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"Measure first, discover later" can be a perfectly valid application of the scientific method. It's all about refining the resolution on reality. The problem w
by perrygeo 2y ago
"Measure first, discover later" can be a perfectly valid application of the scientific method. It's all about refining the resolution on reality.
The problem with dark matter/energy is that we're not guaranteed to discover anything. It might just be wrong. The neutrinos and Higgs just happened to match their initial theory, so that's a survivorship bias. We can't just assume the same will play out for dark matter. It might just be pure mathematical fiction, reflecting our ignorance and/or limitations to measurement rather than something "real" that we can zoom in on.
- fxj 2y agoOr it might be at such high energies, that conventional particle accelerators will never observe it. Sterile neutrinos, axions and quintessence particles might have masses in the PeV range. We were lucky with the Higgs, and the W and Z Bosons, and the top quark. Dark matter and dark energy might be a phenomenon in the GUT regime, which we will not observe with particle accelerators. We need more information about the Higgs, because it sticks out like a sore thumb of all the other particles. It is our first glimpse into the underlying fabric of the universe, as the Higgs field is non-zero everywhere and a scalar field. No other (known) particle behaves like that. But a future collider is expensive... just my 2 cents good plot for a scifi movie: aliens measure a different vacuum value of the Higgs field and discover sub-space communications ;-)