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There is no "time" prescribed for developing scientific theories. There is no plan here. They take exactly as much as they need to be developed, not any shorter
by H8crilA 7y ago
There is no "time" prescribed for developing scientific theories. There is no plan here. They take exactly as much as they need to be developed, not any shorter nor any longer. It can be days, months, years, decades, centuries, millennias. Or more. They can take zero large failures, 5 large failures, 1000 large failures.
- clouddrover 7y ago> There is no plan here. There is a plan. They are looking for particles which supersymmetry says they should find. They haven't found them. Supersymmetry needs supporting evidence but they're running out of places to look.
- orbifold 7y agoWell they believed they would see supersymmetric particles at older colliders as well. The problem now is that the Higgs mass anchors the valid range for "natural" supersymmetric models. Last I checked most of those where ruled out now. That still leaves the problem that the Higgs mass is unexplained. So the obvious step is to do Higgs precision measurements, which is what they intend to do with electron-positron colliders tuned to the Higgs mass.
- H8crilA 7y agoThat is kind of my point. Thinking you can plan a successful confirmation of a theory is just bollocks and pure arrogance. It will either work or not, no way of knowing. We should still fund it.
- Enginerrrd 7y ago>Well they believed they would see supersymmetric particles at older colliders as well. Yes and no. It is important to understand that theoretical predictions with regard to particle accelerators are often massaged into making predictions that seem to coincidentally help justify the cost of the next big accelerator to politicians and nations.
- cwzwarich 7y agoIs there anything that would cause adherents to accept that it is a failed theory? All of the false predictions so far apparently haven't moved the needle much. After a while it starts to seem more like Aristotelian natural philosophy rather than modern empirical science. It would be different if this belief was pushed by a few isolated theorists, but it's the major focus of the field and they will likely ask for billions of dollars of new public investment for accelerators to continue the goose chase, with no promising leads from any of the previous experiments.
- kurthr 7y agoIt seems more like Copernican epicycles in complexity and accuracy to me. Hopefully, the mathematical complexity will lead somewhere interesting even if it’s not GUT. There are so many possible solutions (and data so difficult to get) that it’s more like a game than a theory.
- AnimalMuppet 7y agoI think it's going to come down to the new grad students. Eventually, they're going to look at the lack of results in string theory and decide to work on something else for their career. And then, eventually, the ones working on it will die off. Science progressing one funeral at a time, as the saying goes.
- Koshkin 7y agoBut can't the theory be interesting in its own right, say, as a mathematical construct, at least?
- AnimalMuppet 7y agoOf course it can. But all the physics people aren't pursuing it in order to find an interesting mathematical construct. (That's what math people are for.)
- sebastialonso 7y agoThis feels very much like the situation when a person's job is really no longer necessary but either way they come up with ridiculous scenarios just not to be fired.
- sebastialonso 7y ago> Just because none of my 20 fields trips haven't found Bigfoot doesn't mean it doesn't exists! I mean, yes, technically correct.