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> Instead, the classification of phases is “more like a periodic table. There are many elements, but they fall into categories and we can understand the categor

> Instead, the classification of phases is “more like a periodic table. There are many elements, but they fall into categories and we can understand the categories.” > Before these zero-temperature phases cropped up, physicists thought they had phases all figured out. Ahh, the irony. This is an endless loop: hey, we figured it all out! Some years/decades later: hah! Past scientists didn't have the full picture. Now we have figured it all out...

infogulch 7y ago
Physics usually works in cycles. Someone finds some new weird observation that our current models don't yet explain. People swarm it, poking at the edge trying to find cases that the current model fails to explain. Eventually someone comes up with a new model that fits all the newly found observations in addition to all the old observations. Sometimes the new model is an addendum/special case/clarification of the existing model, sometimes it's a 'deeper' more fundamental model from which the entire old model is a special case. The new model's predictions are exercised and stretched until some prediction that the new model makes doesn't line up with experiment and the whole thing starts over. This process is happening for basically every aspect of every model all the time, all at different stages and timescales. We've known that all kinds of weird states of matter exist for quite a while now, but all these observations have so far resisted being made into nice, neat predictive models. So in this case the 'poking it' stage has been decades long, and we're stuck on the modeling stage. Hopefully the team in the article has found a model that can be useful and kicks us over the hump. It is an endless loop, but it's not irony. It's just the way science works.
- stareatgoats 7y ago
  > it's not irony Well, it is irony when some scientists don't seem to remember the nature of the scientific inquiry as you describe it. Maybe because some seeming paradox or aberration is easier discarded as irrelevant or untrue rather than upsetting the whole theoretic framework that he/she has built their whole career on ... It is human of course. But also ironic.

infogulch 7y ago

Physics usually works in cycles. Someone finds some new weird observation that our current models don't yet explain. People swarm it, poking at the edge trying to find cases that the current model fails to explain. Eventually someone comes up with a new model that fits all the newly found observations in addition to all the old observations. Sometimes the new model is an addendum/special case/clarification of the existing model, sometimes it's a 'deeper' more fundamental model from which the entire old model is a special case. The new model's predictions are exercised and stretched until some prediction that the new model makes doesn't line up with experiment and the whole thing starts over. This process is happening for basically every aspect of every model all the time, all at different stages and timescales. We've known that all kinds of weird states of matter exist for quite a while now, but all these observations have so far resisted being made into nice, neat predictive models. So in this case the 'poking it' stage has been decades long, and we're stuck on the modeling stage. Hopefully the team in the article has found a model that can be useful and kicks us over the hump. It is an endless loop, but it's not irony. It's just the way science works.

stareatgoats 7y ago
> it's not irony Well, it is irony when some scientists don't seem to remember the nature of the scientific inquiry as you describe it. Maybe because some seeming paradox or aberration is easier discarded as irrelevant or untrue rather than upsetting the whole theoretic framework that he/she has built their whole career on ... It is human of course. But also ironic.