The Sound Of Settled Science

NYT;

Evidence is mounting that a tiny subatomic particle seems to be disobeying the known laws of physics, scientists announced on Wednesday, a finding that would open a vast and tantalizing hole in our understanding of the universe.
 
The result, physicists say, suggests that there are forms of matter and energy vital to the nature and evolution of the cosmos that are not yet known to science. The new work, they said, could eventually lead to breakthroughs more dramatic than the heralded discovery in 2012 of the Higgs boson, a particle that imbues other particles with mass.
 
“This is our Mars rover landing moment,” said Chris Polly, a physicist at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, or Fermilab, in Batavia, Ill., who has been working toward this finding for most of his career.
 
The particle célèbre is the muon, which is akin to an electron but far heavier, and is an integral element of the cosmos. Dr. Polly and his colleagues — an international team of 200 physicists from seven countries — found that muons did not behave as predicted when shot through an intense magnetic field at Fermilab.
 
The aberrant behavior poses a firm challenge to the Standard Model, the suite of equations that enumerates the fundamental particles in the universe (17, at last count) and how they interact.

Yes, just like a “Mars rover landing moment”!

Most physicists believe that a rich trove of new physics waits to be found, if only they could see deeper and further. The additional data from the Fermilab experiment could provide a major boost to scientists eager to build the next generation of expensive particle accelerators.

More muoney, please.

36 Replies to “The Sound Of Settled Science”

  1. Yup, more research and more money please as their research means absolutely jack shit.

    1. Yup, Jojo.
      You may know, or not, bout the huge government investment in big science infrastructure over the past 20 or so years, funded by federal and provincial coffers, and benefitting many physicists and grad students, and, of course, universities.
      Two examples….Snolab in Sudbury (Sudbury Neutrino Observatory) and CLS (Canadian Light Source) in Saskatoon.
      Those big science installations promised the sun, moon, and stars. What they really became were black holes of ongoing money and escalating operating costs so that more pointy heads could pursue stupid projects that yield none of the glowing things they promised.
      Look it up. These two examples were funded by the Canada Foundation for Innovation and other provincial sources .

      1. I’ve worked in research and development for a number of years. I’ve got a few stories to tell about how some of those projects are little more than financial sinkholes.

        Many are concocted by scientists simply to create work for themselves. What they examine is often of no immediate practical value, do little to expand knowledge, and can’t even be categorized as information that might prove to be useful some day.

        Oh, and don’t forget that they want someone else to pay for it. There’s a word for that: freeloading.

    2. This reminds of that episode of The Big Bang Theory and the exchange between Sheldon and Kripe:

      “Sheldon: Why would you do that? You’re a string theorist as well.
      Barry Kripke: Incorrect. I’m a string pragmatist. I say I’m going to prove something that can not be proved. I apply for grant money and then I spend it on liquor and broads.”

  2. “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.” Carl Sagan

    1. It was heartbreaking to see Sagan become a climate whackjob towards the end. It’s like he forgot the he wrote A Demon Haunted World.

  3. The findings of the late 19th and early 20th century , namely that light and matter could exhibit either wave properties or particle properties (but never both at the same time), led to countless inventions and advances. Nuclear reactors, bombs, electron microscopes, transistor, to name a few. Thats why physicists of the past are so revered.

    Todays physicists dont seem to have as much to show for their work. Quantum computers remain “promising” and quantum entanglement remains a “possible way of communicating”. Nuclear fusion requires “more experimentation”. But the LED bulb is still something.

    1. Todays physicists dont seem to have as much to show for their work.

      Yup. Academic research is more concerned about keeping the funding coming rather than in producing viable results. It’s all about the gravy train.

      1. I have to agree there.
        Our school system has sucked the life and fun out of being adventurous.
        The Greatest minds didn’t care about economic ties of business and just loved following the avenue their research was taking them.

        I myself have chosen to sit this out.
        I could quite easily be wealthy as I have the skills and imagination.
        I slightly touched an area never put into production as our politicians kept imposing their taxes and restrictions and regulations. So, I just retired this area that if in an emergency, my skills could reinvent these products.

  4. a better (ie not NYTs) version of the article can be found at:
    https://www.sciencenews.org/article/muon-physics-standard-model-particles

    you have to go deep into the article to start finding the weasel words that indicate that they only looked at part of the data provided, that the predictive equations they used was only finalized in December 2020, and most importantly from the paper that was released “The experimental uncertainty will soon be reduced by up to a factor four by the new experiment currently running at Fermilab, and also by the future J-PARC experiment. ”

    so lets step back and ask, which is more likely, that:

    a) new PHYSICS!

    or

    b) there is something wrong with the equation

    1. I remember a case several years ago at a facility in Italy that thought it found evidence of matter travelling faster than the speed of light. Subsequent investigation determined the results were due to instrumentation error. Similarly, in the mid-1980s, there was a lot of to-do about experimental results indicating the existence of a 5th fundamental force. Again, a re-examination showed that not to be the case.

      In the mid-1990s, an Antarctic meteorite was examined. Due to its mineral content, it was determined that it came from Mars. During the examination, structures in the rock, which looked a lot like bacteria, were found. The investigators made an announcement but they didn’t make a definitive statement to that effect.

      Fortunately, the investigators made the wise move to allow other researchers to examine what they had found and conduct their own analyses. They concluded that the original results were coincidental and that, in fact, those structures were due to chemical reactions.

      The AAAS periodical Science published the original findings and I actually read the paper. Although the case in favour of extraterrestrial life was compelling, there still was enough room for doubt.

      Those examples show that one needs to be careful about drawing conclusions, particularly when claiming that a pioneering discovery has been made.

      1. there is also the EM thrust drive that was just disproved, because it turns out the “thrust” they were measuring was from the mount of the drive heating up, and when someone else built the same thing, but with a different mount, turned out there was no “thrust”

        1. There are a number of people working on it. From what I understand, the jury’s still out as to what’s actually going on.

          I regularly listen to the Internet radio program The Space Show and EM drive was of great interest a number of years ago, but not so much now.

        1. I remember reading articles about researchers attempting to duplicate the work of Pons and Fleischmann. The outcomess were mixed. Some got similar results, but many didn’t.

          Something appears to be going on, but it’s probably not fusion.

    1. I first heard about laser cooling in the mid-1980s. The light is used to slow down the motion of the atoms of the material in question.

      While much of this work is interesting, there’s often the question of, “OK, we’ve made a discovery. Now what?”

    2. Nothing.Unlike Gates’s desire to block the sunlight from the Earth.

      Do you actually understand what he, and others, are trying on here? With public money, under the “noble cause” of saving the planet, they intend to erect a planetary wide sunshade, which they can then direct to blot out those regions which will no pay them a solar tax.

      Nice planet you’ve got here; pity if it would lose sunlight.

    3. Have they made a Bose concenrate of anti-matter? A peculiarity of of the universe is that ther are not equals part of matter and anti-matter. Some research projects are attempting to find ways to store anti-matter, in magnetic bottles. This would be an excellent fuel for spacecraft.

      1. In addition, some particles in the matter realm don’t appear to have an anti-matter counterpart or, more specifically, they haven’t been found yet, assuming they exist in the first place.

  5. Well, contrary to some skeptics here, of which I am one usually, I see value in these experiments. I see less value in the countless handwaving academic papers about theories of the observations. A negative result is rarely reported but is, if not more, important than a positive one.

    I personally think there will be little further advance in sub-atomic, nor quantuumn physics, nor cosmology, until another apple falls on the right head. BTW If anyone thinks quantuum physics is Blarney Science, then how do you think you are reading this?

    1. A negative result is rarely reported but is, if not more, important than a positive one.

      See my earlier comment about funding. Keep the moolah flowing because universities are now money-harvesting machines.

  6. If they want funding all they have to do is say the particle exhibits transitioning characteristics and call it a Jenner.

    1. We must abandon all charge particles and call them diferently neutered.

  7. These “scientific” discoveries only secures my belief that God Almighty has a sense of humor!

  8. You want to know which research projects are likely viable in the near term? Easy: Just look for the ones with Chinese (nationals, not ethnic in the West, or Taiwanese) grad students in them. Looking for targets for IP theft.

  9. We need bigger accelerators. Period. Money spent on accelerators is never wasted.

  10. Meanwhile Red China is plowing research yuan into innovations their country can actually use—-genetically engineered viruses that will kill off the military-age population of countries who refuse to kowtow to the dragon, but will leave the infrastructure intact.

    In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. We’re not ready to know the details.

    Meanwhile, people who hate Him and want His name blotted out want us all dead. The atomic bomb is 1940’s technology. Turning China into a radioactive wasteland would be the work of a single night. What have the theoretical physicists done for us since Nagasaki?

    1. we are ready for any detail we can figure out. Why else would we be created in his image? We are the owners of what God gave us, we are not required by God to be stewards of creation.

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