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To use the bug collecting analogy, I like the idea that by capturing and describing these particles perhaps we've killed them in the process.
by kayamon 5y ago
To use the bug collecting analogy, I like the idea that by capturing and describing these particles perhaps we've killed them in the process.
- jiggawatts 5y agoThe analogy I like to use is that high-energy particle physics is like trying to learn a game like chess or baseball by analysing the statistics of past games. That's literally what goes on at CERN. They run effectively trillions of experiments, collect millions of them (after some filter), and then they draw histograms. Unless you know nothing about mathematics, you know that histograms are inherently statistical beasts. It's meaningless to talk about the histograms of one experiment. Could you learn to play, say, tennis by drawing histograms of player movements? Ball bounce locations? No? Why not!? It's tons and tons of data! Accurate, scientific data! Quantum physicists would argue that only statistics exists. I like to point to the fact that one hydrogen atom can exist, and it can have on electron. Or zero electrons. In nice countable, integral quantities. You can place a single gold atom on a crystal lattice with an AFM or even draw cute pictures with them: https://cen.acs.org/analytical-chemistry/imaging/30-years-moving-atoms-scanning/97/i44 https://cen.acs.org/analytical-chemistry/imaging/30-years-mo... Just because some people think only collecting bugs is what biology is all about, doesn't mean that there isn't more to it...