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New boson appears in nuclear decay, could break standard model if confirmed

arstechnica.com

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Re: New boson appears in nuclear decay, could break standard model if confirmed

#21

Post by bilekas »

machrider wrote: post #14
bilekas wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am skeptic also, but at the same time, I remember the skepticism of the higgs. I am more than welcome to be proven wrong though! This news is a little crazy and I don't think people 'not being sold on it' should stop people trying.

The Higgs boson was expected though, while this claimed boson is not predicted by the model at all?

I wouldn't go so far as to say it was expected, it was more of a placeholder. It was more: 'Well, something doesn't add up here, so the 'boson' should fill that gap. And people went and searched for it.

I feel something simular to what we see here, the problem is trying to tie everything else that we know back into it.. I say problem but I really mean excitement to understand a bit more!

Again, this could all be completely wrong and it could even draw down to a bad input along the chain, but the idea is definitely something worth investigating!

Remember, the Higgs Boson brought us the imagination of changing a light particle (photon) to a particle with mass.. It's a quite wacky idea if you look at it from a point we knew many moons ago!

Re: New boson appears in nuclear decay, could break standard model if confirmed

#22

Post by jessriedel »

bilekas wrote: post #10
ddavis wrote: post #2

The field is not sold on this. Some previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21616084

I am skeptic also, but at the same time, I remember the skepticism of the higgs. I am more than welcome to be proven wrong though! This news is a little crazy and I don't think people 'not being sold on it' should stop people trying.

No, the Higgs was considered the most probable thing the LHC could find, including the null result of "nothing". People are always going to be skeptical of particular measurements because this stuff is so tricky and the incentives are huge for discoveries, but the prior of experts was that the Higgs would exist.

Re: New boson appears in nuclear decay, could break standard model if confirmed

#23

Post by bilekas »

amelius wrote: post #16
machrider wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Higgs boson was expected though, while this claimed boson is not predicted by the model at all?

Yes, a better comparison would perhaps be the faster-than-light neutrinos.

Fair.. Absolutely fair, personally I don't believe faster-than-light neutrinos exist.

It will be an incredible change, if something else happens: that's really all, I'm not pushing some agenda.

Re: New boson appears in nuclear decay, could break standard model if confirmed

#24

Post by yiyus »

particleguy wrote: post #17

This result isn't even peer-reviewed yet. All of this hype about the X17 particle is coming from a pre-print on the arXiv. https://arxiv.org/abs/1910.10459 They claim a 7.2 sigma result, but the distribution of the null-hypothesis (called PDF(exp) in the paper) was determined from simulations of one atomic transition and "external pair creation on the target backing", and the only source of systematic error they took…

> The paper also is riddled with spelling and grammar mistakes, and while that doesn't have anything to do with the science, it does say something about the sloppiness of the researcher, I think.

I have reviewed many papers that were originally quite badly written, but were not bad papers at all. Many non-native speakers are bad at English, so they rely on some external editing service, and they do not want to pay this service until the paper has been properly reviewed and they have made the proposed changes. Of course it does not send a good signal, but the content of the article should not be judged in basis to that.

Re: New boson appears in nuclear decay, could break standard model if confirmed

#25

Post by account73466 »

particleguy wrote: post #17

This result isn't even peer-reviewed yet. All of this hype about the X17 particle is coming from a pre-print on the arXiv. https://arxiv.org/abs/1910.10459 They claim a 7.2 sigma result, but the distribution of the null-hypothesis (called PDF(exp) in the paper) was determined from simulations of one atomic transition and "external pair creation on the target backing", and the only source of systematic error they took…

>> This result isn't even peer-reviewed yet.

ArXiv pre-prints are pretty normal in physics and math.

>> that doesn't have anything to do with the science, it does say something about the sloppiness of the researcher, I think.

Interesting. BTW, Krasznahorkay is a highly-cited researchers.

Re: New boson appears in nuclear decay, could break standard model if confirmed

#27

Post by derefr »

dudydidudy wrote: post #26

That seems more like not speaking English than not being a native English speaker. If you can't be bothered to pay for something until it's published why should the reviewers be obligated to give you the benefit of the doubt?

Because being cheap has no correlation with being a bad scientist?

Re: New boson appears in nuclear decay, could break standard model if confirmed

#28

Post by account73466 »

dudydidudy wrote: post #26

That seems more like not speaking English than not being a native English speaker. If you can't be bothered to pay for something until it's published why should the reviewers be obligated to give you the benefit of the doubt?

>> why should the reviewers be obligated to give you the benefit of the doubt?

That is a technical paper with 5 pages of text. Their PI has a few hundred papers published so he probably just does not care. The reviewers usually don't care as well as long as the core contribution is legit.

Re: New boson appears in nuclear decay, could break standard model if confirmed

#29

Post by juanjmanfredi »

This research group has claimed previous discoveries of different bosons before [0]. They have never succeeded in reproducing a result. The scientific community is right to be skeptical. If there is real physics there, then follow up experiments should be able to reproduce the effect.

[0] https://www.quantamagazine.org/new-boson-claim-faces-scrutin...

Re: New boson appears in nuclear decay, could break standard model if confirmed

#30

Post by pintable »

account73466 wrote: post #25
particleguy wrote: post #17

This result isn't even peer-reviewed yet. All of this hype about the X17 particle is coming from a pre-print on the arXiv. https://arxiv.org/abs/1910.10459 They claim a 7.2 sigma result, but the distribution of the null-hypothesis (called PDF(exp) in the paper) was determined from simulations of one atomic transition and "external pair creation on the target backing", and the only source of systematic error they took…

>> This result isn't even peer-reviewed yet. ArXiv pre-prints are pretty normal in physics and math. >> that doesn't have anything to do with the science, it does say something about the sloppiness of the researcher, I think. Interesting. BTW, Krasznahorkay is a highly-cited researchers.

Seconded. We treated ArXiv pre-prints incredibly seriously and only posted things when they were already in review/scheduled to be published.
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