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"Researchers say there are three possible explanations for the anomalous data. One is mundane. Two would revolutionize physics." The "mundane explanation" is c
by tech-historian 6y ago
"Researchers say there are three possible explanations for the anomalous data. One is mundane. Two would revolutionize physics."
The "mundane explanation" is contamination from inside the experiment. Hopefully it's not that!
- enkid 6y agoBut realistically it's probably the mundane explanation, just like the faster than light travel a few years ago.
- lisper 6y agoYep. You almost don't even have to look at the details. Any time you see a headline that says some experimental result "could revolutionize physics" the odds will be very much with you if bet against.
- _jal 6y agoTo be fair, the line works much better than "is probably noise".
- lou1306 6y agoQuasars, pulsars, and the Cosmic Microwave Background all started as unexplainable experimental data: I know the most likely explaination is the mundane one, but what if it is not?
- HPsquared 6y agoThose famous cases are the exception that proves the rule.
- margalabargala 6y agoIn what way do they prove the rule? They fact that these exceptions exist prove the rule is no rule, but just a guideline.
- HPsquared 6y agoThe "rule" being that the vast majority of unexplained results are due to experimental error or noise. The existence of a few famous examples that were indeed new science, narrows the statement from "all unexplained results" to just "the vast majority".
- lisper 6y agoYes, that's true. The problem is that the more our knowledge converges on the actual truth, the less likely new discoveries become. It has been 50 years or so since the last really new thing was discovered in particle physics despite heroic efforts. The more time goes by, the more likely it is that this is because the next breakthrough is simply beyond our reach.
- AnimalMuppet 6y agoUm, Higgs Boson? Now, true, it was expected rather than a surprise. But it was still a discovery.
- at_a_remove 6y agoVisit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_particle_discoveries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_particle_discoveri... and, since we are talking about subatomic particles, remove 1995's antihydrogen and 2011's antihelium-4. Note that the criteria listed on the page are a little generous. What's that graph look like, plotted on time? 1930s: Three subatomic particles 1940s: Two subatomic particles 1950s: Three subatomic particles 1960s: Three subatomic particles 1970s: Four subatomic particles, that's going up but then ... 1980s: only one subatomic particle 1990s: One subatomic particle 2000s: Two subatomic particles, and that is if you are being generous about including the quark-gluon fireball, which I wouldn't be 2010s: One subatomic particle There are only so many to discover, if these are fundamental, and so the timeline of discoveries per decade must trend down.
- brandmeyer 6y agoIMO, the situation is much worse than this. There haven't been any new particle predictions since the 1970's. The observations since then have all been confirmations of earlier predictions.
- vl 6y agoBut in the Standard Model each “generation” of particles is so much heavier than the previous one, and in practice there is a limit on the power of the accelerator we can build. Even then there is no reason to believe that there is infinite number of subatomic particles.
- cambalache 6y agoAll those three were clear, sharp signals whose origin was not established. This is totally the opposite, a signal who dances between noise/contamination and an actual result(between 1-2 sigma and a actual "discovery" of 5+ sigma).99% of those cases are bogus.
- BurningFrog 6y agoYeah, if it was almost any other branch of science, I'd half expect new revolutionary findings. But in physics, mundanity wins.
- lisper 6y agoThere's a reason for this, and it reveals a very deep truth about our universe: at root, the laws of nature are simple. All of the interesting complexity is emergent. That's the reason that, in terms of the potential for producing an endless stream of new discoveries, physics is a drier well than other fields of science.
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- Ma8ee 6y agoWe don’t know that. It might as well be that the laws we know just are good simple approximations to something much more complex.
- BurningFrog 6y agoOne way to think about it is that elementary particles are so extremely small that they can't have that much complexity. Entirely unprovable intuitive reasoning, I know. But I think there is something to it.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- RhysU 6y agoIf it is complex but can be described simply, Ockham's Razor says it is simple.
- Ma8ee 6y agoNo, that is a misunderstanding of Ockham’s razor. If a simpler explanation explains all known phenomena, then of course, choose the simpler explanation. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t any unknown phenomena that the simpler explanation can’t explain that forces us to choose a more complicated explanation later. Ockham’s razor doesn’t say anything about reality. It only says anything about which model of reality we should choose given a set of known phenomena.
- detritus 6y agoExactly what I thought when I read that it was in Italy. I mentally rolled my eyes and thought "here we go again". - (My partner's from Italy and I spend at least a month there each year, so I hope I don't come across as being entirely needlessly snarky saying the above! :) )
- sgdpk 6y agoOr even the Digamma [1] signal that appeared independently at the same time in two experiments at CERN. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/750_GeV_diphoton_excess https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/750_GeV_diphoton_excess
- credit_guy 6y agoAnd the faster than light travel was "discovered" at the same lab, Grand Sasso National Laboratory.
- elfchief 6y agoTo be fair, they didn't actually think they'd discovered faster than light travel. They basically went "uhhhh, we double-checked everything and our numbers work out but we're pretty sure this isn't faster than light; here's our paper, can someone please point out wtf we screwed up?
- simcop2387 6y agoAnd the fun part of that one is that all the math, data, etc. all lined up to say that. Their analysis of the data was correct, and it turned out to be an equipment issue. A single incorrectly installed fiber optic cable, and an out of spec clock. It wasn't even a bad cable, just not inserted completely correctly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster-than-light_neutrino_anomaly https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster-than-light_neutrino_ano... EDIT: A much better detailed analysis of the failure including pictures of the cable, https://profmattstrassler.com/articles-and-posts/particle-physics-basics/neutrinos/neutrinos-faster-than-light/opera-what-went-wrong/ https://profmattstrassler.com/articles-and-posts/particle-ph...
- credit_guy 6y agoThis is a bit of revisionist history. The way the "discovery" was announced was slightly subdued, they called it an "anomaly", and added the caveats that it could be due to some errors, but they also stated that the "deviation of the neutrino velocity from c would be a striking result pointing to new physics in the neutrino sector". So pretty much, we are not 100% sure, but if this is correct, this is revolutionary. That's not exactly the tone of someone who asks the larger community to assist with a debugging exercise. And the recent announcement repeats the same pattern. "This could be due to some equipment malfunction, but if not, then this is big".
- raverbashing 6y agoThe XENON experiment is located at Grand Sasso but it is a collaboration between multiple laboratories It wasn't a single group looking at those results
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- ISL 6y agoWhen you're in this game long enough, you realize that the thing you want most is not to be wrong. Experimental physics (and every experimental/field branch of science) is a search for what is true. If the dark matter is axions, that's great. If it isn't, that is okay, too. The key problem is that we don't know what gives rise to the phenomena that have led us to believe that dark matter exists. The thing we should hope for and aspire to, from every experimental endeavor, is a complete and accurate assessment of uncertainties. A complete assessment is only ever a goal, as the "unknown unknowns" are intrinsically difficult to discover; barring that, one can always list and accurately assess all of the known uncertainties. It is exciting every time a new or unexpected signal appears in a precision experiment -- perhaps today is the day a great truth is exposed -- but the thing we should always hope for is not an exciting result but, rather, a reliable one.
- tech-historian 6y agoAbsolutely. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
- TeMPOraL 6y ago> When you're in this game long enough, you realize that the thing you want most is not to be wrong. I suppose most of us are commenting from the outside perspective, where the thing you want most is a warp drive - so any revolution in understanding of the universe gives hope that we'll be able to do things we now consider impossible.
- 7thaccount 6y agoI think you've nailed it. All we really want is to find out we can do warp drive or build a Stargate. I'm only partly joking.
- pacala 6y agoResearchers say there are three possible explanations for the anomalous data. One is mundane, 99.98%. Two would revolutionize physics, 0.01% and 0.01%.