos? Most simply, why does each particle have the rest mass it does? And why is there a Higgs field that's very similar to the field of condensation of Cooper pairs in a normal superconductor, but with more dimensions?

Solving just one "why" question might earn you a Nobel prize.

Re: Physicists Solve a Muon Mystery. Now, Old Results Don't Add Up

#153

Post by Min0taur »

wbl wrote: post #104
podocarp wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference with the Copernican stuff is that you can fly a satellite (e.g. Voyager) to the edge of the solar system, look back, and see the planets orbiting the sun. There is no sane way to put the earth in the center once you do that. If I do a push up the Earth moves beneath me but no reasonable person says I'm pushing the Earth away. Hence I feel heliocentrism is simply an observable fact. It's not a mathemati…

Humans can detect single photons with their eyes! https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms12172

Thanks for the link, this is sick

Re: Physicists Solve a Muon Mystery. Now, Old Results Don't Add Up

#154

Post by glenstein »

stonedivot wrote: post #95
ceejayoz wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Marshall had to drink a beaker of Helicobacter pylori because no one would believe it caused ulcers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis wound up in an insane asylum for suggesting surgeons should wash their hands. Scientists get hidebound just like the rest of us, at times.

The person you replied to was clearly asking of examples where some large paradigm shift caused large scale instances of suicidal thoughts, self harm, or otherwise, as a direct result of these new ideas. Providing two cases is, first of all, certainly not anything like "large scale". Second, these two cases are in complete and total isolation of each other, so not evidence of people getting riled up over the same new…

Someone who gets it! This whole branch of comments is like a comedy of errors of distractedness in multiple directions. The wrong theory, dramatically inadequate evidence in support of that theory, and a lack of applicability of that theory to the book even if it were true. The book explains it by a specific and intentional campaign of harassment and sabotage (and worse) aimed at scientists. Terrifying hallucinations, death threats, and violent sabotage by a group of domestic collaborators. It's not just scientists getting bummed out by not having agreeable data.

And for that matter you would think scientific revolutions, which to some degree are about how you struggle in response to the limits of an old theory that can't explain data, are nevertheless more properly understood as triumphant moments of progress that validate the practice of science, not failures and dead ends the scientists in the book experience.

Re: Physicists Solve a Muon Mystery. Now, Old Results Don't Add Up

#155

Post by podocarp »

inigyou wrote: post #151
podocarp wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference with the Copernican stuff is that you can fly a satellite (e.g. Voyager) to the edge of the solar system, look back, and see the planets orbiting the sun. There is no sane way to put the earth in the center once you do that. If I do a push up the Earth moves beneath me but no reasonable person says I'm pushing the Earth away. Hence I feel heliocentrism is simply an observable fact. It's not a mathemati…

We can't even see an electron. But we can see the effect of a beam of electrons on a low-pressure gas quite easily. We can't even see a table. We can only see the nerve impulses resulting from the photons resulting from the sunlight bouncing off the table. A computer can't play sound either, it can only send bits to a DAC.

That is true. I'm not arguing for that standpoint, but it works perfectly fine for all classical matters and has been since Descartes.

I think in a common sense way you do get what I mean though when I say it is obvious that when we see two billiard balls colliding we know it but when think of electrons colliding it is only indirectly through whatever happens after the collision, never the process itself.

Re: Physicists Solve a Muon Mystery. Now, Old Results Don't Add Up

#156

Post by podocarp »

stbede wrote: post #137
podocarp wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference with the Copernican stuff is that you can fly a satellite (e.g. Voyager) to the edge of the solar system, look back, and see the planets orbiting the sun. There is no sane way to put the earth in the center once you do that. If I do a push up the Earth moves beneath me but no reasonable person says I'm pushing the Earth away. Hence I feel heliocentrism is simply an observable fact. It's not a mathemati…

> The difference with the Copernican stuff is that you can fly a satellite (e.g. Voyager) to the edge of the solar system, look back, and see the planets orbiting the sun. Or you can put the satellite in the back of a truck and back the truck out of your garage and see the sun orbiting the earth. Yet it remains sane to put anywhere in the center depending on your context.

If you have a reasonable grasp of Newtonian gravity you would also be unable to conclude that. A wrestler flailing a skinny guy around, from the POV of the skinny guy, is still definitely not the skinny guy flailing the wrestler about. I don't see what's to argue here. Given all facts, then there is no POV that results in the conclusion the sun goes round the earth. Just like how there's no placement of the camera that results in you claiming I'm pushing the earth away.

Re: Physicists Solve a Muon Mystery. Now, Old Results Don't Add Up

#157

Post by inigyou »

podocarp wrote: post #155
inigyou wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can't even see an electron. But we can see the effect of a beam of electrons on a low-pressure gas quite easily. We can't even see a table. We can only see the nerve impulses resulting from the photons resulting from the sunlight bouncing off the table. A computer can't play sound either, it can only send bits to a DAC.

That is true. I'm not arguing for that standpoint, but it works perfectly fine for all classical matters and has been since Descartes. I think in a common sense way you do get what I mean though when I say it is obvious that when we see two billiard balls colliding we know it but when think of electrons colliding it is only indirectly through whatever happens after the collision, never the process itself.

We saw the things that were easy to see long ago. Now we're seeing the things that are harder to see. That is, of course, harder, and more complicated, and only gets worse as we probe deeper, with more and more indirection, but I think all the stuff we are seeing has a pretty good grounding so far that it's actually something we are seeing indirectly and not a model artifact, at least until you get to quarks and gravitational waves, and we definitely can't see the strings of string theory.

Re: Physicists Solve a Muon Mystery. Now, Old Results Don't Add Up

#158

Post by cindyllm »

inigyou wrote: post #157
podocarp wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is true. I'm not arguing for that standpoint, but it works perfectly fine for all classical matters and has been since Descartes. I think in a common sense way you do get what I mean though when I say it is obvious that when we see two billiard balls colliding we know it but when think of electrons colliding it is only indirectly through whatever happens after the collision, never the process itself.

We saw the things that were easy to see long ago. Now we're seeing the things that are harder to see. That is, of course, harder, and more complicated, and only gets worse as we probe deeper, with more and more indirection, but I think all the stuff we are seeing has a pretty good grounding so far that it's actually something we are seeing indirectly and not a model artifact, at least until you get to quarks and grav…

[dead]

Re: Physicists Solve a Muon Mystery. Now, Old Results Don't Add Up

#159

Post by aleph_minus_one »

podocarp wrote: post #100
whatsThisBtn4 wrote: post #68

9 years of philosophy and I'm over platonic realism and reading contemporary philosophy of science. The thing is, we are wrong, but this stuff is useful to make predictions. Everyone knows about the copernican revolution. But when it first happened, the old models(earth at the center of the solar system) were more accurate at predicting where the plenets would be. Scientists pragmatically spend their time doing best…

The difference with the Copernican stuff is that you can fly a satellite (e.g. Voyager) to the edge of the solar system, look back, and see the planets orbiting the sun. There is no sane way to put the earth in the center once you do that. If I do a push up the Earth moves beneath me but no reasonable person says I'm pushing the Earth away. Hence I feel heliocentrism is simply an observable fact. It's not a mathemati…

> Hence I feel heliocentrism is simply an observable fact.

It isn't. You can easily define a coordinate system for the universe in which the earth is the center.

Heliocentrism just makes some approximate computations easier because the sun is so heavy. Thus in heliocentrism, the orbits of the planets are approximately ellipses (near-circles) around the sun, while in a geocentric model, the orbits have more complicated shapes.

Nevertheless (to explicare "approximate" even in the Newtonian gravity model (i.e. not Einsteinian gravity)) be aware that even in the heliocentric coordinate system the earth (and the other planets) don't move along an elliptical (near-circular) orbit around the sun, but both the sun and the planet move around a common center which is near to the sun.

> There is no sane way to put the earth in the center once you do that. [...] Hence I feel heliocentrism is simply an observable fact. It's not a mathematical convenience. It's a fact you can see with a camera. The relativism or perspective argument is irrelevant because as we established you have to be very unreasonable to describe a picture of a huge ass sun that hardly moves with small planets zooming around it as earth centric.

Modern physics really is about that there is no preferred coordinate system: this manifests itself in the fact that conserved quantities can be derived via Noether's theorem from such symmetries in the natural laws. There is just a choice of a coordinate system which in our solar system makes computations easier.

Re: Physicists Solve a Muon Mystery. Now, Old Results Don't Add Up

#160

Post by aleph_minus_one »

analog31 wrote: post #117
whatsThisBtn4 wrote: post #68

9 years of philosophy and I'm over platonic realism and reading contemporary philosophy of science. The thing is, we are wrong, but this stuff is useful to make predictions. Everyone knows about the copernican revolution. But when it first happened, the old models(earth at the center of the solar system) were more accurate at predicting where the plenets would be. Scientists pragmatically spend their time doing best…

From what I've read, a problem with the Copernican model was that it assumed circular orbits. Galileo insisted on this as well. It doesn't matter what orbits what, if you've got the shape of the orbits wrong. Oddly enough the Catholic astronomers were willing to accept a model that had the sun going around the earth, and the planets around the sun. What settled matters for them was Newtonian physics, which provided a…

Relevant concerning your point:

> What is the most misunderstood historical event?

> The Galileo Affair

> https://tidbits.quora.com/What-is-the-most-misunderstood-his...

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