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So you don't know statistics nor how observations are made in particle physics... Do you think that we collect these things in a jar and make a picture? Of cour

by mnl 8y ago

So you don't know statistics nor how observations are made in particle physics... Do you think that we collect these things in a jar and make a picture? Of course you look for a signal on top of a background, after modelling it within a control region and then unblinding with data somewhere else, and of course you compare signal against a Monte Carlo simulation because there's no other way to do this. You're welcome to suggest 10,000 particle physicists your ideas about how to find particles with lifetimes of 10^-22 s and a production cross section of 57 pb. I don't understand what makes people that have never opened an actual book about this, nor stepped into a lab, entitled to think they know better than professionals working their asses out what they're talking about.

BurnGpuBurn 8y ago
Well, one of the problems, for instance, is that experiments like this are basically un-peer-reviewable. Who has the money to build another LHC? So it's hard for others to review the work done and thus, basically we all have to trust ONE team of scientists on this. But the particle scientists, in this for science and for them rather peculiar position, don't take proper care at all to explain their findings or their theories, which is obviously made harder with the absence of pictures from experiments like we used to have in particle physics. They just anounce "we've found the Higgs!", throw a party and ask everybody to believe them. The theories of particle physics are not really understandable unless you choose to study them very hard for a couple of years, and for sure the amount of theory needed to understand the experiments at LHC is staggering. I'm just a layman in this regard, and I will probably never understand the theories you guys do. So I'm not a scientist, but I am pretty well versed in politics, and I can tell you from a political view there's two options: you either found the Higgs or you didn't. If you did, you'd be very happy and publishing your results. If you didn't, you'd also be happily publishing results because for all 10,000 of you it'd be career suicide to admit that y'all just spent 15 billion euros to build a device that didn't give the expected results. The amount of anger and disdain displayed by scientists in this field towards anyone asking genuine questions is starting to look like other fields where "the science is settled".
- mnl 8y ago
  The thing is you haven't asked anything, you've made your own assumptions and presented them as facts. There is a single accelerator that provides the proton beams: the LHC, and there are two independently designed and built huge main detectors where collisions happen and two independent collaborations, one for each, that actually make the measurements and then analyze the data of just theirs. At the LHC there's ATLAS and CMS, they don't share any data nor staff, and both of them have found the Higgs. Once they publish their results, they are statistically combined so you have a single value for whatever property at the PDG. This is how it's done, for obvious scientific-method-done-right reasons, at CERN at least since 1978 with UA1 and UA2. But you're not interested in what's really going on, because you're well versed in politics AKA bullshit, so you can't even grasp that there are competent people actually doing their job, with stellar standards let me add, and I know because I've seen a lot of bullshit in action almost everywhere in this fake it until you make it society we're building so merrily, but not there. You wouldn't believe it, people actually working? surely they're scamming us honest maligners, eh? I left out a relevant factoid. It's almost impossible for a scientist to become CERN staff, they mostly hire engineers. There are about 25 physicists at the Theory division and a few more scattered around with a fellowship. Usually scientists are paid by universities or investigation institutes from all around the world. Countries pay their contribution to the budget because it's not a very good idea for your R&D to miss it.

by mnl 8y ago

BurnGpuBurn 8y ago

Well, one of the problems, for instance, is that experiments like this are basically un-peer-reviewable. Who has the money to build another LHC? So it's hard for others to review the work done and thus, basically we all have to trust ONE team of scientists on this. But the particle scientists, in this for science and for them rather peculiar position, don't take proper care at all to explain their findings or their theories, which is obviously made harder with the absence of pictures from experiments like we used to have in particle physics. They just anounce "we've found the Higgs!", throw a party and ask everybody to believe them. The theories of particle physics are not really understandable unless you choose to study them very hard for a couple of years, and for sure the amount of theory needed to understand the experiments at LHC is staggering. I'm just a layman in this regard, and I will probably never understand the theories you guys do. So I'm not a scientist, but I am pretty well versed in politics, and I can tell you from a political view there's two options: you either found the Higgs or you didn't. If you did, you'd be very happy and publishing your results. If you didn't, you'd also be happily publishing results because for all 10,000 of you it'd be career suicide to admit that y'all just spent 15 billion euros to build a device that didn't give the expected results. The amount of anger and disdain displayed by scientists in this field towards anyone asking genuine questions is starting to look like other fields where "the science is settled".

mnl 8y ago
The thing is you haven't asked anything, you've made your own assumptions and presented them as facts. There is a single accelerator that provides the proton beams: the LHC, and there are two independently designed and built huge main detectors where collisions happen and two independent collaborations, one for each, that actually make the measurements and then analyze the data of just theirs. At the LHC there's ATLAS and CMS, they don't share any data nor staff, and both of them have found the Higgs. Once they publish their results, they are statistically combined so you have a single value for whatever property at the PDG. This is how it's done, for obvious scientific-method-done-right reasons, at CERN at least since 1978 with UA1 and UA2. But you're not interested in what's really going on, because you're well versed in politics AKA bullshit, so you can't even grasp that there are competent people actually doing their job, with stellar standards let me add, and I know because I've seen a lot of bullshit in action almost everywhere in this fake it until you make it society we're building so merrily, but not there. You wouldn't believe it, people actually working? surely they're scamming us honest maligners, eh? I left out a relevant factoid. It's almost impossible for a scientist to become CERN staff, they mostly hire engineers. There are about 25 physicists at the Theory division and a few more scattered around with a fellowship. Usually scientists are paid by universities or investigation institutes from all around the world. Countries pay their contribution to the budget because it's not a very good idea for your R&D to miss it.