5 ms·
The field is not sold on this. Some previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21616084 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21616084
by ddavis 7y ago
The field is not sold on this. Some previous discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21616084 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21616084
- bilekas 7y agoI am skeptic also, but at the same time, I remember the skepticism of the higgs. I am more than welcome to be proven wrong though! This news is a little crazy and I don't think people 'not being sold on it' should stop people trying.
- machrider 7y agoThe Higgs boson was expected though, while this claimed boson is not predicted by the model at all?
- amelius 7y agoYes, a better comparison would perhaps be the faster-than-light neutrinos.
- hn_throwaway_99 7y agoWell, I guess in the sense that the faster-than-light neutrinos turned out to be false.
- jessriedel 7y agoThat is a better comparison, but not a great one. A new boson (and associated force) would be exciting but completely in line with known physics. Speed-of-light violations would be absolutely revolutionary, threatening almost everything we know about fundamental physics.
- bilekas 7y agoFair.. Absolutely fair, personally I don't believe faster-than-light neutrinos exist. It will be an incredible change, if something else happens: that's really all, I'm not pushing some agenda.
- zamalek 7y ago> personally I don't believe faster-than-light neutrinos exist. You don't have to believe they they exist, they were quickly and conclusively disproven. As I recall, GPS was used as a time source and there was timer inaccuracies on Earth due to relativistic effects.
- bilekas 7y agoI wouldn't go so far as to say it was expected, it was more of a placeholder. It was more: 'Well, something doesn't add up here, so the 'boson' should fill that gap. And people went and searched for it. I feel something simular to what we see here, the problem is trying to tie everything else that we know back into it.. I say problem but I really mean excitement to understand a bit more! Again, this could all be completely wrong and it could even draw down to a bad input along the chain, but the idea is definitely something worth investigating! Remember, the Higgs Boson brought us the imagination of changing a light particle (photon) to a particle with mass.. It's a quite wacky idea if you look at it from a point we knew many moons ago!
- jessriedel 7y agoNo, the Higgs was considered the most probable thing the LHC could find, including the null result of "nothing". People are always going to be skeptical of particular measurements because this stuff is so tricky and the incentives are huge for discoveries, but the prior of experts was that the Higgs would exist.
- thefringthing 7y agoI studied the philosophy of science a bit in university and one of my professors did some work on reactions in the scientific community to the Higgs boson discovery. I remember her remarking about how "this is a huge discovery" and "we knew we would see this; it's not a big deal" narratives were popular simultaneously.
- jessriedel 7y agoI don't actually think those narratives are in strong tension, especially if each were stated precisely. In short, "surprisal" is not the sole measure of importance for a scientific discovery.