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My physics teacher used to say: "Whenever physicists don't understand something - they invent a new particle"
by juliangamble 8y ago
My physics teacher used to say:
"Whenever physicists don't understand something - they invent a new particle"
- analog31 8y agoIndeed, it's been a pretty fruitful approach. Physicists propose new particles for a variety of reasons. Though they weren't fully recognized as "particles" at the time, gaps in the early periodic table could be thought of as missing particles in a sense. An apparent consistent failure of conservation laws in a collision experiment could be described as a "particle" if the failure has a quantitative regularity that's consistent with an un-detected particle. Particles can be proposed to identify a way that a new theory can be tested -- the Higgs and the graviton are in this category. Given a choice, physicists prefer to explore theories that can yield experimental predictions, and particle detection is an area where theories can be tested with decent sensitivity, albeit at some cost.
- leetbulb 8y agoI don't know much about particle physics, but this is a really nice way to think about "particles". Thank you!
- ezequiel-garzon 8y agoA very wise person (I wish I knew who) noted: “All models are wrong. Some models are useful.”
- hasseio 8y agoGeorge Box I believe.
- ezequiel-garzon 8y agoThank you! At the very least it looks like he started the expression: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_models_are_wrong https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_models_are_wrong