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Name a single physics phenomenon that was discovered purely with way 2. I can only think of one, the positron. Newtonian physics was not kicked off by math "a
by throwawaymaths 2y ago
Name a single physics phenomenon that was discovered purely with way 2. I can only think of one, the positron.
Newtonian physics was not kicked off by math "advances". Approximately speaking it was the other way, Newton created the math to explain p^2 ~ r^3, which was a surprising observation.
Even theory of relativity wasn't really a math advance, the math was already mostly worked out by mach, lorenz, and minkowski. Einstein put it together into a coherent story (v. Important)
- zburatorul 2y agoThe Higgs.
- cb321 2y agoAlso, the W's and the Z.. neutrino oscillations. There is actually a long list. Physics is the poster child science of theory-experiment interplay and this shows up constantly in the philosophy of science and other things resulting in expressions like "physics envy" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physics_envy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physics_envy ).
- throwawaymaths 2y agoNo the higgs mechanism was directly proposed from how particles masses were not explainable from the existing model -- so it's clearly in the "surprising observation" category. The positron was, "oh what if we had this thing that is mathematically possible". Very different. IIRC the discovery was kind of independent. It was in the data the whole time so if the physicists didn't just ignore those "impossible" bubble tracks they might have found it before the math. If we discovered superluminal tachyons that would definitely count. But we haven't found those.
- versteegen 2y agoBose-Einstein statistics, which originated purely from finding a derivation of an equation, without immediately understanding of the true physical meaning of the derivation. And then Bose-Einstein condensates; a thought-experiment consequence of Bose-Einstein statistics. Radio waves etc., from formulating Maxwell's equations.