4 ms·
This article made me feel uneasy since knowing the names of several particles doesn't mean we understand them. And superconducting would change our world, yet
by throwaway_exer 10y ago
This article made me feel uneasy since knowing the names of several particles doesn't mean we understand them.
And superconducting would change our world, yet it's still early days for both the science and engineering of efficient applications.
Maybe a follow-up is needed in 2110.
- sanxiyn 10y agoMaybe not knowing the names, but how about knowing the masses? Part of the theory is precisely that apart from some numbers we already know, there is nothing more to know about those particles.
- Steuard 10y agoMy understanding of Carroll's point here is that if we were to revisit this question in 2110, there is absolutely no reason to suspect that the ultimate explanation for superconductivity would have turned out to have required any fundamental particles or interactions other than those in quantum field theory as applied to the Standard Model (plus gravity). Certainly our ability to do calculations within those theories will probably have improved drastically by then! But there's every reason to expect that physicists of that future era will be able to say, "Physicists from 2010 were entirely familiar with the basic principles and structures that our recent algorithms explaining superconductivity are based on."