5 ms·

Honestly feel sorry for particle physicists... Their entire gig is spending billions on fancy equipment, and hoping that observe something unexpected. If they s

Honestly feel sorry for particle physicists... Their entire gig is spending billions on fancy equipment, and hoping that observe something unexpected. If they see exactly what they expected to see, all that effort was basically wasted. Also, a lot of "discoveries" turn out to be equipment miscalibration - remember those particles which supposedly moved faster than light a few years back? Always struck me as an odd way to do science.

astrophysician 6y ago
From a physicists standpoint, not seeing something unexpected is not a waste at all.
- gautamcgoel 6y ago
  Can you expand on that? I was under the impression that many thought of it as a waste (Sabine Hossenfelder comes to mind, for example).
  - CrazyDave 6y ago
    I assume it helps trim off the branches of research that become unviable with the new evidence.
  - bluGill 6y ago
    Some do I'm sure. However if we see something unexpected and it turns out to be true that means our ideas of physics are fundamentally wrong. While it is long term good to correct our understanding, in the mean time a lot of the real world depends on us being right, and so until we correct the theory who knows what will work. I'd hate to find our margin of safety on nuclear bombs was too small and it is only luck that they haven't all blown up in their silos over the years.
  - aqme28 6y ago
    Theorizing a phenomenon and having experimental evidence of a phenomenon are very different things.
  - whimsicalism 6y ago
    > Sabine Hossenfelder Hossenfelder has a lot of... unique takes in the physics world, I don't think she should be used as a general barometer of the field.
  - astrophysician 6y ago
    Yea, some people are disappointed; some of the more interesting and exciting moments in physics are when we find out we're wrong, but not always. E.g. I will never forget the time and place I heard about the preliminary detection of primordial B-modes by BICEP (which turned out to be dust contamination) -- that was a predicted detection from canonical inflation models, as the Higgs was a standard prediction from the standard model (also a pretty exciting moment). Not seeing something when we "expect" to not see anything (from the perspective of certain models) might be more boring, but it's definitely not a "waste" (again speaking purely from a physicist's standpoint). We know the standard model is incomplete, but where and how are not well known. Not seeing evidence for new physics rules out certain models, and places upper/lower limits on others. It's progress either way.
  - 8note 6y ago
    The quantum mechanics approach is to get a good idea about what happens for everything under a certain energy level. They keep building bigger machines to fill out the parts that don't have a definition yet. Anything that specifies what happens at the next band of energy levels is a success, whether it yields new particles, or rules them out at that energy level. There's some destination of approaching the most energy dense states like describing the mechanics that were active during the big bang period
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- BrandoElFollito 6y ago
  From a physicist's standpoint, always being right is disheartening. I think that every physicist hopes to see something that does not match and then a fantastic work begins. I did not see anything like this during my studies, PhD and short career and moved to industry. I terribly miss the teaching, though.
  - mooneater 6y ago
    Is there a way you can continue to teach in some capacity?
    - BrandoElFollito 6y ago
      This is something I have in mind for some time. I have a great job, but it takes all my "professional" time, the rest if for my family and hobbies. I am still 10-12 years away from official retirement and until then I doubt to have the time. Taken into account the seniority of my position, I am quite confident that I could teach afterwards at a good school, something I would do even for free.
gher-shyu3i 6y ago
> If they see exactly what they expected to see Why? Validating a hypothesis is quite valuable.
- renewiltord 6y ago
  It's actually not at all. Or more precisely, no one treats it as valuable. If you fail to reject H0 repeatedly your career is doomed to mediocrity.
arbitrage 6y ago
Remember, you can't solve the halting problem. This is progress. Sometimes science takes two steps back and one step forward. Sometimes that one step is bigger than you realized. And it wasn't backwards, it was projecting into a different spacial dimension. Or something. The point is, this is probably good news, honestly.
- yetihehe 6y ago
  Two steps back, but the new step forward is in better direction.
- potatoman22 6y ago
  Could you explain what you mean by halting problem in this context?
m463 6y ago
I think learning to observe anything at such small scales as a routine matter will increase understanding of all kinds of other things we look at. There are folks riding on their coattails, and folks riding on their coattails. But yeah, it's the long game.
pxhb 6y ago
> Honestly feel sorry for particle physicists... Their entire gig is spending billions on fancy equipment, and hoping that observe something unexpected. This isn’t the way I would frame it. No one will fund billions on fancy equipment for unexpected results, and no one is flipping a coin expecting something other than heads/tails. The usual course is that there is some theoretical expectation/justification of a result, however we then need to build the experimental capacity to see if it is true.
tootie 6y ago
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn lays all this out pretty clearly. The work of "normal science" is to make predictions based on established models and test them until you find something that breaks, then you have a "paradigm shift" that creates a new model. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Revolutions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Re...

astrophysician 6y ago

From a physicists standpoint, not seeing something unexpected is not a waste at all.

gautamcgoel 6y ago
Can you expand on that? I was under the impression that many thought of it as a waste (Sabine Hossenfelder comes to mind, for example).
- CrazyDave 6y ago
  I assume it helps trim off the branches of research that become unviable with the new evidence.
- bluGill 6y ago
  Some do I'm sure. However if we see something unexpected and it turns out to be true that means our ideas of physics are fundamentally wrong. While it is long term good to correct our understanding, in the mean time a lot of the real world depends on us being right, and so until we correct the theory who knows what will work. I'd hate to find our margin of safety on nuclear bombs was too small and it is only luck that they haven't all blown up in their silos over the years.
- aqme28 6y ago
  Theorizing a phenomenon and having experimental evidence of a phenomenon are very different things.
- whimsicalism 6y ago
  > Sabine Hossenfelder Hossenfelder has a lot of... unique takes in the physics world, I don't think she should be used as a general barometer of the field.
- astrophysician 6y ago
  Yea, some people are disappointed; some of the more interesting and exciting moments in physics are when we find out we're wrong, but not always. E.g. I will never forget the time and place I heard about the preliminary detection of primordial B-modes by BICEP (which turned out to be dust contamination) -- that was a predicted detection from canonical inflation models, as the Higgs was a standard prediction from the standard model (also a pretty exciting moment). Not seeing something when we "expect" to not see anything (from the perspective of certain models) might be more boring, but it's definitely not a "waste" (again speaking purely from a physicist's standpoint). We know the standard model is incomplete, but where and how are not well known. Not seeing evidence for new physics rules out certain models, and places upper/lower limits on others. It's progress either way.
- 8note 6y ago
  The quantum mechanics approach is to get a good idea about what happens for everything under a certain energy level. They keep building bigger machines to fill out the parts that don't have a definition yet. Anything that specifies what happens at the next band of energy levels is a success, whether it yields new particles, or rules them out at that energy level. There's some destination of approaching the most energy dense states like describing the mechanics that were active during the big bang period
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
BrandoElFollito 6y ago
From a physicist's standpoint, always being right is disheartening. I think that every physicist hopes to see something that does not match and then a fantastic work begins. I did not see anything like this during my studies, PhD and short career and moved to industry. I terribly miss the teaching, though.
- mooneater 6y ago
  Is there a way you can continue to teach in some capacity?
  - BrandoElFollito 6y ago
    This is something I have in mind for some time. I have a great job, but it takes all my "professional" time, the rest if for my family and hobbies. I am still 10-12 years away from official retirement and until then I doubt to have the time. Taken into account the seniority of my position, I am quite confident that I could teach afterwards at a good school, something I would do even for free.

gher-shyu3i 6y ago

> If they see exactly what they expected to see Why? Validating a hypothesis is quite valuable.

renewiltord 6y ago
It's actually not at all. Or more precisely, no one treats it as valuable. If you fail to reject H0 repeatedly your career is doomed to mediocrity.

arbitrage 6y ago

Remember, you can't solve the halting problem. This is progress. Sometimes science takes two steps back and one step forward. Sometimes that one step is bigger than you realized. And it wasn't backwards, it was projecting into a different spacial dimension. Or something. The point is, this is probably good news, honestly.

yetihehe 6y ago
Two steps back, but the new step forward is in better direction.
potatoman22 6y ago
Could you explain what you mean by halting problem in this context?

m463 6y ago

I think learning to observe anything at such small scales as a routine matter will increase understanding of all kinds of other things we look at. There are folks riding on their coattails, and folks riding on their coattails. But yeah, it's the long game.

pxhb 6y ago

> Honestly feel sorry for particle physicists... Their entire gig is spending billions on fancy equipment, and hoping that observe something unexpected. This isn’t the way I would frame it. No one will fund billions on fancy equipment for unexpected results, and no one is flipping a coin expecting something other than heads/tails. The usual course is that there is some theoretical expectation/justification of a result, however we then need to build the experimental capacity to see if it is true.

tootie 6y ago

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn lays all this out pretty clearly. The work of "normal science" is to make predictions based on established models and test them until you find something that breaks, then you have a "paradigm shift" that creates a new model. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Revolutions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Re...