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I don't understand what is the point of your comment, I am a physicist and I understand this paper but this does not mean that others should worry if they don't

by pw6hv 9y ago

I don't understand what is the point of your comment, I am a physicist and I understand this paper but this does not mean that others should worry if they don't.

andrewmcwatters 9y ago
I think it's public commentary on the ease of consumption of these papers on HN on a wider scale than just physicists.
- fwdpropaganda 9y ago
  In your opinion, what does it say about HN that people have the need to say "this is very complicated, don't worry if you don't get it"?
  - AnimalMuppet 9y ago
    It says that people here expect to be able to understand things. "I'm not smart enough to understand physics" is not a normal self-image on HN.
    - fwdpropaganda 9y ago
      Bingo.
gus_massa 9y ago
Nice. Can you ELI25 it? I only skimmed it. I don't understand it now, but I guess that in a week I could get a good enough understanding if I skip the most difficult parts. So my possible wrong ELI25: The vacuum can transform spontaneously in another type of vacuum (like liquid water transform into ice at low temperature). Lucky this is very improbable because otherwise we would be all dead, and the transition is due to quantum tunneling. To estimate the probability of the transition it is necessary to calculate the contribution of the virtual particles in the loops in the Feynman diagrams. A naïve calculation has too many infinite values to be useful. In this article they calculate the contribution of multiple virtual particles, in particular when the Feynman diagrams has many loops. They have a nice pattern and somehow they cancel (most?) of the infinite values. With this new calculation they can estimate how long we should wait until this tunneling effect between the two vacuum destroy the universe and luckily it's a long time. (Perhaps other thing can kill all of us before :).) For this calculation it is particular important the mass of the heavy particles. (Linkbait title: "Scientists say that God's particle may open portal to universe doom at any moment". Sorry. I couldn't resist.) As I said earlier, this short version may be wrong. Any corrections or missing important points are welcome.

by pw6hv 9y ago

I don't understand what is the point of your comment, I am a physicist and I understand this paper but this does not mean that others should worry if they don't.

andrewmcwatters 9y ago

I think it's public commentary on the ease of consumption of these papers on HN on a wider scale than just physicists.

fwdpropaganda 9y ago
In your opinion, what does it say about HN that people have the need to say "this is very complicated, don't worry if you don't get it"?
- AnimalMuppet 9y ago
  It says that people here expect to be able to understand things. "I'm not smart enough to understand physics" is not a normal self-image on HN.
  - fwdpropaganda 9y ago
    Bingo.

gus_massa 9y ago

Nice. Can you ELI25 it? I only skimmed it. I don't understand it now, but I guess that in a week I could get a good enough understanding if I skip the most difficult parts. So my possible wrong ELI25: The vacuum can transform spontaneously in another type of vacuum (like liquid water transform into ice at low temperature). Lucky this is very improbable because otherwise we would be all dead, and the transition is due to quantum tunneling. To estimate the probability of the transition it is necessary to calculate the contribution of the virtual particles in the loops in the Feynman diagrams. A naïve calculation has too many infinite values to be useful. In this article they calculate the contribution of multiple virtual particles, in particular when the Feynman diagrams has many loops. They have a nice pattern and somehow they cancel (most?) of the infinite values. With this new calculation they can estimate how long we should wait until this tunneling effect between the two vacuum destroy the universe and luckily it's a long time. (Perhaps other thing can kill all of us before :).) For this calculation it is particular important the mass of the heavy particles. (Linkbait title: "Scientists say that God's particle may open portal to universe doom at any moment". Sorry. I couldn't resist.) As I said earlier, this short version may be wrong. Any corrections or missing important points are welcome.