from the all-things-great-and-small-how-does-theory-explain-them-all? dept.
Though galaxies look larger than atoms and elephants appear to outweigh ants, some physicists have begun to suspect that size differences are illusory. Perhaps the fundamental description of the universe does not include the concepts of “mass” and “length,” implying that at its core, nature lacks a sense of scale.
This little-explored idea, known as scale symmetry, constitutes a radical departure from long-standing assumptions about how elementary particles acquire their properties. But it has recently emerged as a common theme of numerous talks and papers by respected particle physicists. With their field stuck at a nasty impasse, the researchers have returned to the master equations that describe the known particles and their interactions, and are asking: What happens when you erase the terms in the equations having to do with mass and length?
When the Large Hadron Collider at CERN Laboratory in Geneva closed down for upgrades in early 2013, its collisions had failed to yield any of dozens of particles that many theorists had included in their equations for more than 30 years. The grand flop suggests that researchers may have taken a wrong turn decades ago in their understanding of how to calculate the masses of particles.
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 26 2014, @01:43PM
...does not include the concepts of “mass” and “length,” implying that at its core, nature lacks a sense of scale
[insert oblig penis gag here]
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by Gaaark on Tuesday August 26 2014, @07:37PM
So sorry... I do not suck on penis, and therefore cannot insert any penis gagging anywhere!
[insert oblig ball gag here] :)
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 5, Interesting) by geb on Tuesday August 26 2014, @02:03PM
For particle physics, size is an odd issue. A particle's wavelength and it's collision cross section seem only loosely related. If you have a single photon of radio-frequency light, from somewhere in the lower end of the spectrum, do you have a single particle a kilometre across or more? It acts like that in some ways, but not others.
(Score: 1) by axsdenied on Thursday August 28 2014, @12:42AM
I already replied to this yesterday but after few hours my post disappeared???
Anyway, you are getting confused with the particle-wave duality.
The particle's wavelength is related to its energy and not to its physical size. See here for example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromagnetic_spectrum [wikipedia.org]
Basically E = hc/lambda
where E is the energy, h = Planck constant, c = speed of light and lambda is wavelength.
The statement that particle's wavelength/energy "seems only loosely related" to corss-section is at best "loosely correct", especially at energies that you are talking about (radio waves and light frequencies). The cross-section can vary several orders of magnitude by a very small change of energy and people are doing those kinds of experiments all the time.
(Score: 4, Informative) by VLM on Tuesday August 26 2014, @02:04PM
The source of elephants and ants/mouse analogies in all popular press discussions seems to come from wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symmetry#Scale_symmetry_and_fractals [wikipedia.org]
Its an attempt at talking about square/cube law type of issues without using those scary math words.
The popular science journalist summaries are not explaining the problem very well. The meta-problem is there is no good explanation for weak vs gravitational strength differences, and it turns out there's an interesting numerological solution found about 30 years ago that upon decades of further testing so far seems to bear no relationship at all to reality.
So, 30 years of pent up alternative answers other than the numerological solution are now bursting forth as new uncensored ideas.
Academia is strongly influenced by style and fad and basically new ideas are now permitted for the first time in 30 years, so there's lots to talk about. Most of which will almost certainly turn out to be wrong. Maybe something will be correct, however. So its more interesting to watch particle physics now, at least this weird corner of it, than any time since Carter was president. Seriously.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Tuesday August 26 2014, @02:13PM
Look, I get that advanced physics is tough to test for, but "idea written down somewhere" does not qualify as a "theory" in any scientific sense. I've been seeing a lot of non-theory "theories" running around SoylentNews lately, which makes me think that at least one article submitter and some editors don't understand the meaning of the term.
So, to reiterate, a valid scientific theory:
1. Makes clear testable predictions.
2. Has been tested by repeated experiment to ensure that all phenomena predicted by the theory are accurately explained.
3. Is consistent with other valid theories about the universe.
A lot of the advanced physics stuff floating around passes none of these tests: String "theory", for example, makes no testable predictions, and thus isn't a theory. If the math behind an idea works, that's maybe a promising line of research, but it's not a theory until it has been tested in the real world.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Funny) by c0lo on Tuesday August 26 2014, @02:26PM
On the other side, Big Bang theory is predicted to run the 8th season, but is not scientific.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by RaffArundel on Tuesday August 26 2014, @02:39PM
Beat me to this point. There are a lot of attempts to "fix" the Standard Model as it continues to be verified - remember the Higgs boson was the last "missing" piece. Super-symmetry and String Theory, IIRC, were supposed to get us the Theory of Everything, explain the gap between quantum gravity models and the highly verified theory of Relativity and the WTH is dark energy/mass question. Am I missing any major question? Is the Standard Model really wrong in those areas or just unexplored/missing the ad-hoc rules?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by tangomargarine on Tuesday August 26 2014, @03:22PM
remember the Higgs boson was the last "missing" piece.
That was the impression I was under, too, at least until
failed to yield any of dozens of particles that many theorists had included in their equations for more than 30 years.
Dozens? Way to go, guys. Or is this The Slashdot Summary Effect in action where it's actually blatantly misleading.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 3, Informative) by RaffArundel on Tuesday August 26 2014, @04:28PM
Super-symmetry added sparticles - symmetric versions of Standard Model particles. Those are the ones that are missing. So, the TFS is saying actually saying for 30 years, there were people who wanted super-symmetry experiments to find these additional particles, and they have failed to do so. It does not mean the Standard Model is missing any particles.
(Score: 3, Informative) by FatPhil on Tuesday August 26 2014, @08:09PM
I confess to also having lost my childlike wide-eyed Scientific-American-cover-story point of view over the last 30 years. There are a lot more fairy-stories than Feynmans in physics nowadays.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by SlimmPickens on Wednesday August 27 2014, @12:49AM
Is the Standard Model really wrong in those areas or just unexplored/missing the ad-hoc rules?
It's not wrong, it's just that the dimensionality is out of order.
0 This is a proper zero.
1 Pure energy, it's only feature is it's oneness.
2 Magnetism, the only thing you can make with two parameters is s sphere.
3 Gravity, you get all three dimensions at once.
4 Here's your Higgs Field. All at once it gives rise to the strong force, the weak force, the astrological force and the force in my pants.
c = emg
There you go, FTFY!
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday August 26 2014, @03:20PM
So what term would you use? Conjecture?
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Thexalon on Tuesday August 26 2014, @03:36PM
"Conjecture" would be precisely the right word to use: A conjecture is an unproven (and in some cases unproveable) educated guess, and that's what this stuff is.
The last time I raised this issue [soylentnews.org], I mentioned a major motivation for getting the terms right: Misuse of the word "theory" lends credibility to statements like "Evolution is just a theory".
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Tuesday August 26 2014, @05:44PM
I thought Evolution was just a theory though. It's always broken down into two parts. Evolution as a dynamic process that is easily observable today. Most of the properties of evolution are testable and verified. However, Evolution is also considered a theory in that it doesn't actually explain our origins, just what we did since we got here. I kind of have to accept that because I am open to the idea that we could have come from some place else.
In that sense Evolution really is a theory since it cannot be verified and tested to the extent it proves humanity's origins. There's not anything that you could even test for as almost all of the data has been destroyed. That is all anyone seems to care about, where we came from. Not that we are royally screwing up the planet and killing each other. We can't even use our knowledge of evolution effectively. All we do is try to create intellectual property and own life, and thereby control food sources. I'm not impressed.
It wasn't religion that put that idea into my head either, it was NASA. One of their better ideas for space travel and conquest is to master genetic engineering, identify suitable DNA platforms (creatures) and modify them to hold our level of intelligence. A human will never actually live natively on any planet, in fact, plain vanilla (or even chocolate) humans will be rare. You might be a humanoid with 6 arms and designed for low gravity and long lifespan to service interstellar communication conduits.
You object to misuse of the word theory, but I would be more concerned that large numbers of people are becoming adults that don't even have the capability to spelling most scientific words, let alone possess the ability to understand their meanings. Try leaving Soylent for awhile and talking to somebody on Reddit, Imgur, or some other forum. You quickly become thankful for this place and somebody that understands what theory even means :)
Most of the time when people tell me something today, I'm tearing apart their statements and spending a lot of time just trying to understand what they are meaning to say. I wish I was kidding.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday August 27 2014, @01:45AM
If you are talking about evolution not explaining the origins of life, that sounds accurate. If you are talking about evolution not explaining the process for getting from really simple single-celled life to modern humans, you're absolutely wrong, as the theory of evolution has been constantly tested - there are all sorts of intermediate forms predicted by evolution, and paleontologists have managed to dig up many of those intermediate forms by looking in the right geological era (Creationists argue, in a nutshell, that fossil evidence that matches evolution doesn't count, because God put it there to confuse us).
However, there is quite a bit of research on the ability of the early Earth to create life, and so far nothing has turned up that disproves the possibility of life forming purely from the chemistry of the situation that Earth was in at the time.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1) by hendrikboom on Wednesday August 27 2014, @02:03PM
So the creationists are wrong on two fronts: the scientific, by ignoring evidence, and the theological, because it's Satan's job to test us, not God's.
(Score: 1) by idetuxs on Tuesday August 26 2014, @07:53PM
Let's use the right words here.
Now I use the appropriate words. The word "theory" holds more weight considering the "conjecture" and "hypothesis" phase that the theory it refers had to undergo. But still, it doesn't mean that the "theory" theory could be wrong.
(Score: 2) by SlimmPickens on Wednesday August 27 2014, @02:08AM
Misuse of the word "theory" lends credibility to statements like "Evolution is just a theory".
I think there's a problem at the other end too, which is that too many people won't take a fresh look at what they have decided is a fact.
The reason that we accept particles, relativity and QM is that Einstein and Feynman said so, and yet both of them died looking for a field theory. Quite simply, if the smartest people on the planet can't even understand their own theory, it's wrong.
My feeling is that quantum field theory and higher spin theory are on the right track, mainly because they handle the inversion of forces (fields? IDK) at different scales. If you think about it, there's no such thing as a straight line, precisely because of the fields.
btw, my math is at the level of being half way through a book about QFT that contains no math, half way through a book called 'The Joy of X', having three Polya books on the bedside table and furiously practicing algebra at Khan Academy (adaptive learning website).
(Score: 1) by hendrikboom on Wednesday August 27 2014, @02:07PM
Those books sound interesting. Especially the one on QFT. Reference, please?
(Score: 2) by SlimmPickens on Thursday August 28 2014, @01:42AM
The QFT one is Fields of Color by Rodney A Brooks. Here's [youtube.com] him talking about it. In the book he mentions another book on QFT suitable for the layperson, The Lightness of Being by Frank Wilczek.
The Joy of X by Stephen Strogatz is a fantastic overview, the carefully chosen examples have much to give even the bona fide mathematician.
Here's [scientificamerican.com] an introduction to HST in the form of Vasiliev theory. It's got gravity waves and all sorts of cool stuff.
Polya's How to Solve It is legendary, however many don't know it's the first of a five book set which contains many more of his beautiful proofs. I've heard Microsoft give HTSI to every programmer, although I guess the meek will consider that a negative.
There's another more contemporary book on math psychology which is preferred by the math olympiad types (ie be a genius and have lots of practice) called Mathematical Problem Solving by Alan Schoenfeld, however the cheapest used one on Amazon is $320, you won't even believe what the highest price is. I was very pleased to pick up a used one for $120.
I also picked up a copy of Mathematica since it's an excellent tool for testing ideas and rapid learning in general. All of that stuff together cost under $500 and IMO is significantly better than something like a math bridging course.
BTW, I love my 3G kindles but does anyone know of a decent e-reader device that doesn't require a cloud account?
(Score: 2) by Dunbal on Tuesday August 26 2014, @03:47PM
Hypothesis.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday August 26 2014, @04:27PM
For it to be a hypothesis, you need testable predictions. Right now, a lot of these "radical new theories" don't even have that.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 26 2014, @04:31PM
Well, those predicting dozens of new particles which should have been found by the LHC obviously made testable predictions (and the test failed). So clearly they do deserve the term "hypothesis" (or, after the LHC results, "failed hypothesis").
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Tuesday August 26 2014, @05:25PM
But as an engineer friend once wisely said "a lot of these new ideas are basically "fudge factors" because they have yet to figure out how to make the math work" and that is what sparticles and its ilk are, they are "we have no clue why the math doesn't work at the quantum scale but if we insert (X) that has property (Y) and behaves like (Z) then the math will work" and time and time again when they try to find this pixie dust that will magically make the math work? They come up with bumpkiss.
I have a feeling we already have most if not all the pieces to the puzzle, but we are trying to get them to fit together NOT to create what the puzzle actually IS but what we WANT the puzzle to be based on our classical Newtonian thinking of how things should work. Remember even Einstein resisted quantum mechanics because how strangely things behaved at that level was to him "God playing dice". I have a feeling reality is gonna be the allegory of the cave, we are trying to make everything fit within our extremely limited idea of how things should work and the universe simply isn't that narrow.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Wednesday August 27 2014, @02:38AM
Fudge factor worked out for the neutrino.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 1) by hendrikboom on Wednesday August 27 2014, @02:16PM
Fudge factors led to the theory of relativity. The Lorentz-Fitzgerald contraction had been hypothesized as a necessary patch to electromagnetic theory long before Einstein got into the mix. What Einstein did was to formulate the coherent framework that made sense of the fudge factors.
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Thursday August 28 2014, @06:55AM
Did I say that it never ever worked? Nope I simply said that many times it turns out to be just what I said, a fudge factor. But that is ignoring the point, that its quite possible that we have most of the pieces of the puzzle, but we are just like the blind monks trying to describe the elephant, we are trying to fit the puzzle into our Newtonian mindset and when we get to the very large or the very small classical Newtonian just doesn't hold up.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 1) by hendrikboom on Wednesday August 27 2014, @02:10PM
You mean they're not even false?
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday August 26 2014, @04:38PM
A hypothesis is testable. It may be right or wrong, but it is in principle testable. Ideally, a theory is a hypothesis that has been proven correct. We get a little sloppy here sometimes. And some ideas, while testable, are very difficult to test. Have to gather evidence from thousands of trials.
(Score: 1) by Delwin on Tuesday August 26 2014, @07:49PM
Some of these actually are theories - testable ones even. I've heard a lot of chatter about 'Classicists' who throw out all of QM and go back to Maxwell and his peers and start over from there. Some of them have new particles (such as Hydrino's) and others don't but all of them make strong predictions that are quite testable.
(Score: 4, Funny) by wonkey_monkey on Tuesday August 26 2014, @03:23PM
...I can't even get an erroneous grasp of what it's about.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 1) by hendrikboom on Wednesday August 27 2014, @04:23AM
Its known that symmetries are intimate with conservation laws. Symmetry under spatial translation leads to conservation of momentum; symmetry under time shifting gives conservation of energy, and symmetry under rotation gives conservation of momentum. And the symmetry groups are related to particles in ways that I don't understand.
Now if we assume symmetry under change of scale, it's quite possible that something interesting comes of it. Perhaps a kind of conservation of expansion? I'm guessing here. But it's clear to me that the math involved is likely to be difficult, and the results interesting.
The article sounds plausible to me, although it is woefully incomplete. I was hoping someone knowledgeable could illuminate the content of the article, rather than just having a terminological argument about the word "theory".
-- hendrik
(Score: 3, Informative) by HiThere on Tuesday August 26 2014, @07:15PM
There is more than one theory of the multiverse, and it's not immediately obvious to me why this should kill any of them. Not unless it also shoots down the standard model of quantum physics.
OTOH, one of the theories of the multiverse would be killed if they showed that inflation never happened (after the big bang). Another would require revision of the laws governing virtual particles. There are others, but I don't understand most of them well enough to say what basic postulate would need to be altered.
One that that many the versions of the multiverse theory have in common is that they arise naturally from the decision to accept that the math used to express quantum theory means what it says. E.g., The EWG multiverse arises out of not collapsing the state vector when a measurement occurs. The math makes no requirement that the state vector be collapsed, that is just an added feature to make it fit the "common sense" interpretation of what the math ought to mean. (N.B.: For measurement here, read "quantum particle interaction".) Another version arises because there's no known reason for inflation to stop, and no clear way to synchronize its stopping. We just assume it's stopped because we can't see it happening. But it could be continuing, just outside of our light-cone. Etc.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 1) by hendrikboom on Tuesday August 26 2014, @09:18PM
Instead of holding that the state collapses when you observe, say, an electron, you could instead trust the math and say that your state (and state of knowledge) becomes correlated with the state of the electron.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Wednesday August 27 2014, @06:06PM
If I understand what you're saying correctly, that *is* the EWG Multiverse interpretation.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 1) by lolococo on Tuesday August 26 2014, @07:54PM
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Wednesday August 27 2014, @02:42AM
"it's bigger on the inside than on the outside!" Watchout for Dalecks.