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Comment by nyc640 | Hacker News Reader

There was a nice explanation of the finding in comic format from APS & PhD Comics: https://physics.aps.org/articles/v14/47

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Let me say that this is the best thing that I ever saw in science: people using art to explain extremely complex findings that might change the future in a bit. I laughed a bit on 'I don't know you anymore'.

When I was younger, I remember to read cyberpunk comics quite a lot. They explain a vision of the future that is improbable, but in many ways it get stuff right. Imagine aligning this with real word science. Imagine hearing from a superhero how his powers came to him. Imagine having a scientist name on the movie credits.

It doesn't need to make everything scientifically accurate, but explaining the fundamentals can engage more people to enter science.

Yesterday I was watching a new movie from Netflix called 'hacker'. The movie is awful, but it starts showing how Stuxnet should work, and that is pretty awesome. This is cool because I know the fundamentals of Stuxnet.

If they break the 4th wall and show something that could happen for real, it could bring more emotions to the movie.

I used to read the Cartoon Guide to... books as a kid: https://www.amazon.com/Cartoon-Guide-Physics/dp/0062731009. They were great.

Cartoon History of the Universe is probably the best "nonfiction" comic ever made. (it's not inaccurate but it's kind of psychedelic and retells more than one religious founding text as if it actually happened)

Best part that most people don't realize... There are 3 parts to it... All massive.

I still remember finding part 1 in the used books store with my dad around the age of 10-11 for like $2. Now I'm in my early 30's and all 3 parts are just a handful of books away from my physics and philosophy books on my book shelf :)

I’m a huge fan of the Cartoon History, but I think I’d have to give the prize to Maus for best nonfiction comics. Second runner up would probably be Understanding Comics.

The problem with Understanding Comics is that most comic readers are sensible enough to know that American style comics are bad, so they all read manga instead. Most of the books about that aren’t translated though there is Even a Monkey Can Draw Manga.

Today no starch press has a series of Manga Guide to ...

which are pretty great.

https://nostarch.com/catalog/manga

The Japanese originals have more topics.

Which cyberpunk comics? Give us some recommendations please. :)

not op but I recommend the Nikopol trilogy by Enki Bilal

> They explain a vision of the future that is improbable

We're currently heading into cyberpunk in basically every aspect except for the anarchy. More like totalitarian cyberpunk. It's left to see whether tech gives us the means for a semblance of anarchy, but I'm not getting my hopes up.

Economix, a comic book explanation of basic economics, is the only book on economics I have ever read.

It seemed biased but still covered the basics well, I thought, not that I'm a good judge.

They mystery here is why that comic image that is inlined into the page loads so slowly, but if you click on it while it is loading, you get a pop-up which shows the whole darn thing almost instantly, at what looks like the same resolution, even as the in-line one is still loading.

Spooky quantum effect, there!

NoScript lets you peek at a parallel universe in which the image pretty much instantly.

I didn't feel the need to click anything.

The creation of new particles, is that bremsstrahlung?? I’m trying to find more info on it.

Bremsstrahlung is not the creation of virtual particles, though it does involve a virtual photon. It is rather the radiation of (real) photons by electrons when they suddenly "decelerate" (i.e. collide with other charged particles). In fact the name "bremsstrahlung" means "braking radiation," if memory serves.

> when they suddenly "decelerate" (i.e. collide with other charged particles)

I think it'd be more accurate to say "interact" instead of "collide" – the electron could still be far away from the charged particle. More generally, bremsstrahlung also occurs when an electron's velocity vector (not necessarily its modulus) changes, i.e. when the electron changes direction, like in a synchroton.

> In fact the name "bremsstrahlung" means "braking radiation," if memory serves.

That's correct :)

Basically the change of momentum for the electron sheds some of energy used to accelerate it.

it is also important to note that due to experimental constraints and the nature of quantum mechanics different possible processes interfere with eachother.

eg: (a+b)^2 = a^2 + b^2 + 2ab

That 2ab is an interference term so a different process can get mixed in (quantum mechanically speaking). And we may not experimentally be able to disentangle it.

Also concisely covered in Fermilab's Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjnK5exNhZ0

why did they move the magnet from Brookhaven to Chicago?

From what I understand the Magnet is extremely specialized and it would cost millions more to manufacture a second one rather than ship the existing one. As to why Fermilab, scientists had exhausted the capabilities of the particle accelerator at Brookhaven and Fermilab already possessed the equipment to generate more intense muon beams.

All are correct! Also making a new magnet would take at least 3-5 more years.

The NYT sort of explained that repeating the experiment in Brookhaven would have cost a lot of money but wouldn't have resulted in an increase in accuracy that was worth that amount of money. Presumable other equipment exists at Fermilab that made the move cost effective compared to other options.

Oh, so it's a bit like electron screening, but with virtual particles ? Fine structurally neat !

What's the symbol that looks like a b fell over?

Lowercase Sigma

Just to expand a bit, the sigma symbol is a standard symbol used to indicate the standard deviation of a measurement, and standard deviation is roughly a measure of how much variation there is within a data set (and consequently how confident you can be in your measurement). So when they say that the theoretical result is now 4.2 sigma (units of standard deviation) away from the experimental result instead of 2.7 sigma, that is because the new experiment provided more precise data that scientists could use to lower the perceived variance.

Assuming that there were no experimental errors, you can use the measure of standard deviation to express roughly what % chance a measurement is due to a statistical anomaly vs. a real indication that something is wrong.

To put some numbers to this, a measurement 1 sigma from the prediction would mean that there is roughly a 84% chance that the measurement represented a deviation from the prediction and a 16% chance that it was just a statistical anomaly. Similarly:

> 2 sigma = 97.7%/2.3% chance of deviation/anomaly

> 3 sigma = 99.9%/0.1% chance of deviation/anomaly

> 4.2 sigma = 99.9987%/0.0013% chance of deviation/anomaly

Which is why this is potentially big news since there is a very small chance that the disagreements between measurement and prediction are due to a statistical anomaly, and a higher chance that there are some fundamental physics going on that we don't understand and thus cannot predict.

edit: Again, this assumes both that there were no errors made in the experiment (it inspires confidence that they were able to reproduce this result twice in different settings) and that there were no mistakes made in the predicition itself, which as another commenter mentions eleswhere, is a nontrivial task in and of itself.

> Again, this assumes both that there were no errors made in the experiment

This is worth repeating a lot when explaining sigma (even in a great and comprehensive explanation such as yours): Statistical anomalies are only relevant when the experiment itself is sound.

Imagine you are trying to see whether two brands of cake mix have different density (maybe you want to get a good initial idea whether they could be the same cake mix). You can do this by weighing the same amount (volume) of cake mix repeatedly, and comparing the mean value for weight measurements of either brand. That works well, but it totally breaks down if you consistently use a glass bowl for one brand, and a steel bowl for the other brand. You will get very high units of sigma, but not because of the cake mix.

Nitpick: it assumes that there were no systematic errors. If (say) you switch randomly between steel and glass bowls, you results will still be valid, just with much wider (worse) standard deviation than you could have gotten otherwise (or much greater numbers of measurements needed for a given accuracy, due to Shannon/noise floor issues).

Yes, that's entirely my point, hence why I said "consistently" using one type of bowl for one brand. That's a systematic error, but since this was supposed to be educational, I preferred explaining the error instead of using terminology that basically implies knowledge already.

> a measurement 1 sigma from the prediction would mean that there is roughly a 84% chance that the measurement represented a deviation from the prediction and a 16% chance that it was just a statistical anomaly.

No, this is a p-value misinterpretation. Sigma has to do with the probability that, if the null hypothesis were true, the observed data would be generated. It does not reflect the probability that any hypothesis is true given the data.

Hm, I was not being particularly precise with my language because I was trying to make my explanation easily digestible, but please correct me if I'm wrong.

The null hypothesis is that there are no new particles or physics and the Standard Model predicts the magnetic charge of a muon. A 4.2 sigma result means that given this null hypothesis prediction, the chances that we would have observed the given data is ~0.0013% (chance this was a statistical anomaly). Since this is a vanishingly small chance (assuming no experimental errors), we can reasonably reject the hypothesis that the Standard Model wholly predicts the charge of a muon.

This sound like the hypothesized „subtle-matter“ as proposed by Dr. Klaus Volkamer [1]?

- still looking for a better link than the Book… I’ll update this later

[1] https://amzn.to/3mvvsWW

But if muons are inanimate, why would they be affected by this hypothesised “subtle matter” which makes up the soul of living things?

heres is a paper [1] from 1994 here the results of weighing thermodynamically closed reactions are "interpreted to reveal the existence of a heretofore unknown kind of non-bradyonic, cold dark matter with two different forms of interaction with normal matter"

[1] http://klaus-volkamer.de/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/1994-Vol...

lol

Maybe the muons are hitting the angels at a good fractions of the speed of light and the difference is the angel-splat. Maybe FERMI can contract Dr Klaus to come up the an experiment to measure the angel-goo and true the difference right up. Thanks for the link to an 'authoritative source'. :-)

Absolutely. there's this Paper from 1999[1] "Experimental Evidence of a New Type of Quantized Matter with Quanta as Integer Multiples of the Planck Mass" about how the weight of a closed system with a chemical reaction changes, violating the conservation of mass.

[1] https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.1....

"Weightable soul". Sounds like a con-man, who wants only the most foolish of marks to make his job as easy as possible, and hence begins his script "I am about to hoax you...but I have something very important to tell you" - and those that remain after that are proven suckers and can be taken to any sort of ride.

I totally agree. Id be great to have a peer review of his papers[1][2] and either confirm something interesting or just shut him up.

Seems like all he was initially doing in the 80’s was dig into the 2 out of 10 experiments from Landolt that failed to confirm a conservation of mass

[1] http://klaus-volkamer.de/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/1994-Vol...

[2] https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.1....

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