5 ms·

I'm not a physicist, but I do follow physics news regularly and have a fair bit of understanding. From what I remember, many physicists are not entirely satisfi

I'm not a physicist, but I do follow physics news regularly and have a fair bit of understanding. From what I remember, many physicists are not entirely satisfied with the Standard Model and have been "looking to replace it" for quite some time, the main problem being that it was still the best at describing reality (or experiments results, which is about the same for physics). Could somebody who is into the field answer how relevant this is, and/or perhaps point to a better source? The article is quite thin on substance, for example, that diagram of the LHCb experiment without caption feels weird, as if it had something to do but we're not even told!

ISL 11y ago
We're not so much looking to replace the Standard Model (it works very well), but rather trying to figure out if there's something more, and preferably less complicated, under the hood. There are lots of hints that there's something more, and everyone is looking hard in lots of places to discover the next scrap of the treasure map. If the tau were indeed found to exhibit substantially different decay properties from the muon, it would be major news within fundamental physics. The stated statistical significance of the result is quite low, you'll want to wait for more data (which are imminent at LHCb). A different experiment, BaBar, also sees a similar excess, and the experiments roughly agree. Taken together, the results are near the threshold for "evidence for", but not "discovery of" a new result. One upside to experiments with leptons (electrons, muons, and taus) is that they're simpler to understand. Anything involving hadronic physics (quarks, gluons, and the zoo of particles made from them, like protons and neutrons) is comparatively difficult to understand. TL;DR: Stay tuned. The result is of potential importance, but not yet, and could fluctuate away.
- poelzi 11y ago
  No it doesn't: http://www.cosmology.info/newsletter/2014.05.pdf http://www.cosmology.info/newsletter/2014.05.pdf http://www.cosmology.info http://www.cosmology.info <- the other papers referenced http://lenr-canr.org/index/Summary/Summary.php http://lenr-canr.org/index/Summary/Summary.php sorry, 4000+ papers and many replications are enough for me. then, unified theories like strings theory is absurd and not even a physical one. 0 explanation of electro gravity effects (Q-Thruster to start with). ... And then BAM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q43sqytcdLE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q43sqytcdLE I'm standing on the right side and the model I have adapted makes actually sense, so, no, it is nigher good, nor does it explain everything. http://www.helical-structures.org/anal_algorithm.gif http://www.helical-structures.org/anal_algorithm.gif
gus_massa 11y ago
[Let's ignore string theory...] I think that "looking to replace it" is a wrong characterization. The idea is to "tweak and improve" it. If this experiment is right, it means that at very high energy there is a small correction due to a new force. (At low energy, the correction would be still there, but it's negligible.) It's not something groundbreaking like "the electrons actually don't exist, sorry". (But this experiment is only a 2 sigma, so it may disappear when more data arrive.)

ISL 11y ago

We're not so much looking to replace the Standard Model (it works very well), but rather trying to figure out if there's something more, and preferably less complicated, under the hood. There are lots of hints that there's something more, and everyone is looking hard in lots of places to discover the next scrap of the treasure map. If the tau were indeed found to exhibit substantially different decay properties from the muon, it would be major news within fundamental physics. The stated statistical significance of the result is quite low, you'll want to wait for more data (which are imminent at LHCb). A different experiment, BaBar, also sees a similar excess, and the experiments roughly agree. Taken together, the results are near the threshold for "evidence for", but not "discovery of" a new result. One upside to experiments with leptons (electrons, muons, and taus) is that they're simpler to understand. Anything involving hadronic physics (quarks, gluons, and the zoo of particles made from them, like protons and neutrons) is comparatively difficult to understand. TL;DR: Stay tuned. The result is of potential importance, but not yet, and could fluctuate away.

poelzi 11y ago
No it doesn't: http://www.cosmology.info/newsletter/2014.05.pdf http://www.cosmology.info/newsletter/2014.05.pdf http://www.cosmology.info http://www.cosmology.info <- the other papers referenced http://lenr-canr.org/index/Summary/Summary.php http://lenr-canr.org/index/Summary/Summary.php sorry, 4000+ papers and many replications are enough for me. then, unified theories like strings theory is absurd and not even a physical one. 0 explanation of electro gravity effects (Q-Thruster to start with). ... And then BAM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q43sqytcdLE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q43sqytcdLE I'm standing on the right side and the model I have adapted makes actually sense, so, no, it is nigher good, nor does it explain everything. http://www.helical-structures.org/anal_algorithm.gif http://www.helical-structures.org/anal_algorithm.gif

gus_massa 11y ago

[Let's ignore string theory...] I think that "looking to replace it" is a wrong characterization. The idea is to "tweak and improve" it. If this experiment is right, it means that at very high energy there is a small correction due to a new force. (At low energy, the correction would be still there, but it's negligible.) It's not something groundbreaking like "the electrons actually don't exist, sorry". (But this experiment is only a 2 sigma, so it may disappear when more data arrive.)