Boson mass: back to the drawing board?
The scientists at the Fermilab Collider Detector (CDF) in Illinois have found only a tiny difference in the mass of the W Boson compared with what the theory says it should be – just 0.1%. But if confirmed by other experiments, the implications are enormous. The so-called Standard Model of particle physics has predicted the behaviour and properties of sub-atomic particles with no discrepancies whatsoever for fifty years. Until now.
CDF’s other co-spokesperson, Prof Giorgio Chiarelli, from INFN Sezione di Pisa, told BBC News that the research team could scarcely believe their eyes when they saw the results.
“No-one was expecting this. We thought maybe we got something wrong.” But the researchers have painstakingly gone through their results and tried to look for errors. They found none.
The result, published in the journal Science, could be related to hints from other experiments at Fermilab and the Large Hadron Collider at the Swiss-French border. These, as yet unconfirmed results, also suggest deviations from the Standard Model, possibly as a result of an as yet undiscovered fifth force
HORATIO:
O day and night, but this is wondrous strange.HAMLET:
And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Good thing they at least got those climate models right …
Waiting for physicsguy to weigh in. My own physics guy at home points out that Newton’s laws are laws, whereas Einstein’s revelations are still theories. On this, he said, “Hmmm.”
The good news is that the Biden administration is proving that the mass of the bozo approaches infinity.
And I thought it was Boston mass. Local news or religion? Is this a vision thread? 🙂
Fredrick is a physicist as well, he may have thoughts about it.
They’re all bozos on that bus.
om,
That’s what I thought too.
Neo,
I propose that the undiscovered fifth force be named ‘woke’ becuz … shut up VBG
Just got back from 4 days in Orlando/Lakeland…visiting daughter and attending Sun N Fun airshow.
Quick, not much thought response: any cracks in the Standard Model is welcome news to me. Once the number of quarks began to multiply, the SM seemed to resemble the Ptolomy solar system rather than a real physical system to me. I still think cosmology and subatomic physics both desperately need the melding of QM and GR to make real progress.
physicsguy, what is your reaction to “Newton’s laws are laws, whereas Einstein’s revelations are still theories”? I thought that Einstein showed that Newton’s Laws do not hold, or at least are modified, as velocity approaches the speed of light. And hasn’t this been verified by experiment e. g. with particle accelerators? It’s been a while since I’ve taken physics so I would welcome being schooled if I am way off the mark here.
This is the type of discovery that can lead to breakthroughs in physics.
I suspect we are currently about halfway between the ignorance of the caveman and a full and completely accurate understanding of the physical universe within which we exist.
In the spiritual / wisdom realm and as a race, perhaps not even close to the halfway point.
Hubris to assume otherwise.
“The science is settled.”
Yet once again.
NOT.
By the way; climate computer models have their input variables “tuned” so as to obtain the “correct” results. By “tuned” it is meant that different values of the input variables are selected until the correct result is obtained.
That is, we know, a priori what the answer must be, so let’s keep trying different values of the input parameters until we obtain the “correct” result.
Climate “scientists” freely admit this; it is no secret.
FOAF, the terms “laws” and “theories” can be confusing in physics. For me a law is more on the equation level, F=ma for example of one of Newton’s laws, which are part of Newton’s Theory of motion. Theories are big picture, laws can be pieces that make up the theory.
GB, I’d agree with that assessment of our progress of understanding.
We are only halfway to knowing all that is the mind of God?
Asymptope problem. Never get there.
Long ago for my PhD (checks calendar, 50 years, yikes!) we did a search for the rare, 1/hundred million, decay of a subatomic particle. A group at Berkeley had made the measurement and didn’t see anything, which caused a stir because it implied something wrong with the understanding of the physics. In the end we saw it at the predicted rate as did a group at CERN. It turned out after very careful calibration that the Berkeley experiment was too insensitive to see the decay. Don’t hold your breath that a re-analysis of decade old data really turned up something.
I also found the publication choice weird. It used to be that important results were published in either Physical Review Letters(US) or Physics Letters(Europe). Science? Isn’t that where you learn about the mating habits of turtles in Patagonia? I sense a disturbance in the Force.
I’d second physicsguy: in physics (and in science generally) “theories” don’t get “promoted” to “laws”; scientists use these words differently from the public.
Laws are formulas, small picture, and many of them are known to be more like rules of thumb. (Ohm’s law, for example, is a very simple model of electrical resistance and lots of materials don’t follow it closely or at all).
Theories are mathematical frameworks which explain large numbers of observations and sometimes your laws can be derived from these theories. (If you study the theory of quantum mechanics and assume materials are made from electrons and atomic nuclei, you can derive Ohm’s Law as well as explain semiconductors and insulators, which don’t follow Ohm’s Law.)
Breathless announcements in the press about something big in physics being about to be disproved turn out to be nothing a lot more often than something. For example, in 2011 the press was full of “was Einstein wrong” articles because an experiment measured neutrinos moving faster than light. Further study found that there was a problem with how the time of flight was being measured, and when this was fixed neutrinos didn’t move faster than light.
It’s not just physicsguy, no one is all that happy with the Standard Model and its “particle zoo”. All that you’ve heard about “string theory” is people trying to replace the Standard Model. No one is going to cry if it gets disproved*. But as little as anyone likes it, it’s working better than any alternative proposed so far.
*There’s not really “proved” or “disproved”. There’s “agrees pretty well with the experiments we’re doing” and “not so much”. Newton’s laws, for example, are plenty good enough to send probes to distant planets and call in artillery strikes, but the GPS satellites would give you really wrong positions if you used Newton’s laws instead of Einstein’s. And yet, something out there is better than Einstein’s laws; no one knows what it is yet.
People want to believe… However, science is necessarily a philosophy and practice in the near domain.
Naturally, as a history/English lit major, I don’t pretend to understand the Boson mass or much else in physics. But I did read the article, and what I appreciated is that these researchers are eagerly awaiting results from other experiments to either confirm or refute their results. Unlike “climate crisis” proponents, these are actual scientists pursuing truth.
@Kate:Unlike “climate crisis” proponents, these are actual scientists pursuing truth.
What we see in the news about climate science is heavily filtered through journalists and activists. The basic physics underlying climate is well understood, but what’s hard is using that to predict what the climate will do, because climate is the sum of many complex interactions some of which offset each other.
Climate scientists argue with each other, question each other’s work, and change what they are doing in response to what else is learned, and they do this continually. But little of this disagreement is allowed to filter through the media.
Most of the criticisms leveled at climate science by our side of things is based on work done and published by climate scientists themselves. Our side is trying to get the disagreements out into popular consciousness, but I’m not sure how effective its been. What’s been more effective is the endless prophecies of doom from the media which never seems to come to pass.
As a layperson who has gotten somewhat deep in Astronomy and done a lot of free reading on Physics and Physicists I’m still disappointingly close to the caveman Geoffrey Britain referenced, but for decades I’ve had the same feeling physicsguy described.
It literally reminds me of Ptolemy’s cycles, epicycles, deferents and equants. Copernicus was much more correct than Ptolemy on how things really are, but Ptolemy’s system fit observation more precisely than Copernicus’.
Until Kepler came along and figured out the orbits are not circles but ellipses. He did this through brute force and trying every other shape and possibility first.
All these quark flavors seem like Ptolemy building circles upon circles to match observation. I hope a Kepler arrives in particle physics to bring us back to something as elegant as Copernicus’ model writ small. Very small.
}}} The so-called Standard Model of particle physics has predicted the behaviour and properties of sub-atomic particles with no discrepancies whatsoever for fifty years. Until now.
This is Science. (not to be confused with the term “Climate ‘science’ “)
Newton’s Laws of Motion predicted how things behaved for more than two centuries… then we looked really close and hard at the orbit of Mercury…
What followed was a refinement. Nothing invalidated Newton’s Laws, we just found the edge conditions where they failed.
The same may be true, now, for the Standard Model.
Long ago for my PhD (checks calendar, 50 years, yikes!)
I never feel so young as here. Neo’s commentariat is over-run with elderly academicians. I’m wondering how many of them are trying to get a date out of her.
I’m wondering how many of them are trying to get a date out of her.
[…checks calendar for next Bee Gees tour…]