5 ms·

As someone who's been in physics for much of the last twenty years, I'd guess that things are going at about the same rate. I don't think that the rate is "craw

by ISL 11y ago

As someone who's been in physics for much of the last twenty years, I'd guess that things are going at about the same rate. I don't think that the rate is "crawling", though. If you look on log plots of parametrized experimental progress, progress remains linear, so it's a Moore's law like improvement on many fronts. The emergence of precision cosmology has really transformed astrophysics in the last twenty years. The solar neutrino problem is now solved entirely (and even \theta_{13} has been measured!). The lynchpin of the Standard Model (the Higgs) has been found. LIGO is likely to make first detection in the next couple of years. Graphene and topological insulators have the solid-state community buzzing. Fluorescence microscopy and nanopore techniques are making waves in the biophysics community. And more, of course. Heck, this week, the most compelling evidence yet for the long-sought pentaquark appeared. For the probes of the dark sector and of gravity, though we haven't found anything, huge swaths of parameter space (i.e. possible theories) have been ruled out. EDM searches are relentless in their searches for new physics. Someday, someone will find a reliable anomalous signal, but we can't predict when. And, if you're looking for fun hints of new physics, check out "muon g-2". The next 5-10 years will be exciting there, too, to see if the existing discrepancy between measurement and the Standard Model will survive closer experimental scrutiny. We go slow because we will go far.

admax88q 11y ago
What's EDM?
- ilzmastr 11y ago
  electric dipole movement or maybe electronic dance music http://www.int.washington.edu/talks/WorkShops/int_08_3/People/Hamilton_P/Hamilton2.pdf http://www.int.washington.edu/talks/WorkShops/int_08_3/Peopl...
elektromekatron 11y ago
Given your perspective, what do you make of stuff like Umbral Moonshine http://arxiv.org/abs/1204.2779 http://arxiv.org/abs/1204.2779 and ER=EPR http://arxiv.org/abs/1306.0533 http://arxiv.org/abs/1306.0533 ?
- ISL 11y ago
  In both cases, I'd be out of my professional depth to make any definitive statements about either paper. My expertise is much closer to experiment. Maldecena and Susskind are both well regarded and accomplished.
jessriedel 11y ago
In terms of progress on fundamental physics (i.e., ignoring things like material science), this is a very slow crawl on any sensible absolute scale, and certainly vastly slower than progress was made up until the 1970s. With respect, I think you're just renormalizing to the glacial pace we've come to expect. The Standard Model (including the yet-to-be discovered Higgs and top quark) was completed in the mid '70s around when the bottom and charm quark were found. The pace of discovery of new fundamental particles has clearly slowed dramatically; the top quark was in 1994 and Higgs was just a couple of years ago, with serious pessimism that anything else will come out of the LHC (even with the luminosity upgrades). The existence of an LHC successor is uncertain, and even if it is built it is unlikely to find anything new. The solar neutrino, compared to just about any other fundamental physics question in the 20th century, is boring. It was solved by adding a few additional free parameters to the SM with little conceptual insight and few implications for further post-SM physics. As you and I commented elsewhere, pentaquarks are a neat window into low-energy QCD, but they aren't new fundamental physics. Precision cosmology's biggest result was to confirm the ad hoc and simplest inflationary models from the 1980's, with little hope in the near-term future to do anything besides rule out poorly motivated variations designed explicitly to be testable. What is the inflaton like, and what does it do besides adjust a couple of parameters in the CMB? No one knows, and know one has a serious expectation of finding out anytime soon. None of this, obviously, means that these meager accomplishments weren't hard or that the people who made them aren't extremely clever. But they are undeniably less exciting then what was see before I was born in 1985, and pale in comparison to the absolute revolutions of the first half of the 20th century (quantum mechanics, relativity, GR, field theory). I really want to call this out: > huge swaths of parameter space (i.e. possible theories) have been ruled out. This is the sort of comment that only us physicists can say with a straight face. Parameter space is bounded only by one's cleverness and stamina. Ruling it out says very little about reality because most proposals have very little a priori probability. The entire industry of constructing complicated models and then ruling them out is the lamest kind of progress I can imagine. Perhaps the open questions have really just gotten so hard that this is the best that can be hoped for. But we should be honest that this is essentially like hitting a brick wall and digging into it with spoons.
- ISL 11y ago
sqrt17 11y ago
What are the assumptions behind "log plots of parametrized experimental progress"? What do these mean in the real world? To give an example of why "pouring money into it and getting slower and slower progress" could translate into linear progress on a log plot, imagine you have to pour in x² amount of (money, people, time) to get to level x of progress. In that case "we go slow" means, "we'll gobble up larger and larger amounts of money, but everytime people get impatient we'll have some bone to throw at them".
- rn222 11y ago
  Add that to the fact there is no global dependency tree of "What we need to discover to make this practical technology possible", how can we be sure that existing/future research funds are focused in the areas needed to make the most valuable technologies available?
  - CountSessine 11y ago
    Is that why we're doing physics research? Practical technology?
    - marcosdumay 11y ago
      Isn't it? Understanding things is certainly great, but you can't even claim you understand something new if you can not use that new understanding to achieve something you couldn't before it. Or, more clearly, pure theory is good for mathematicians, but scientists can not even claim a theory is new if it has no application.
      - CountSessine 11y ago
        Isn't it? It's certainly not what I'm expecting. Even if it hadn't gone on to be central to our engineering, I would have liked to have known about general relativity or QCD. Understanding things is certainly great, but you can't even claim you understand something new if you can not use that new understanding to achieve something you couldn't before it. What do you mean by understand something new? This week we started to understand something new - understand many things new - about Pluto. Are you trying to claim that this isn't true unless we can use it somehow? What is it you're trying to say? Or, more clearly, pure theory is good for mathematicians, but scientists can not even claim a theory is new if it has no application. Is astronomy not a science? Or palaeontology? Or archaeology? Those are all observation-oriented sciences that don't conduct experiments but do gather information and develop knowledge. I have no idea what it is you're trying to say about claim a theory is new - do you want to rephrase that? What would you say about the recent discover of pentaquarks? Pentaquarks are useless, but our knowledge of them is quite new.
nanooq 11y ago
what is this \theta_{13} ?
- pvaldes 11y ago
  The neutrino mixing angle Θ13 probably, written in latex :-)

by ISL 11y ago

admax88q 11y ago

What's EDM?

ilzmastr 11y ago
electric dipole movement or maybe electronic dance music http://www.int.washington.edu/talks/WorkShops/int_08_3/People/Hamilton_P/Hamilton2.pdf http://www.int.washington.edu/talks/WorkShops/int_08_3/Peopl...

elektromekatron 11y ago

Given your perspective, what do you make of stuff like Umbral Moonshine http://arxiv.org/abs/1204.2779 http://arxiv.org/abs/1204.2779 and ER=EPR http://arxiv.org/abs/1306.0533 http://arxiv.org/abs/1306.0533 ?

ISL 11y ago
In both cases, I'd be out of my professional depth to make any definitive statements about either paper. My expertise is much closer to experiment. Maldecena and Susskind are both well regarded and accomplished.

jessriedel 11y ago

In terms of progress on fundamental physics (i.e., ignoring things like material science), this is a very slow crawl on any sensible absolute scale, and certainly vastly slower than progress was made up until the 1970s. With respect, I think you're just renormalizing to the glacial pace we've come to expect. The Standard Model (including the yet-to-be discovered Higgs and top quark) was completed in the mid '70s around when the bottom and charm quark were found. The pace of discovery of new fundamental particles has clearly slowed dramatically; the top quark was in 1994 and Higgs was just a couple of years ago, with serious pessimism that anything else will come out of the LHC (even with the luminosity upgrades). The existence of an LHC successor is uncertain, and even if it is built it is unlikely to find anything new. The solar neutrino, compared to just about any other fundamental physics question in the 20th century, is boring. It was solved by adding a few additional free parameters to the SM with little conceptual insight and few implications for further post-SM physics. As you and I commented elsewhere, pentaquarks are a neat window into low-energy QCD, but they aren't new fundamental physics. Precision cosmology's biggest result was to confirm the ad hoc and simplest inflationary models from the 1980's, with little hope in the near-term future to do anything besides rule out poorly motivated variations designed explicitly to be testable. What is the inflaton like, and what does it do besides adjust a couple of parameters in the CMB? No one knows, and know one has a serious expectation of finding out anytime soon. None of this, obviously, means that these meager accomplishments weren't hard or that the people who made them aren't extremely clever. But they are undeniably less exciting then what was see before I was born in 1985, and pale in comparison to the absolute revolutions of the first half of the 20th century (quantum mechanics, relativity, GR, field theory). I really want to call this out: > huge swaths of parameter space (i.e. possible theories) have been ruled out. This is the sort of comment that only us physicists can say with a straight face. Parameter space is bounded only by one's cleverness and stamina. Ruling it out says very little about reality because most proposals have very little a priori probability. The entire industry of constructing complicated models and then ruling them out is the lamest kind of progress I can imagine. Perhaps the open questions have really just gotten so hard that this is the best that can be hoped for. But we should be honest that this is essentially like hitting a brick wall and digging into it with spoons.

ISL 11y ago

sqrt17 11y ago

What are the assumptions behind "log plots of parametrized experimental progress"? What do these mean in the real world? To give an example of why "pouring money into it and getting slower and slower progress" could translate into linear progress on a log plot, imagine you have to pour in x² amount of (money, people, time) to get to level x of progress. In that case "we go slow" means, "we'll gobble up larger and larger amounts of money, but everytime people get impatient we'll have some bone to throw at them".

rn222 11y ago
Add that to the fact there is no global dependency tree of "What we need to discover to make this practical technology possible", how can we be sure that existing/future research funds are focused in the areas needed to make the most valuable technologies available?
- CountSessine 11y ago
  Is that why we're doing physics research? Practical technology?
  - marcosdumay 11y ago
    Isn't it? Understanding things is certainly great, but you can't even claim you understand something new if you can not use that new understanding to achieve something you couldn't before it. Or, more clearly, pure theory is good for mathematicians, but scientists can not even claim a theory is new if it has no application.
    - CountSessine 11y ago
      Isn't it? It's certainly not what I'm expecting. Even if it hadn't gone on to be central to our engineering, I would have liked to have known about general relativity or QCD. Understanding things is certainly great, but you can't even claim you understand something new if you can not use that new understanding to achieve something you couldn't before it. What do you mean by understand something new? This week we started to understand something new - understand many things new - about Pluto. Are you trying to claim that this isn't true unless we can use it somehow? What is it you're trying to say? Or, more clearly, pure theory is good for mathematicians, but scientists can not even claim a theory is new if it has no application. Is astronomy not a science? Or palaeontology? Or archaeology? Those are all observation-oriented sciences that don't conduct experiments but do gather information and develop knowledge. I have no idea what it is you're trying to say about claim a theory is new - do you want to rephrase that? What would you say about the recent discover of pentaquarks? Pentaquarks are useless, but our knowledge of them is quite new.

nanooq 11y ago

what is this \theta_{13} ?

pvaldes 11y ago
The neutrino mixing angle Θ13 probably, written in latex :-)