4 ms·

it's arxiv chill

by mxkopy 3y ago

it's arxiv chill

nequo 3y ago
The paper got published in Physical Review Letters in 2020: https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.125.051103 https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.12... It advances scientific knowledge by providing a testable prediction. The prediction can be used to collect data and determine whether there indeed is a black hole orbiting the Sun beyond Neptune.
- naikrovek 3y ago
  "here's what we should do" is not advancing science. do the thing, get the results, and if they're significant, then author a paper. I think there is a lot of resume oriented science, these days, because publishing lots of papers looks good on your resume. i mean, we can't let actual science get in the way of our science careers, right? we gotta publish papers telling people what we're thinking about, and how to do those things.
  - nequo 3y ago
    Proposing theories and then testing them in data is what the scientific method is. Many theories were proposed before they were confirmed or refuted in data. Einstein's theory of general relativity is a famous example which was proposed before it could be confirmed by Eddington during a solar eclipse. Black holes themselves were also predicted by Penrose and Hawking before their existence was confirmed.
  - Mimmy 3y ago
    this type of discourse is very common in physics, where the theoretical physicists propose a testable hypothesis and then the experimentalists verify or disprove it.
  - dotnet00 3y ago
    Modern physics is too complex and expensive at the cutting edge to do the entire "hypothesis, experiment, result" process in one paper. It's very normal for support for a hypothesis to build up through theoretical physics papers over many years, leading to sufficient funding at a facility capable of testing the hypothesis. The Higgs Boson is a great example of this, theorized 40 years before it could finally be discovered at the LHC, a machine which wouldn't have been possible at all with the technology of the time when the Higgs boson was proposed as the computing capability to digest the Petabytes of data generated simply did not exist. Plus, with these things there's a bit of a chicken and egg issue where part of the impetus for building these expensive machines is to test theories which have been gaining support, so if those theories weren't being shared, there's no way to really say if the machines to test them could even exist. Neutrinos, time crystals and gravitational waves are other notable examples of things where it would not be practical to expect theoreticians to wait the decade(s) for technology to catch up before presenting their theories.

it's arxiv chill

by mxkopy 3y ago

it's arxiv chill

The paper got published in Physical Review Letters in 2020: https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.125.051103 https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.12... It advances scientific knowledge by providing a testable prediction. The prediction can be used to collect data and determine whether there indeed is a black hole orbiting the Sun beyond Neptune.

naikrovek 3y ago
"here's what we should do" is not advancing science. do the thing, get the results, and if they're significant, then author a paper. I think there is a lot of resume oriented science, these days, because publishing lots of papers looks good on your resume. i mean, we can't let actual science get in the way of our science careers, right? we gotta publish papers telling people what we're thinking about, and how to do those things.
- nequo 3y ago
  Proposing theories and then testing them in data is what the scientific method is. Many theories were proposed before they were confirmed or refuted in data. Einstein's theory of general relativity is a famous example which was proposed before it could be confirmed by Eddington during a solar eclipse. Black holes themselves were also predicted by Penrose and Hawking before their existence was confirmed.
- Mimmy 3y ago
  this type of discourse is very common in physics, where the theoretical physicists propose a testable hypothesis and then the experimentalists verify or disprove it.
- dotnet00 3y ago
  Modern physics is too complex and expensive at the cutting edge to do the entire "hypothesis, experiment, result" process in one paper. It's very normal for support for a hypothesis to build up through theoretical physics papers over many years, leading to sufficient funding at a facility capable of testing the hypothesis. The Higgs Boson is a great example of this, theorized 40 years before it could finally be discovered at the LHC, a machine which wouldn't have been possible at all with the technology of the time when the Higgs boson was proposed as the computing capability to digest the Petabytes of data generated simply did not exist. Plus, with these things there's a bit of a chicken and egg issue where part of the impetus for building these expensive machines is to test theories which have been gaining support, so if those theories weren't being shared, there's no way to really say if the machines to test them could even exist. Neutrinos, time crystals and gravitational waves are other notable examples of things where it would not be practical to expect theoreticians to wait the decade(s) for technology to catch up before presenting their theories.