Hacker News Reader

Comment by hprotagonist | Hacker News Reader

we'd have to change our understanding of how all the particles in the universe work.

Well, remember the new paper? We're pretty much entering that worst case scenario.

I believe you mean "best case"! There was much hue and cry after the Higgs discovery because the result, at least from the outside, seemed like "welp, we predicted a thing and found it and we don't have any new physics to disagree with; what a letdown!"

worst case here would be something like "oh, we thought it was 7 sigma, but actually we can completely account for the discrepancy because the instrument deformed slowly under its own weight for the last decade and now we're 4 angstroms off and we still don't have any new physics to disagree with!"

View on HN

> the instrument deformed slowly under its own weight for the last decade and now we're 4 angstroms off

This was hilarious and plausible at the same time. Nice work!

Totally plausible indeed! One of the recent (past decade or so) major mistaken discoveries in particle physics was a cabling issue.

And from a different field, but closer to the quip: semiconductor lithography lenses' own weight causes stresses that cause birefringence in the optics that has to be explicitly corrected for. And that was true 20 years ago already.

(Recovering particle physicist here and thinking about this even much later gives me mild trauma. ;) )

> One of the recent (past decade or so) major mistaken discoveries in particle physics was a cabling issue.

Have more info on this or link about it?

I'm guessing the parent is referring to

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster-than-light_neutrino_ano...

Yes, thank you, that's the one I was thinking about. Apologies for not naming/linking it in the first place.

"EM Drive" also probably counts.

From what I’ve been hearing, EM drive is more of “didn’t do the maths” followed by shoestring-budget “might as well try it, we have some spare lab space” work getting squished in between the serious projects.

Thanks

The Pioneer spacecraft speed anomaly turned out to be forgetting to account for the small amount of thrust from photons generated by the heat of the spacecraft (~1kph per decade).

I thought they were, but with an oversimplified model.

It's like the six-sigma result of CERN OPERA experiment showing neutrinos travaling slightly faster than speed of light - which was ultimately caused by a fiber cable between clocks not being fully tightened and thus causing a tiny delay and messing up the measurements.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faster-than-light_neutrino_ano...

Experiments can detect all sorts of things, including new unanticipated subtle experimental artifacts.

Definition of Science:

1 a : a study where participants seek to disprove their own conjectures

  b: the practice of getting excited when proven wrong because it means more work

2 : a complex study where everything that can go wrong will go wrong, often small or trivial errors (frequently difficult to observe) leading to insanity within participants as they have an existential crisis coming to terms with a new world paradigm, only to then have it shattered (again) when they realize their mistake.

I'm intrigued by how you got to lighten the text on the second line of your comment. I don't see anything on the formatting help page [0]

https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc

The process of getting the world as it can be experienced and its cultural representation to converge by updating the latter.

Power is the same, but acting on the former.

Stay away from mirrors or that definition collapses on itself.

3 : being open-minded of what is possible.

The great new is the past model does not work in some cases and we can now reduce it. Qm and R both does not refute all past science. Unlike the model we are the centre of universe and got 4 elements etc which is totally overruled.

The question we still do not have any after standard model. Whilst we have some big question similar to ultraviolet crazy (like today vaccuum space has so much energy the world has been gone in 10 power negative 30 sec) etc.

Still waiting.

yep, I came here to say this. gaining understanding is a very good outcome.

SO WHAT if it means other things are wrong? we need to know what we are wrong about if we are ever to get any of it right.

A reanalysis of data from a stopped detector wont continue to deform but nice try...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com