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Duplicate of this post. [0] I have the same comment as over there: > It's important to keep in mind that there are always plenty of outstanding experimental a
by knzhou 7y ago
Duplicate of this post. [0]
I have the same comment as over there:
> It's important to keep in mind that there are always plenty of outstanding experimental anomalies in physics. At the moment, this is one of ~40 roughly equally credible hints towards new physics, and it's more likely than not that all of those hints will fade away over time. That isn't anybody's fault either: it has always been like this, and it happens because experiments are difficult and subtle.
0: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21616084 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21616084
- quickben 7y agoWhere can I read more about these hints?
- knzhou 7y agoYou can go straight to review articles, which are generally available for free on the arXiv. Or if you want the firehose, you can scan for papers whose abstracts contain words like 'hint', 'anomaly', 'excess', 'discrepancy', and so on [0]. 0: https://arxiv.org/search/advanced?advanced=&terms-0-operator=AND&terms-0-term=anomaly+OR+excess+OR+hint+OR+discrepancy&terms-0-field=all&classification-physics=y&classification-physics_archives=all&classification-include_cross_list=include&date-filter_by=all_dates&date-year=&date-from_date=&date-to_date=&date-date_type=submitted_date&abstracts=show&size=50&order=-announced_date_first https://arxiv.org/search/advanced?advanced=&terms-0-operator...
- mellosouls 7y agoI've provided a link to a blog that goes in depth on the previous results in another comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21617254 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21617254
- CabbageRice 7y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axis_of_evil_(cosmology) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axis_of_evil_(cosmology)
- k__ 7y agoWhy do they fade away? Because the experiments have been misinterpreted?
- DuskStar 7y agoBecause they're statistical artifacts, basically. P=0.05 means you're got a 1/20 chance of it happening on any given random test set where the bill hypothesis is true, after all. Physics uses far higher confidence levels, but also runs (effectively) massive numbers of tests. That's part of the danger of picking theories based on the data - each degree of freedom in interpretation multiplies your chances of having spurious results crop up.
- kmm 7y agoGiven the high statistical confidence they have, 7.2 sigma or 1 in 2 trillion, it's more likely to be some sort of systemic issue with the experimental setup.
- air7 7y agoThis is well known and corrected for in properly conducted experiments. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_comparisons_problem https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_comparisons_problem
- gus_massa 7y agoI almost agree. This is the more probable explanation of the other ~39 anomalies that are at 2 or 3 sigma. As a rule of thumb, don't get too attached to a 2 or 3 sisma because there is a high chance that it is only a statistical fluke and the apparent result will disappear with more data. But this cases has too many sigmas, 7!! And the group has a history of dubious discoveries, like the 5 sigma result in 2015 that was never reproduced. So I'm more inclined for a bad measurement method until an independent group can replicate it.
- peteradio 7y ago> like the 5 sigma result in 2015 Isn't that just an earlier version of the same experiment? Doesn't seem too surprising that a broad distribution has a mean shift with a different experimental setup. I'd count this as a repeat of the same experiment. That of course doesn't rule out some flaw in their experimental setup that happens in roughly the same way in each repeat.