Comment by ThinkBeat | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ThinkBeat | Hacker News Reader

"Quarks are the fundamental building blocks from which matter is constructed."

I sometimes wish would include "In our current model", "We now think that", or some other qualifier.

Such absolute statements have been made frequently prior to our current understanding.

I have no special knowledge to lead me to believe that quarks are not the end all of parties.

But I was happy with atom being the fundamental thing, and then electrons, neutrons, protons were the thing as well.

The other day I read about Fractons "quasiparticles or Partial Particles", so now I have to figure those out as well.

I have lost track if the graviton has been found yet. I dont think it has.

From a purely layman's sense of esthetics the current model for particle physics is messy and a little spooky.

I have an odd hobby. I collect old paper encyclopedias from pre 1970 For every language that I speak. It takes up MASSIVE amounts of space.

The oldest I have been able to acquire on a limited budget Is 1880.

It is always fun to track concepts over time.

They all state what the world is like, and how it works as bombastic facts.

Yet over time, most of it gets replaced or at least highly refined and things are removed.

Particle physics is an active field with much still to learn or figure out. Let us keep that in mind.

"We now think that" is the qualifier on the entirety of physics. It's redundant.

I'll certainly give the authors of the papers the benefit of a presumption of humility; it's the people "translating into layman's terms" and "passing on knowledge" that introduce Authority, and other errors, as part of the process.

"Think for yourself, schmuck" is the only dogma worth petting.

Haha. True. Some parts of physics are way shakier than others though. For example, the whole big bang, dark matter, dark energy area needs the qualifier of, "We know we've got something wrong here, but its the best we've got". (eg see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bang#Problems_and_related_...). I'm trying not to be controversial here. I'm just using this as an example of physics with well known problems.

Regarding, "Quarks are the fundamental building blocks", do we actually think that? If so, why? I'm genuinely curious. Is it just because we haven't seen anything more fundamental? That would violate your "We now think that" qualifier - ie if that is the reason, the qualifier should be "We have NO reason to think that...".

There is a theory about Preons.

This theory has fallen out of fashion.

"In particle physics, preons are point particles, conceived of as sub-components of quarks and leptons."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preon

It's much worse than you think.

In physics there is 1) we know this is definitely wrong but it's useful and 2) this is very right so far and it's probably going to be wrong. I'm only a little bit joking. Now, I am not a physicist but I have been in a physics rabbit hole for a few months now.

The absolute best most experimentally verified theories we have are: general relativity and quantum mechanics. These are the pinnacle of physics. And they are incompatible with each other. So we know for sure that one is wrong. Or both are wrong.

String theory might be the resolution of that, making strings the most fundamental thing. But we've been working on it for 50 years with basically nothing to show for it so far. And there may be more beyond strings, who knows.

Of course there are many things in physics we can say with great confidence. But in terms of fundamental understanding there is ONLY "we now think that".

If only epidemiologists had such humility

> I sometimes wish would include "In our current model", "We now think that", or some other qualifier.

There is actually good reason to think quarks aren't fundemental. Even ignoring the empirical shortcomings of the standard model (specifically the incompatibility with General Relativity), it just doesn't "look" like a fundemental model.

Specifically, it is essentially a periodic table of elementary particles, with 3 "generations" of matter particles. Like the periodic table of the elements, this structure is highly suggestive that there is some deeper underlying structure.

I agree that we don’t know. But there is also evidence that quarks are fundamental. Based on all our measurement, they are point like particles with no internal structure or size.

Sure, but where did the word "atom" come from?

Perhaps the structure becomes visible at higher energies?

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