3 ms·

I'm a physicist who spent seven years working at the LHC and I've never heard of a "purposeful" move away from the term beauty quark. It just fell out of favor

I'm a physicist who spent seven years working at the LHC and I've never heard of a "purposeful" move away from the term beauty quark. It just fell out of favor but some, including myself, still like to use that name on occasion, personally I like it much better. The particle does not have a name in the official (PDG) listing, only a symbol "b". The "bottom" quantum number is universally called as such so one talks of "bottom hadrons" and so on. On the other hand the general area of research is called "b-physics" or "beauty physics", LHCb is the LHC-beauty experiment and so on. It makes perfect sense that this article uses "beauty" throughout for consistency. At the end of the day its just a name and this particle happens to have more than one (as does the J/psi and others) and neither is more whimsical than the other. Physicists tend to be quite whimsical anyway, particle physicists perhaps especially so.

goldenkey 6y ago
In any case, which authority told /u/reedf1 that studying the universe should be barred from being whimsical? Alan Watts would be laughing. So would the Joker. The universe is not meant to be taken so seriously. It is whimsical. And that is part of its beauty ;-)
- reedf1 6y ago
  I have absolutely no problem with it being whimsical. Actually I would like it to be as whimsical as possible, while still being easy and consistent to learn that is.
reedf1 6y ago
I was given the impression by my professors that it was a purposeful move, maybe it was just in teaching and not research. I'll defer to you, the actual particle physicist.
- goldenkey 6y ago
  How can something you wear so light on your sleeve cause you such angst that it "grinds your gears." Though you may have resigned in this tumult, I believe you still need to resolve something far deeper in your perspective on knowledge with regard to yourself and others.
  - minitoar 6y ago
    This may just be a language subtlety. I’ve frequently heard “grinds my gears” used as a synonym for “a pet peeve of mine”.
  - reedf1 6y ago
    Make no mistake, I think they should teach the b-quark as "bottom quark" to the general public and students. What particle physicist actually choose to use should be done at their own whimsy. I appreciate your diagnosis though, always feel I could be a bit more introspective.
  - soulofmischief 6y ago
    Sounds like you got triggered as well into making a comment? Maybe it's best to give OP the benefit of the doubt.
  - chriswarbo 6y ago
    > How can something you wear so light on your sleeve cause you such angst that it "grinds your gears." They revised their perspective in light of new information. That seems preferable to not revising their perspective ('wearing it heavy on their sleeve'?).
- Method5440 6y ago
  I’d also heard something like this during my physics education - you’re not alone apparently. One name was apparently more ‘respectable’ than the other. Lol
  - patcon 6y ago
    heh there's a deep irony here, in a story about "how science communicators [supposedly] ditched the term favoured for capturing the public imagination, in order to instead favour a more descriptive factual term"... ...of which the story itself is an overly neat simplification that has spread by better capturing the imagination of descriptive-minded physics students, in the teachers' own science communicating :)
  - cabaalis 6y ago
    An example of how the educators drive the narrative for the future.
reasonabl_human 6y ago
What do you do now? Is there a demand for CS skills at the LHC, and was it a fulfilling place to work in general? Presumably you lived in the UK that whole time?
- amadsen 6y ago
  The LHC is in Switzerland (not the UK) and in fact I'm still here. I was a data scientist for while. These days I'm back in research, but in a different field. There is a huge demand for CS skills of all kinds. CERN has one of the largest SCADA installations in the world, runs its own internet exchange point, operates a network of computing centers with a million cpu and hundreds of PB of data, and maintains many many millions of lines of code of specialized software, just to give you an idea. It is a fantastic place to work, the level of expertise and dedication among the people there (scientists and engineers alike) is very very high.
  - tsimionescu 6y ago
    They have also shown an impressive 1000-machine kubernetes cluster running on GCP for analyzing data (they did a live demo at KubeCon in 2018 I believe where they ran the Higgs boson data analysis during a panel).
andrewflnr 6y ago
I kind of don't believe there is such a thing as "just a name". People persistently confuse names with the thing named. If you want to communicate truthfully, you have to take into account the psychology of your audience. So "it's just a name" is not a good reason for misleading names. I realize this isn't a big deal for quarks, but it's been on my mind a lot. The application to politics is left as an exercise for the reader.

goldenkey 6y ago

In any case, which authority told /u/reedf1 that studying the universe should be barred from being whimsical? Alan Watts would be laughing. So would the Joker. The universe is not meant to be taken so seriously. It is whimsical. And that is part of its beauty ;-)

reedf1 6y ago
I have absolutely no problem with it being whimsical. Actually I would like it to be as whimsical as possible, while still being easy and consistent to learn that is.

reedf1 6y ago

I was given the impression by my professors that it was a purposeful move, maybe it was just in teaching and not research. I'll defer to you, the actual particle physicist.

goldenkey 6y ago
How can something you wear so light on your sleeve cause you such angst that it "grinds your gears." Though you may have resigned in this tumult, I believe you still need to resolve something far deeper in your perspective on knowledge with regard to yourself and others.
- minitoar 6y ago
  This may just be a language subtlety. I’ve frequently heard “grinds my gears” used as a synonym for “a pet peeve of mine”.
- reedf1 6y ago
  Make no mistake, I think they should teach the b-quark as "bottom quark" to the general public and students. What particle physicist actually choose to use should be done at their own whimsy. I appreciate your diagnosis though, always feel I could be a bit more introspective.
- soulofmischief 6y ago
  Sounds like you got triggered as well into making a comment? Maybe it's best to give OP the benefit of the doubt.
- chriswarbo 6y ago
  > How can something you wear so light on your sleeve cause you such angst that it "grinds your gears." They revised their perspective in light of new information. That seems preferable to not revising their perspective ('wearing it heavy on their sleeve'?).
Method5440 6y ago
I’d also heard something like this during my physics education - you’re not alone apparently. One name was apparently more ‘respectable’ than the other. Lol
- patcon 6y ago
  heh there's a deep irony here, in a story about "how science communicators [supposedly] ditched the term favoured for capturing the public imagination, in order to instead favour a more descriptive factual term"... ...of which the story itself is an overly neat simplification that has spread by better capturing the imagination of descriptive-minded physics students, in the teachers' own science communicating :)
- cabaalis 6y ago
  An example of how the educators drive the narrative for the future.

reasonabl_human 6y ago

What do you do now? Is there a demand for CS skills at the LHC, and was it a fulfilling place to work in general? Presumably you lived in the UK that whole time?

amadsen 6y ago
The LHC is in Switzerland (not the UK) and in fact I'm still here. I was a data scientist for while. These days I'm back in research, but in a different field. There is a huge demand for CS skills of all kinds. CERN has one of the largest SCADA installations in the world, runs its own internet exchange point, operates a network of computing centers with a million cpu and hundreds of PB of data, and maintains many many millions of lines of code of specialized software, just to give you an idea. It is a fantastic place to work, the level of expertise and dedication among the people there (scientists and engineers alike) is very very high.
- tsimionescu 6y ago
  They have also shown an impressive 1000-machine kubernetes cluster running on GCP for analyzing data (they did a live demo at KubeCon in 2018 I believe where they ran the Higgs boson data analysis during a panel).

andrewflnr 6y ago

I kind of don't believe there is such a thing as "just a name". People persistently confuse names with the thing named. If you want to communicate truthfully, you have to take into account the psychology of your audience. So "it's just a name" is not a good reason for misleading names. I realize this isn't a big deal for quarks, but it's been on my mind a lot. The application to politics is left as an exercise for the reader.