Matter, Anti-Matter, and a New Subatomic Particle? 175
sciencehabit writes "Physicists may have finally figured out why the universe contains more matter than antimatter. The key lies in a flaw in the relationship between the two and a potentially new subatomic particle. 'Other researchers, however, say the results, published today in Nature, should be interpreted cautiously. It could all be an effect produced by run-of-the-mill particles'."
Re:Dark Matter? (Score:3, Insightful)
Doctors once thought that wellness and illness within the human body were caused by the balance between the body's four humors: Yellow Bile, Black Bile, Phlegm, and Blood.
Obviously, there is MUCH more to it than that. It is no different with this.
The actual answers to the universe and its mass-energy balances, origins, and "dark matter", etc.. are VERY likely to also NOT be so simple.
Does "Dark Matter" cease to be dark if you shine a light on it?
Re:Star Trekkin' Across the Universe (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Dark Matter? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:A flaw? A FLAW? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Star Trekkin' Across the Universe (Score:5, Insightful)
For example? Can you list some of these please?
A Non-Surprise (Score:5, Insightful)
Astronomers noticed an anomaly. They dreamed up dark matter to explain it. Actually, they dredged it up -- the concept had been applied to other phenomena and always found not to be involved if it even existed. Then they set about looking for other signs that matched the theory, and in a fit of circular reasoning claimed it supported the hypothesized existence of the dream-stuff. Now that they're getting away with it so well that The Teaching Company even has a 12 hour lecture series on it for sale, it's encouraging others to invent all manner of invisible widgetons to blame it on, because hey, anyone can do science, but how many people get to dream up something imaginary and get taken seriously? Dream-stuff is sexy even if it doesn't exist. It gets you noticed. It gets you published, and if the publication is more a question than an answer, well, it's invisible or massless or some other quality which makes it unseen by everyone except you and your imagination.
I'm not buying until I see how they dismiss the previous workable theory based on entirely known quanta that predates this supposed discovery by 10 years.
Another flaw in the paradism (Score:3, Insightful)
Its the same problem with particle physics. Using the same logic, having to find more and more particles to satisfy some mathematical model makes it pretty obvious that you are in the wrong paradism. People will claim that we have proof that this or that particle exists, but what is a particle to begin with? What exactly is an electron or proton? We have no idea YET.
Re:Dark Matter? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Another flaw in the paradism (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Another flaw in the paradism (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:A Non-Surprise (Score:4, Insightful)
Ok I'll one-up you: I attended a lecture this week, on this particular paper, at CERN.
Because in addition to the expected effects, TFA claims NEW effects not explainable by the standard theory. So, we need a new rabbit. The original theory is NOT sufficient if their claims are not due to statistical fluctuations.
That's a pretty darn good description of the scientific method, minus your disparaging adjectives.
Yes anyone can do science. That's the point. Observe, Hypothesize, test. Proving/disproving your dreamed up theory is hard work, and that's what we do. If their observations were explainable by the current theory, they would have been shot down in 5 seconds by their colleagues, in a seminar, or in the journals, and you wouldn't be reading about it in Science magazine. Science is incredibly adversarial. We're all trying to kill each other's theories.
FYI, it's generally a bad assumption that some piece of science you read about in the press has a simple explanation, and the scientists are idiots.
-- Bob
Re:Star Trekkin' Across the Universe (Score:5, Insightful)
In particle physics right now, the problem is that we have a model, the Standard Model, which we know is incomplete (doesnt include gravity for a start) but it more or less explains every experimental result we've every produced (neutrino masses are argueably accommodated with some small extension). We lack experimental data to even give us a hint what might be beyond it and this has been the case for a long time. So theory has had nothing to do but invent crazy models and wait for the experimentalists to catch up (which we hope to do this year, it'll be exciting). Hence why you see a lot of crazy models around with zero experimental evidence supporting them.
The other problem is that we are all tired and sick of the Standard Model, we want to know whats beyond it so people really really want to find evidence of new physics beyond it. This means that people are quick to jump on small effects and claim its new physics which is probably where you are coming from. Usually they get shouted down by the rest of the quickly community but it does happen with alarming regularity (see pentaquarks, 160 GeV Higgs last year as two recent examples). Whats worse is that for something like the result in the article, its an indirect evidence in a QCD environment which basically means there are so many effects going on, this could easily be explained by the Standard Model. So basically nobody believes it for now. QCD is what binds mesons (such as the B+,B0) and baryons (such as the proton and neutron) together. Unfortunately, we cant solve it right now, except for high energies so often there are many effects which later turn out just because we make a mistake in our approximations in order to get a solution. Compare with the CDF Run I jet excess which later just turned out because QCD effects werent being taken into account. This is the reason that physicists wont believe anything which says new physics right now unless theres a clear unambiguous peak in a mass spectrum, ie make and detect a new particle in your detector. Now this could be genuine evidence but we've all been here before so I think the community takes the feeling that we'll wait for more supporting evidence and for people to offer up alternative explanations before we say its new physics.
Re:Exceptionally Simply Theory of Everything (Score:3, Insightful)
I only knew about Lisi's paper because it was posted on Slashdot; I do consider all of the lifestyle stuff to be completely superfluous and don't base my judgment on the paper on those things (however considering how sour the taste is in my mouth whenever I hear about string theory, the fact that he is very much outside the 'establishment' does have its appeal). Also there was some flack posted about his paper because it was titled 'An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything' which does clearly overstate its reach, but I forgive him because I have learned that the title was simply a tongue-in-cheek pun based on the mathematical names of the constructs he uses in forming his theory.
I really have tried hard to read and understand as much as I can about his theory, which is difficult when my formal education is in computer science and I know nothing of 'manifolds' and 'Higgs space' and the like. One thing reading his paper and the scientific community's online comments about it taught me is that advanced physics is communicated in terms that require quite a bit of background knowledge. Of course I kind of already suspected this but it's one thing to infer it, and another thing to experience it directly by trying to make sense of a paper when every sentence contains terminology whose meaning is assumed, and obvious to the target audience, but which is completely opaque to the uninitiated.
At any rate, what I have concluded, very non-scientifically, is that Lisi's paper is basically just a 'periodic table of elements' for fundamental particles. Kind of like how the chemical periodic table of elements organized atoms in ways that both explained known phenomena, and predicted new atoms with new properties, Lisi's paper gives a mathematical model that encompasses known particles and the forces by which they interact, and and by nature of the fact that the mathematical models in question also describe particles and forces which have not yet been observed, predicts new subatomic particles.
I also concluded after my layman research that while this is interesting, and perhaps might help point scientists in a new direction of research, it does not answer any fundamental questions of 'why' physics works the way it does. Of course, I have to wonder philosophically whether or not there really is an answer to 'why' things are the way they are, and if the best we can do is perhaps to describe 'how' our universe works, but never 'why'.
However, I am still intensely interested in the outcome of his research because, like I mentioned, I am not a fan of string theory, and Lisi's stuff is, as far as I understand it, completely at odds with string theory, and if his stuff works and it obsoletes string theory, then I really want to know about it.
Once again, thanks for your awesome post. It is a laborious process to search via google and try to tease out understanding of Lisi's work and where it's going, and your comments gave me more insight than hours and hours of my own 'research' has done.
Re:Dark Matter? (Score:2, Insightful)
Fact is, in science you are never "done with it". So there's nothing wrong with a general classification like "dark matter", because you can take for granted that in the future it will be dissected into more specific kinds of matter.
Just as we first had "atoms" and then discovered sub-atomic particles.
Re:Dark Matter? (Score:3, Insightful)
I was thinking more on the lines of who we voted into office and our reality TV shows, but to each his own.
Re:Dark Matter? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Dark Matter? (Score:4, Insightful)