Physics: Large Hadron Collider suggests a new particle carrying a fifth force of nature.

[buster poser]

Scientists and their findings are pure bunk! Now excuse me while I post about it online while listening to music through a speaker.

I think some people have poor understandings of the lives of academic/scientific types, ditto grants and fellowships, in both funding level and usage. I wonder where these blanks get filled in? Very weird.

 

[985plowboy]

I have decided to self identify as an ancient astronaut theorist.
Apparently, anyone can claim the title.
It’ll look spiffy on my resume.

 

[Silent Otto]

Of course, the great thing about working at the LHC is if you make a big enough mistake, no one will ever know.

 

[BelindasShadow]

Things are going to get decidedly freaky this year, watch out.

Fifth force of nature? I bet there are countless more forces in the universe beyond the scope of current human understanding. Looking forward to knowing them all in time.

 

[JL_LI]

Things are going to get decidedly freaky this year, watch out.

Fifth force of nature? I bet there are countless more forces in the universe beyond the scope of current human understanding. Looking forward to knowing them all in time.

Informed opinion but opinion nonetheless. It is impossible for me to conceive of dark matter as a single particle, WIMP or otherwise. Just as there is a plethora of particles in our common experience and many more only encountered at the highest energies only to rapidly decay, I can’t see dark matter being simpler. Dark matter is known to interact with other matter gravitationally. I can’t imagine that there are not other forces controlling interactions between dark particles.

Dark energy is what the accelerating expansion of the universe has been attributed to. What might it be? One possibility is an expression of negative mass. It may appear in quantum gravity. Quantum mechanics ignores time. Is time quantized?

I’m closing fast on 72. I know more physics than I imagined existed while in college. I know more than I ever needed in bioengineering but I don’t think the answers to these questions will come in my lifetime. And if they’re answered in my grandchildren’s lifetimes, there will be still more unanswered questions.

 

[gpw5150]

Something to do with the ‘Weasel’ particle?

 

[guitarsophist]

This video on dark matter is kind of cool:

Missing mass? Not on our watch—Dr. Paul Sutter explains dark matter

In the pilot episode of our new series Edge of Knowledge, we explore science!

arstechnica.com

 

[Greggorios]

Things are going to get decidedly freaky this year, watch out.

Fifth force of nature? I bet there are countless more forces in the universe beyond the scope of current human understanding. Looking forward to knowing them all in time.

Very true. I crawled down into a rabbit hole containing the double slit experiment and the role of the observer. Nothing's been the same since. World of wonders.

 

[pixeljammer]

The more I read about that stuff, the more I am convinced they are a bunch of very smart people who do not know jack squat about dark-this and dark-that. Theorizing about what a thing does that they can not even prove exists in the first place, and how that affects another thing they do not know if exists, etc. Makes about as much sense as some hippy talking about reincarnation and how to influence what you will reincarnate as and when.

Yet they then build a giant machine, and find what they had theorized about, thereby proving it. Makes tons more sense to me.

 

[telemnemonics]

Withoutba doubt it's gotta be fat bottomed girls

 

[pixeljammer]

i am 100% in favor of scientific research into the unknown..i am also 100% in favor of keeping it out of the control of military and governments

I'm in favor of flying pigs and free lunch, too!

 

[pixeljammer]

Edited to correct a factual error. The quark under discussion is the bottom or “beauty” quark.

Ah, the beauty of physics and the way it’s sold to get more funding. First the data. There is 5 sigma confidence that the decay of the bottom quark favors electrons over muons when the standard model predicts an even distribution. There is the highest level of confidence in the data. The open question is why. Is there a fifth force? No doubt but is it responsible for this phenomenon? Is our understanding of the weak force incomplete? Probably? Possibly? Are there interactions with neighboring particles not being fully considered? 5 sigma confidence says probably not. Is this an indication of an interaction with dark matter? If yes, why only beauty quarks?

The data actually raises more questions than it answers. That’s how science works. None of this affects our understanding of the world around us on the scale we experience on a daily basis. Why should we care. Read through the thread. Some of us obviously don’t. Living in the world of science and engineering, I can only say nobody ever did better knowing less. I think the same can be said for humanity as a whole.

In the days of Newton, science was referred to as natural philosophy. Think about that for a moment. Einstein developed his theories of relativity and special relativity as thought experiments. The math was added in the process of tying all of it together and giving the theories predictive power. Let the thought experiments begin. Understanding the decay of beauty will certainly be more interesting than watching Jennifer Aniston age.

To be fair to the boffins, it's quite often the reporters who spin (!) or willfully misinterpret the story to make it more sensational.

 

[pixeljammer]

New Scientist is readily available on the Libby app from local libraries (my Hamilton ON library has it) if you want to read the full article.

It is? Well, shoot, I wish you'd said something eight years ago before I paid all of those subscription bills. Foo.

Incidentally, I've always wanted to do a novelty calendar for them called "Nude Scientist".

 

[DougM]

The more I read about that stuff, the more I am convinced they are a bunch of very smart people who do not know jack squat about dark-this and dark-that. Theorizing about what a thing does that they can not even prove exists in the first place, and how that affects another thing they do not know if exists, etc. Makes about as much sense as some hippy talking about reincarnation and how to influence what you will reincarnate as and when.

It's spelled Hippie. This is a Hippie

This is hippy

And this is a hippy Hippie

 

[pixeljammer]

This video on dark matter is kind of cool:

Missing mass? Not on our watch—Dr. Paul Sutter explains dark matter

In the pilot episode of our new series Edge of Knowledge, we explore science!

arstechnica.com

That video is broken, here's a new link:

 

[mr natural]

Informed opinion but opinion nonetheless. It is impossible for me to conceive of dark matter as a single particle, WIMP or otherwise. Just as there is a plethora of particles in our common experience and many more only encountered at the highest energies only to rapidly decay, I can’t see dark matter being simpler. Dark matter is known to interact with other matter gravitationally. I can’t imagine that there are not other forces controlling interactions between dark particles.

Dark energy is what the accelerating expansion of the universe has been attributed to. What might it be? One possibility is an expression of negative mass. It may appear in quantum gravity. Quantum mechanics ignores time. Is time quantized?

I’m closing fast on 72. I know more physics than I imagined existed while in college. I know more than I ever needed in bioengineering but I don’t think the answers to these questions will come in my lifetime. And if they’re answered in my grandchildren’s lifetimes, there will be still more unanswered questions.

My theory is that space/time is torus shaped. The Big Bang is at the center. We have travelled more than halfway around the surface so it appears that the expansion of the universe is speeding up because we can only look backwards in time.

 

[ClashCityTele]

Finger Tone.

 

[JL_LI]

To be fair to the boffins, it's quite often the reporters who spin (!) or willfully misinterpret the story to make it more sensational.

True. What this thread is about is a sensationalized article about enough data having been reviewed to be able to say with a very high degree of confidence that the decay of the bottom quark deviates very slightly from the prediction of the standard model of particle physics.

Physicists have known since they first began using the model that it incomplete. But this is a big deal. Physicists knew what the model didn’t predict. This is the first time I am aware of that a prediction of the standard model has been proven wrong. There’s a lot of excitement in the community about new physics, a glimpse into the unknown. I wonder what the next run of the LHC will reveal.

 

[0SubSeanik0]

I always thought the Beatles discovered the 5th force of nature, and he's called Billy Preston.

 

[MarkieMark]

.