Physicists Solve a Muon Mystery. Now, Old Results Don't Add Up

Humans can detect single photons with their eyes! https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms12172

In the 1500s, it might just as well be impossible to fly a spaceship to the outer edge of the solar system to confirm heliocentrism without doubt as it is right now to build a solar system sized detector to look for the graviton.

> Hence I feel heliocentrism is simply an observable fact.

It isn't. You can easily define a coordinate system for the universe in which the earth is the center.

Heliocentrism just makes some approximate computations easier because the sun is so heavy. Thus in heliocentrism, the orbits of the planets are approximately ellipses (near-circles) around the sun, while in a geocentric model, the orbits have more complicated shapes.

Nevertheless (to explicare "approximate" even in the Newtonian gravity model (i.e. not Einsteinian gravity)) be aware that even in the heliocentric coordinate system the earth (and the other planets) don't move along an elliptical (near-circular) orbit around the sun, but both the sun and the planet move around a common center which is near to the sun.

> There is no sane way to put the earth in the center once you do that. [...] Hence I feel heliocentrism is simply an observable fact. It's not a mathematical convenience. It's a fact you can see with a camera. The relativism or perspective argument is irrelevant because as we established you have to be very unreasonable to describe a picture of a huge ass sun that hardly moves with small planets zooming around it as earth centric.

Modern physics really is about that there is no preferred coordinate system: this manifests itself in the fact that conserved quantities can be derived via Noether's theorem from such symmetries in the natural laws. There is just a choice of a coordinate system which in our solar system makes computations easier.

Geocentric coordinates are easily observable; just look at the sunrise and sunset. And if you zoom out even more and look at the galaxy, heliocentric coordinates become unreasonable.

> The difference with the Copernican stuff is that you can fly a satellite (e.g. Voyager) to the edge of the solar system, look back, and see the planets orbiting the sun.

Or you can put the satellite in the back of a truck and back the truck out of your garage and see the sun orbiting the earth. Yet it remains sane to put anywhere in the center depending on your context.

> Yet it is very successful in all its predictions. So obviously the Popperian "falsifiability" is too simple a criteria for science.

Those two sentences contradict each other. If something unobservable implies some observable, i.e. predictable, consequences, then falsifying these predictions would also falsify the unobservable antecedents.

We can't even see an electron. But we can see the effect of a beam of electrons on a low-pressure gas quite easily.

We can't even see a table. We can only see the nerve impulses resulting from the photons resulting from the sunlight bouncing off the table.

A computer can't play sound either, it can only send bits to a DAC.

Relevant concerning your point:

> What is the most misunderstood historical event?

> The Galileo Affair

> https://tidbits.quora.com/What-is-the-most-misunderstood-his...

I think it is similar to the 'All models are wrong but some are useful' adage.

There is reality and there is the math at which we point at it with. The pointing will never be reality but that doesn't mean it is useless.

In the same way you cannot blow the wind with the word 'Fan'. But the concept of a fan is very useful.

Aye, but we only sorta kinda "know" what things like black holes might be. We have models that make sense to us based on our understanding of science, and we think our instruments can faithfully report on what they can be with measurements we believe we are making correctly, but we have no clue what we don't know, and no real way to prove it, just theorize, and sort of bundle up what we believe is data supporting it.

  A physical theory is, at its core, a mathematical model of some set of physical phenomena. It gets judged on two main grounds: how well its predictions match what we already observe, and whether it can successfully predict new things that can then be tested...

  It is also worth being clear about what a physical theory is not. A mathematical proof establishes the truth of a conclusion given certain axioms, and that is that. A physical theory, however well-supported, remains permanently open to revision by future observations. That is not a weakness. It is the defining feature of a science that is actually trying to describe the world rather than merely exploring abstract structures.[6]

  In mathematics and formal logic, a theorem is a statement that has been proven, or can be proven.[a][2][3] The proof of a theorem is a logical argument that uses the inference rules of a deductive system to establish that the theorem is a logical consequence of the axioms and previously proved theorems.

The Higgs and black holes are quite different. We've basically observed Higgs according to how we've defined them, while we've only observed phenomena consistent with black holes as we hypothesize them. Singularities are the result of theories based on (ironically named) real numbers, it's entirely possible that what we call black holes are really dark stars formed from exotic matter that can only exist in hyper-extreme conditions, like a leveled up neutron star.

The thing is we have a lot of models which make very accurate predictions most of the time, which are useful for doing some impressive science.

But we have no accepted theory of what is actually happening behind the math. What we have is that in 1925 most theoretical physicists decided that we have already uncovered the most fundamental structures of the universe and further investigation into how or why things are the way they are is fruitless. This view has dominated for the last 100 years. Physics has been focused only on modeling and testing, but nobody knows exactly what the models are telling us about the universe.

I agree with the above poster that this is wrong and we may yet learn that our models are only very close to reality, but the actual mechanics are different. At least I think more research should be pointed in this direction.

Or an exceedingly rare random bit flip very subtly altered the simulated physics behavior…

I believe the alien scientists were depressed by the guaranteed collapse of their civilization, not the difficulty of certain differential equations. So it's more like a doctor getting weird results while working on a cure for a pandemic.

Edit: oops, see the reply below... and my grumpy response. I seriously forgot about that entire plot point.

They were getting inconsistent results, not just weird ones. However I agree that suicide probably wouldn't be where they would end up.

The history of scientific revolutions does not support this view

  Ludwig Boltzmann, who spent much of his life studying statistical mechanics, died in 1906, by his own hand. Paul Ehrenfest, carrying on the work, died similarly in 1933. Now it is our turn to study statistical mechanics.

Specially because only particle physics suddenly became inconsistent. I can see scientists fruitlessly obsessing with finding why the universe was toying with them, but suicide? OK, they were also seeing intent with individualized hallucinations, and computer interference, but IIRC those messages asked them to to stop particle physics, not to off themselves. They could change fields and live on.

well maybe depends how fundamental

if objects you put on a table started falling through the floor it would be a bit stressful

lol

but Dr. Becky gets really excited about all the various "crisis in cosmology" because she knows new science/knowledge will emerge from solving those questions

and you remind me there's another season coming up in that series, can't wait

"Is he still in the grandmother’s house? We would like to speak to him."

In the book they get different results on all tests they run, consistency is gone, that is something else.

[dead]

Academic here. It's actually great for us. You're usually the first to see the implications for your niche area and have a chance to get a hot paper out rather than a moderately impactful one.

This happens in biology all the time.

PHDs will spend years mastering some intricate multi-day long procedure to do some thing and a new discovery will obviate the need for the procedure completely.

Einstein wanted to measure how fast Earth moves through ether as his research thesis.

That’s life. Sometimes you see it coming and ride the wave, sometimes you’re late to the party.

It isn't making mistakes that's a strength, it's the commitment to acknowledging and addressing mistakes.

Mathematicians proof theorems so they are always correct. Physicists don't have that privilege.

No human process is perfect. Every human makes mistakes. If more people were able to admit being wrong the whole world would be a better place.

This is a ridiculous strawman argument that misconstrues what people are saying is good about science--that it constantly reexamines and improves upon its models. You're saying that it would be preferable to have an oracle that flawlessly tells us the truth, and therefore the fallibility of science is "a weakness of the process", but that's completely absurd, a radical failure of reasoning, as of course no such oracle is possible. Given the inherent limitations of finding empirical facts, and empirical generalizations that only hold because we live in a lawful universe (so far, and everywhere we've looked--it is of course logically possible for it to be otherwise, as Hume noted), science is a very effective and powerful method, the best method conceived.

I won't engage further with such bad reasoning and arguments that verge on bad faith.

The data-driven approach is referring to a more general technique --- it's a less fancy concept than renormalization, which only comes up when doing full-blown relativistic quantum field theory. Specifically, it refers to the use of a couple of well-grounded mathematical tricks to sidestep doing a from-first-principles calculation by, effectively, translating the results of different measurements into a prediction for something new (in this case, a quantity that contributes to the calculation of the magnetic moment).

In non-relativistic quantum mechanics, there is the concept of the "wavefunction," from which you can predict the results of measurements of a particle/system. But in most real-world scenarios, you can't actually compute the wavefunction, and so naively you can't make any predictions. But there is something called the "optical theorem," which relates a single evaluation of the wavefunction to a scattering cross-section, which is something that can be measured. If you're familiar with complex analysis, there is also the "residue theorem" which allows you relate individual function values with integrals of the function in the complex plane. Basically, you can combine those two relations to translate kind one integral (which you need to compute) into a different integral (which can be measured).

This is what was done here --- just instead of a simple QM wavefunction, the relevant concept is called a "vacuum polarization function."

Sure, but you can only solve a problem that you are aware of. My concern here is about the unknown unknowns. The task at hand is exceedingly complex and requires extreme precision, with many unknown variables... And the people solving the problems have conflicting interests as they are paid hourly.

Even if there are bonuses, all the bonuses would be given on the basis of solving known problems. There is literally zero monetary incentive to solve unknown problems; only owners care about that stuff. Employees don't care about that. They might point out some whilst not mentioning others.

I've been a software engineer for 15 years and my experience is that unknown unknowns in tech are like a secret piggy bank for engineers to tap into in times of need. They are rarely brought up; only in the event that an engineer feels the need to justify their value to the company/project. The accumulation of secrets gives engineers differentiable value within the project/company and makes them hard to replace... So they tend to keep at least a couple to themselves... They ration it; like retirement planning.

The individual incentive to conceal issues until a time of personal need (when layoffs are looming) outweighs the collective incentive to identify new issues to generate more billable hours of work for the team.

If you're the only person who knows the issue which prevents a multi-million dollar project from coming to fruition, that is valuable information and gives you a lot of leverage in terms of job security... Which is the biggest reward you can get in this line of work.

And it's not malicious; the people who know about those issues probably also solve more issues and contribute more solutions than anyone else. The concealment may be happening subconsciously; they won't admit to themselves that a specific kind of problem exists.

Like when I worked in crypto, all the engineers there believed that the project could scale and also be decentralized... When it couldn't, given the chosen approach. The belief is still there years later; though all the rational engineers left, they were promptly replaced by believers.

I dont particularly agree with this article, but there have been quanta articles i've read in the past that went so far trying to make the topic accessible that it became incomprehensible. Where they used so many metaphors and simplifications that it lost all meaning.

Science writing for a general audience is really challenging.

Writing for an unfamiliar audience doesn't mean you should hide the name of the problem until after a huge pile of setup.

No.

If you're writing an article about a man going to the store to buy a sandwich, the man, the store, and the sandwich should all make appearances by the end of the first paragraph.

These people are writing informative articles like novels and it's incredibly irritating and a disservice if you're actually trying to inform anybody about anything. If you're writing an article about the g-2 anomaly, "g-2 anomaly" belongs in the title not 1/3 the way in.

Wow, thank you. I'd love to learn what others are capable to come up with starting with these premises.

Distress sounds like "Distributed Solipsism".

I suspect the universe is very very strange.

Also read Greg Egan's short story Luminous :)