These “beasts:” I thought the particle zoo was complete and self-consistent, now with the Higgs having at least a foot in the door.
How many proposed “particles” are out there, or are allowed to be called a particle with a straight face? Or is it “a bunch of consistent math being demonstrated by some physical process or other, which we’re claiming is a unique and separable process/phenomenon?”
Which it just occurs to me makes a good framework for talking about any real particle, anyway.
I read the NS article first. So I got all that. I think we’re just talking in circles here. To take a step back: I read your original question (and your clarifying follow-up question) as asking for more information on the scientific details behind what the NS article was discussing. Since, by definition, that information has to come from somewhere other than the article you are asking about, I went to the literature so I could form a broader opinion on the situation. If I just regurgitated the story as told by this one science writer at NS, I wouldn’t be adding any value.
I know it’s a little unfair for me to say, “If you go read the literature on all this, you’ll see what I’m trying to say,” so I can only repeat that the situation is scientifically much more subtle than the NS article suggests. Are there people involved? Yep. Are they all playing nice? Nope, not all the time. But the necessarily reduced narrative in any popular science article is always a crude approximation to reality. And since you were presumably asking for some clarification on the broader reality, I attempted to give my take on it.
That’s what the human-interest side boils down to, and the NS article uses that well as a backbone for its article, thereby allowing some of the science to be at conveyed to its readers. But whereas it’s the backbone of the NS article, the bickering is just a side piece of the actual scientific endeavors. Under the assumption that you have been asking for exposition on that latter, I have attempted to reduce the situation in a drier way.
And I know which passage in the NS article has given you this conclusion. I can do nothing beyond warn that it is difficult to separate the backbone that the author is using to create something readable from the science that is being hung on that backbone. Indeed, if the writer is doing is a good job (and this one has), you won’t notice any distinction.
And I’m happy to have you make an effort to clarify to the extent that I feel that the issue is has been made clearer. I guess I’m not really seeing that from your commentary so I suppose I’ll just look for follow up pieces in New Scientist. If it’s one thing I can count on their doing, it’s to follow a story into the grave and often beyond.
I think what mainly motivated my responses is a) what appeared to your implication that this was just another couple of crackpot “scientists” doing junk science and b) your thinly veiled condescending attitude - especially ‘b.’
Way too many to name. Some are experimentally motivated (proposed to explain some piece of data), some are motivated by Occam’s razor (proposed to simplify the description in the Standard Model or to make some of the arbitrariness go away), and some are theoretically motivated (proposed to make the theory more general in some way).
A few off the top of my head:
Something a lot of laymen miss about science: Scientists very often think that they themselves are wrong. You’ll often see a paper where a scientist or group of scientists report seeing something interesting, and then go on to say in the very same paper that it’s probably just noise or systematic error of some sort. And usually, when the follow-up experiments are done, that’s what it turns out to have been. But you report those results anyway, because first of all, it just might really be what it looks like, and second, even if it isn’t, once you’ve found your systematic error it provides insight into how to avoid that error in the future.
To Pasta’s list there, I should point out that those categories aren’t all mutually exclusive. For instance, WIMPs could encompass both SUSY particles and sterile neutrinos, and probably a few of the others as well.
I think you might have read something into my choice of language at some early point, and then that propagated. I can ensure you that no condescension was present in my thinking. In any case, with my angle more clearly defined, you might take another read of post #14, which is where the main content from me lies. As I mention in that post, none of this is junk science. It’s just not clear yet what is happening.
Yes, I’ve understood everything you’ve said perfectly well, but thank you anyway.
Huh. If there was any amount of contention here, it seemed to come from deltasigma’s postings from a confrontational and defensive front if anything; don’t know why so much emotion over the matter.
Pasta’s replies seemed perfectly respectful and genuine in his responses.
Can You (the collective yous out there) recommend a book about the Standard model and why, except for gravitons, or if, it’s foundations are shaky and why it needs all these particles? Or is this a crazy request, essentally saying “Modern physics. Wassup widdat?” I’ve seen some fine “here’s the standard model, isn’t it cool and basically all wrapped up” kind of books for laymen.
Could any text be found that puts Pasta’s particular pals in perspective be purchased, perhaps?
I really enjoyed Frank Wilczek’s The Lightness of Being on this topic.
Every morning when I see me wife stretch in the pale bedroom light my paradigm of emotional structure is revolutionized.
I’m sure scientists going about their work are well aware of little evolutions and little revolutions as well–that’s the priveledge and glory of being a scientist.
People were speaking English, developing syntax, vocabularies, entire semantic vistas before linguistics came along. Kuhn’s voice is not lost in the wilderness; his Good News is ghenting along just fine, and needs no goading loud-speaker. A tad Marxist in fact, it just occurs to me, the goading.
Looks great. Thanks.
Do me a favor. Look up Stanley Prusiner and find out how long it took him to convince the scientific community that prions were real and not phantasms of his own dementia. Then come back and talk to me about how Kuhn’s lessons have been well learned. You obviously don’t know anyone involved in research.