The h Bar

DanielSank

9:00 AM

@ChrisWhite I tried asking about this and DavidZ more or less said I was being silly.

I found that unsatisfying.

Stan Shunpike

Is there a difference between philosophy and a physical claim that cant be tested due to lack of technology / means?

John Rennie

@ChrisWhite I remember reading Guth's articles back in the 80s, and at the time it seemed like a revelation. It just explained so much so elegantly.

user54412

@DanielSank There's an uncomfortable dogmatism in cosmology these days. And unfortunately the few who question it always have to simultaneously promote their own theories (which often have their own problems).

John Rennie

Things seem to have got a lot more tangled and a lot less elegant since ...

user54412

@JohnRennie It seemed that way to me at first. But the more I think about it, the more I feel I've been swindled.

user54412

9:02 AM

Inflation arguments -- at least as they have always been presented to me -- always boil down to "the universe had nasty initial conditions and had to be smoothed"

John Rennie

Of course, I have my own crackpot theory ...

user54412

But everyone always glosses over the fact that a finite amount of smoothing doesn't solve any initial conditions problem, it just gives it new numbers.

DanielSank

@ChrisWhite Heh. This is something I like about my SO: she does astro and she's totally on top of what she thinks is legit and what is weakly supported fantheory gone haywire.

user54412

@JohnRennie Oh?

Danu

@ChrisWhite But it reduces a number of cosmological problems to a single initial conditions problem and gives a very strong argument for how the heck we get large scale structure from quantum fluctuations

DanielSank

9:03 AM

@Danu osdj losdlsdlsi;ojsdiosd0orew0943ow4oiw3 0o43 iore rp fdopid 9e8ufdoifdkohg 98dfg fdoiu pdfu8fdio

Danu

Seems legit

DanielSank

I have never once heard an astrophysicist mention "quantum fluctuations" and be able to follow that up with anything resembling a sensible understanding of wtf that is supposed to mean.

Ever.

And I've tried.

Danu

Lol

DanielSank

Please PLEASE fix this for me.

Danu

don't go to the astrophysicists

Read Mukhanov's papers from the 80s

He's famous for it

I don't believed that you searched very hard :P

user54412

9:05 AM

@Danu The problem was always a single one of initial conditions. People didn't like having "nice" conditions, because they figured the ICs were drawn from some awful distribution (which only ever existed in their imaginations). Then they invented inflation. Then they declared that the ICs inflation requires are exactly what one would expect to be drawn from their favorite distribution.

user54412

You should read Paul Steinhardt's objections to inflation -- at some level inflation is only "likely" under a completely unjustified choice of measure on the possible universes.

Danu

I very recently saw a talk of his, he visited Munich

It seemed quite unreasonable and more like propaganda for his own cyclic theory

John Rennie

That would be the Paul Steinhardt who has a competing theory of his own of course :-)

Danu

@JohnRennie exactly

user54412

@DanielSank If you ever do get an answer, let me know. I'd love to hear it.

DanielSank

9:08 AM

Would you like to buddy read one of these Mukhanov papers?

@ChrisWhite

user54412

@JohnRennie That's the problem. I don't think ekpyrotism is any more justified. I think his complaints about inflation are very important, but no one is willing to listen to them so long as they can tear apart his alternative theory. As though those two theories partition all of possible reality.

user54412

@DanielSank Sure!

DanielSank

Groovy

@Danu: Which paper to read?

John Rennie

@DanielSank speaking as one ignorant of QFT, isn't the inflaton field just a quantum field and therefore subject to statistical fluctuations like any other quantum field?

DanielSank

@ChrisWhite Warning: I don't know squat about cosmology. I do know squat about quantum mechanics.

user54412

9:11 AM

@DanielSank And I know nothing of QM, but a thing or two about astrophysics.

user54412

With our powers combined...

DanielSank

(I was just about to type that)

we are CAPTAIN PHYSICS!

@JohnRennie Yes, but how do I take a cosmological state vector and turn that into a diagonalized density matrix from the point of view of a human? What's the environment which decoheres the state?

@Danu @ChrisWhite: I'm going to sleep. If @Danu would kindly recommend a particularly good starting paper on this topic I will read it during the APS conference next week and gladly confer with @ChrisWhite about its meaning.

user54412

♫ Captain Physics, he's our hero // Gonna take h bar down to zero ♫

2

Danu

@DanielSank Finding them, will recommend ine a few minutes

DanielSank

@Danu: Much obliged. Thank you.

Danu

9:14 AM

@DanielSank You have access to paywalled stuff and such right?

DanielSank

>.>

<.<

Maybe. Who's asking?

Danu

(80s papers yo, aint no arxiv)

DanielSank

Yes, I have access.

Danu

aight

Stan Shunpike

@DanielSank lol I haven't seen those smiles before

DanielSank

9:15 AM

@ChrisWhite Wait, no, bad! Wouldn't that kill us all?

Stan Shunpike

Smilies*

DanielSank

@StanShunpike No smiles. Shifty eyes.

user54412

I feel I'll take this moment to point out essentially all astrophysics (not quantum cosmology) papers from all time are freely available

2

user54412

why can't other fields be more like us?

DanielSank

@ChrisWhite In my experience you guys are the care bears of physics.

Page limits? No way! Write all the words!

Co-authors? Yeah! The more the merrier. Let's all collaborate!

It's like you care more about science then personal advancement. What's wrong with astrophysicists?

bolbteppa

9:18 AM

@StanShunpike good stuff ;)

DanielSank

That reminds me: if anyone here is going to San Antonio for the APS meeting, shoot me a chat message or something. Would be fun to buy you a beer :D

Danu

Urgh, it is quite difficult finding these papers since they were originally published in Russian, and LMU's journal access is not quite top notch

But I'll manage eventually

user54412

I'll look too... when I'm more awake

Danu

The essential early papers by Mukhanov are

user54412

::wonders if he just committed to learning Russian::

Danu

9:23 AM

"Quantum fluctuations and a nonsingular universe" with Chibisov

and "The vacuum energy and large scale structure of the universe"

JETP Lett. and JETP respectively; 1981, 1982 respectively

(JETP is Russian)

Stan Shunpike

@bolbteppa indeed!

@Danu Is that the paper you've settled on to read?

or rather are those

DanielSank

Well since my Russian is barely good enough to read Винни-Пух, I'm thinking we need to go with the other one.

Danu

@StanShunpike I'm not going to

user54412

adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1981JETPL..33..532M

Danu

@DanielSank I think there exist translations

user54412

9:26 AM

pdf available

Danu

wut

user54412

the other one might be more difficult

Danu

I don't see that

user54412

@Danu the pdf? "full refereed journal article"

DanielSank

@ChrisWhite Woah, yeah I can't read that.

Danu

9:28 AM

Ah wow, thanks

see, it's in english :D

Anyways, if you guys would really like to read this, I can probably talk to Mukhanov or one of his close collaborators to get a copy of the other paper too, somehow

user54412

o.O

DanielSank

Oh boy, this is going to be very hard for me to read.

Danu

(He's working at LMU)

@DanielSank why?

Don't know semiclassical gravity? :P

DanielSank

@Danu It deals with multiple topics I barely know anything about.

Definitely going to try.

Thanks.

Danu

(just kidding, I don't know enough to read these papers either)

but I think

that the other paper is MUCH more relevant, directly at least, for your question

since that one is directly about large scale structure

DanielSank

9:32 AM

Again, thanks. I'm off to sleep.

Danu

Okay, I read a bit of the ending of the paper, they do touch upon your question

For background material I strongly recommend Mukhanov's book 'Quantum effects in gravity'

It's very good and very basic

user54412

@Danu Have you seen this other Mukhanov paper? Is it also worth reading?

Danu

yet goes, I think, quite a long way for this type of stuff

@ChrisWhite It is, of course, related. However, it seems that it's not directly relevant

Mukhanov's book 'Physical principles of cosmology' has a decent bibliography at the end

there, he describes in 1-2 sentences what these papers of his (as well as many others) are about

user54412

@Danu Oh hey, that book is on my bookshelf!

Danu

For this one, he just writes: "This paper contains the derivation of the action for
cosmological perturbations in different models from ﬁrst principles. Explicit formulae
in higher-derivative gravity and for cases of nonzero spatial curvature can be found
here."

user54412

9:35 AM

Not sure I've read it.

Danu

@ChrisWhite Nice! Bibliography of 'Inflation' (ch. 5 & 8) is what you're looking for

it has these papers I brought up as well

The following could be more relevant: "Mukhanov, V. Gravitational instability of the universe ﬁlled with a scalar ﬁeld. JETP Letters,
41 (1985), 493; Quantum theory of gauge invariant cosmological perturbations. Soviet
Physics JETP, 67 (1988), 1297. The self-consistent theory of quantum cosmological
perturbations in generic inﬂationary models is developed
†"

user54412

"higher-derivative gravity" -- is that what they called f(R) models in Soviet Russia?

Danu

It is also worth reading this hilarious footnote that appears in my previous quote:

"The papers by Hawking, S. Phys. Lett., 115B (1982), 295; Starobinsky, A. Phys. Lett., 117B (1982), 175; Guth,
A., Pi, S. Phys. Rev. Lett., 49 (1982), 1110; Bardeen, J., Steinhardt, P., Turner, M. Phys. Rev. D, 28 (1983), 679
are devoted to perturbations in the new inﬂationary scenario. However, bearing in mind the considerations of
Chapter 8 and solving Problems 8.4, 8.5, 8.7 and 8.8, the reader can easily ﬁnd out that none of the above papers
contains a consistent derivation of the result."

Shots fired!

user54412

LOL

Danu

Classic Mukhanov

he calls everyone crap

@ChrisWhite ...quite possibly

If you're interested in other inflation-related stuff I can recommend (from personal experience, I actually read these): Kofman, L., Linde, A., Starobinsky, A. Reheating after inﬂation. Physical Review Letters,
73 (1994), 3195; Toward the theory of reheating after inﬂation. Physical Review D,
56 (1997), 3258. The self-consistent theory of preheating and reheating after inﬂa-
tion is developed with special stress on the role of broad parametric resonance. The
presentation in Section 5.5 follows the main line of these papers.

Stan Shunpike

9:42 AM

@Danu do you a good book that discusses / introduces the inflation stuff you mentioned earlier? That's the thing everyone was making a big deal about when some new data or something was found in the last 2 years right?

Do you know*

Oh whoops I see you mentioned one earlier

I guess I could try that one. I dunno if that's a good one to start with

Danu

What's your level?

Do you know GR, QFT, either, neither?

user54412

9:57 AM

@DavidZ Indeed

Danu

@ChrisWhite And, like I said, the answer is "ask a computer" :)

"At least we can all agree on one thing: The people who see the dress as white are utterly, completely wrong." lol

user54412

I'm so utterly confused. At what point was there evidence that there is anything weird with the picture?

user54412

Also, there are clearly differently doctored photos going around. They even appear different next to each other on my monitor.

user54412

sigh

user54412

I take this as a sign that our society really has entered utopia, and we just didn't notice.

user54412

10:09 AM

Our needs have been taken care of so well, we don't know what to do with ourselves.

Sofia

10:43 AM

@infinitesimal no, I didn't find. Whatever I do is to just ignore i.e. not to read smth. that I dislike. If there would be a way to block things that I dislike I would be glad.

Sofia

11:29 AM

@Danu the way on which I agreed with DavidZ indeed is frail. People loose interest in old questions, both questioners and repliers. And by old I mean even two days ago, or so. After that, answers aren't read anymore, as to comments, they are ignored. So dealing with an old question is lost time.

infinitesimal

11:47 AM

Let me show you, first click on my avatar. What options do you see @Sofia?

At the bottom: Actions

Start a new room with this user

Hide posts

Ignore this user (everywhere) <---- <<

infinitesimal

12:28 PM

I don't see any difference between: "hide posts" and "ignore this user (everywhere)"?

infinitesimal

12:44 PM

0

Q: What is the difference between: "hide posts" and "ignore this user (everywhere)"?

I don't see any difference between: Actions "hide posts" and "ignore this user (everywhere)" Is there any difference in their scope and if so what is it?

discussion

Physics Meta

0

Q: What is the difference between: "hide posts" and "ignore this user (everywhere)"?

I don't see any difference between: Actions "hide posts" and "ignore this user (everywhere)" Is there any difference in their scope and if so what is it?

discussion

infinitesimal

:O

I apologize to the room for the above double post :(

Perhaps the (everywhere) includes all other chatrooms?

ACuriousMind

@Danu Yes. I could not explain to you a single "interesting thing" in GR without looking it up somewhere. QFT stuff like symmetry breaking, anomalies, renormalisation and so on I'd have no problem to give a reasonable account of.

infinitesimal

I didn't know this room had an inbox meta feed?

ACuriousMind

@infinitesimal Well, now you know. It's not that noticable because meta is quite quiet, mostly

infinitesimal

12:58 PM

Why not just put it on the drop down @ManishEarth?

It must be very intrusive when meta gets active @ACuriousMind

ACuriousMind

1:10 PM

@infinitesimal Hasn't happened so far, and "active meta" here usually means that one controversial post is posted and then there's an onslaught of comments. It's mostly good because I tend to keep forgetting to check meta for new/active posts.

infinitesimal

icic

I don't think there is such an "ignore/hide posts" option for a users comments on a question/answer, right?

ACuriousMind

1:25 PM

@infinitesimal Nope. After all, comments are there to improve/clarify posts. If someone is non-constructively annoying you, just flag the comments.

infinitesimal

Good point..

..but a skilled troll knows how to walk the fine line between non-constructive and constructive.

Kyle Kanos

1:46 PM

So it was an optical illusion

infinitesimal

Is that a color filter?

Kyle Kanos

Looks to me that he just placed a dark blue background

Jiminion

@Sofia Sofia, do you think Peres' textbook is worth reading?

Kyle Kanos

Actually, maybe it was a color filter

The gold doesn't change to black when moving the colors over

(e.g., swapping backgrounds)

infinitesimal

2:07 PM

Perhaps the troll is feeding on the color blind

Danu

2:43 PM

@ACuriousMind Strange creature

@KyleKanos The two look exactly the same to me lol

Am I the only one who is not affected (in this case) by this 'illusion'?

infinitesimal

in Mathematics, 5 mins ago, by infinitesimal

With different backgrounds and color filters you can make it look any color you want.

Danu

You quote yourself a lot :P

infinitesimal

lol

Sofia

@Jiminion @Jiminion Peres' book is excellent, unbiased (doesn't take the part of anyone) but it is quire mathematical. It's for graduated.

infinitesimal

@Sofia @Sofia hi :-)

im lazy that way @danu

Sofia

3:20 PM

@infinitesimal hi! How are you today?

infinitesimal

@Sofia fine thanks, how are you?

Sofia

3:40 PM

@infinitesimal I am also fine, thank you. Now, please tell me, could it be that you are good at electromagnetism (e.m.)? I have a problem emerging from a question, and I am absolutely unable to understand what happens. When asking you about e.m. I am just trying my luck. Or maybe, do you know someone here that is good at e.m.?

infinitesimal

Not really, you should just post it on the main site :-)

Sofia

3:55 PM

@infinitesimal Hmmm! I really think to do so, thank you. By the way, what is this symbol :-) ? You and others, use all sort of symbols like these, and they are not understood to me.

@Danu what is this symbol, :P ? Everybody here uses such symbols and I don't understand them.

Jimdalf the Grey

@Sofia : for eyes, P for sticking one's tongue out. It symbolizes that a person is joking or not being serious

Seriously, are you a time traveller?

:-) is a happy face sideways

:-D is very happy

Hang on, there's probably a better way to do this

Sofia

@JimdalftheGrey but I didn't understand the symbol :P.

Kyle Kanos

@Danu I see more of the gold, but the blue definitely looks the same

Jimdalf the Grey

List of emoticons

This is a list of notable and commonly used emoticons or textual portrayals of a writer's moods or facial expressions in the form of icons. The Western use of emoticons is quite different from Eastern usage, and Internet forums, such as 2channel, typically show expressions in their own ways. In recent times, graphic representations, both static and animated, have taken the place of traditional emoticons in the form of icons. These are commonly known as emoji although the term kaomoji is more correct. Emoticons can generally be divided into three groups: Western or horizontal (mainly from America...

Kyle Kanos

I'm also hella glad that the question got shut down

WTF is this edit: Or can it? If this is not a physics phenomenon, please explain how/why.

Why on earth would we explain why something isn't a physics phenomena

Rolling back

Sofia

4:06 PM

@JimdalftheGrey You explained me the general meaning, but not what is the symbol :P . What is it?

Jimdalf the Grey

@Sofia I did explain. :P is a face sticking a tongue out. : for eyes. P for mouth

Why does it always seem like when I have the time, there's no questions I want to answer on the active page and when I don't have the time, there's like 8 of them?

Kyle Kanos

@JimdalftheGrey Favorite them and answer later

Jimdalf the Grey

@KyleKanos I do, but by the time I get the time to answer, someone else beat me to it (usually John)

Sean

@KyleKanos I definitely was not a fan of that edit to my question

Danu

@KyleKanos Let's never talk about this again :)

Kyle Kanos

4:14 PM

@JimdalftheGrey So? Answer it anyway.

@Danu What dress?

Back to teaching labs!

Sean

If the community decides the question's off topic, certainly I'll respect that. That edit seemed like a backdoor way to skirt around the rules for on topic

Danu

@Sean What's this?

Sean

But I've been around long enough I thought I knew expectations well enough that I could state the question in an on topic way

Danu

@KyleKanos Labs, yuck

Sean

Kyle was referring to an edit to a question I asked

Danu

4:15 PM

oh lol the question

we don't talk about the question here

Sean

Didn't think it would cause such a stink

Danu

It didn't and don't feel offended by my semi-joking remarks

I just get annoyed when something stupid like this gets all kinds of hype

Sean

Honestly, I figured if I didn't ask the question, someone else would

I figured I'd do a better job asking about it than someone new to the site

Danu

I think you did a decent job - but there wasn't much to be saved. It is just not physically interesting

Jimdalf the Grey

@KyleKanos So your advice it to present the same information in a different way and potentially steal rep from others that have just as informative answers as mine might be? I'll give it a shot

Danu

4:18 PM

@JimdalftheGrey I approve

ACuriousMind

0

Q: How does a heated constant volume flow behave, for an expanding flow tube leading into the free atmosphere

I have a helium gas flow with a flow rate that has been set to a constant value ($0.3\,m^3/h$). It's streaming upwards in the picture, and beyond the upper big red dot position, it meets the atmospheric gas in the laboratory. The room has $p_{lab}=1\,atm$ and $T_{lab}=300\,K$. The gas has been he...

fluid-dynamics pressure temperature ideal-gas flow

Has NikolajK been hacked?

Look at his profile text

And this is definitely not the kind of question he'd ask

There's something weird going on here

Jimdalf the Grey

I don't know him well enough for the latter, but the former does lend credence to your theory

Possible he went insane

ACuriousMind

You can also just look at his questions and answers, there's no way he'd ask such a HW question

Sofia

@KyleKanos Aaaaaaa! And if I favorite a question what's the use to answer later? Does it remain only for me?

Jimdalf the Grey

Well, I hope he wasn't hacked and if he was I hope he gets control again soon. There's not much more I can do for him

Don't answers like this give you so much confidence in humanity?:

-1

A: Does Expanding Universe conflict with the Thermodynamics 3rd Law?

szfdg gjhikjol'p;[#]/ ]#'[p;oluiktyhrgfwsaqFGHGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGFGHJKJHGFDFGHJKJHGFDFHM,MNBVCSXFGBHJMKNBGFVGBNMMNVB

Sofia

4:27 PM

@KyleKanos there are such questions. And there are also questions that I want only people with some professionality to answer them. Is it possible to do something in this direction?

ACuriousMind

@JimdalftheGrey I know. This is not something that'd warrant a mod flag, is it? (Since I have absolutely no hard evidence whatsoever that he isn't just really puzzled by this flow tube)

@JimdalftheGrey I don't think there are pills against being a stupid troll. Aside from cyanide, perhaps.

Jimdalf the Grey

@ACuriousMind well, the user profile description being changed to nonsense does warrant looking into it, but I don't know what you'd put in a mod flag

Have you tried asking NikolajK what happened?

Perhaps that wouldn't work though

ACuriousMind

@JimdalftheGrey Well, I left a comment

But I don't know him outside of SE

Jimdalf the Grey

Can mods bring this to the attention of someone that can check the login IP to see if the location is drastically different than usual?

ACuriousMind

Well, the SE team certainly can do that

I also have the strange feeling that I've seen this question before

This is creepy

Jimdalf the Grey

4:32 PM

Find the previous version of this question. That would help

Danu

@ACuriousMind Seems like a pretty obvious case of pranking/hacking to me

Jimdalf the Grey

@Danu But what to do about it is the question

ACuriousMind

'Kay, I raised a mod flag

It doesn't really pertain to the question, but hey, that's why there is a custom field, right?

Jimdalf the Grey

0

Q: How much lux does the sun emit?

I want to know how much lux the sun emits on a bright day - I don't mean when one stares directly at the sun, but rather when one walks casually outside when the sun is shinning brightly. Now the reason for my confusion is that Wikipedia states here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lux that "dire...

visible-light sun eye

Danu

@JimdalftheGrey Yeah, flagging

Jimdalf the Grey

4:33 PM

What ho! Another Jim!

Danu

how surprising

ACuriousMind

Mhhh, searching for specific phrases from the question turns up no other question

If it has been deleted, I have no chance to find it, although I could see it, right?

Perhaps I'm also going insane?

Danu

Most definitely

Sean

-7

Q: Thermal physics

I am confused!!! -- Who is the tomboyish girlfriend of Nancy Drew in most of her mystery series. I tried to find about this and i did an experiment. I dropped a stone from the leaning tower of Pisa and it fell on no one's head, I took a sigh of relief and then used time machine to go to 19th cent...

special-relativity

Isn't there a low quality filter that's supposed to catch stuff like this?

ACuriousMind

@Sean The filter just raises an auto low quality flag, I think.

Lol, @0celo7, didn't we talk about explaining the EFE yesterday? Here's your chance ;)

Another question: Do I get my close vote back if I VTC a question, but OP deletes it before it is closed?

Jiminion

4:46 PM

@ACuriousMind Look at his profile. There's a big weird paragraph there. I dunno if that was by him, but it looks odd.

Danu

@Jiminion he already said that, yeah

ACuriousMind

24 mins ago, by ACuriousMind

Look at his profile text

Jiminion

No one commented on my PMH question. :( At least it wasn't pulled/dropped.

ACuriousMind

@Jiminion People are generally reluctant to click youtube links in questions, I think. It would perhaps gain traction if you described the ladder in your own words in the question.

Jiminion

@ACuriousMind (in my Johnny Carson voice) I DID not know that!

ACuriousMind

4:54 PM

Is asking for evidence for non-mainstream theories allowed?

This user seems to have a beef with modern GR/cosmology in general

Danu

Yeah, it always annoys the crap out of me to see users that just want their POV confirmed

Glen The Udderboat

5:07 PM

I read about conspiracy theory people tending to stick to certain parts of the web. This made me wonder where the non-mainstream physics lovers hang? Do they have an SE site?

Danu

They have viXra, at least

Glen The Udderboat

Do the non-mainstream physics lovers love all non-mainstream physics, or only their chosen stuff?

Danu

Obviously the latter

0celo7

@ACuriousMind I'm at school, not about to do technical writing on my phone

Glen The Udderboat

@Danu So a non-mainstream physics lover (hereafter NMPL) will consider some random other NMPL (with a different kind of non-mainstreamishness) a crackpot?

ACuriousMind

5:12 PM

Ohhh, can we set up MNPL battles?

0celo7

@ACuriousMind The TL;DR answer to his question is that the star is the source, and we have to smoothly join the vacuum solution to interior solution. For black holes we treat them as vacuum solutions period, except for the singularity, which is undefined in GR.

Glen The Udderboat

@ACuriousMind I guess that would be fun to watch, wouldn't it?

0celo7

I'd want to source that though and provide some equations.

ACuriousMind

@0celo7 Well, I don't want to answer that question. I just thought you might have fun with it.

0celo7

If it doesn't have a good answer by the time I get home, I'll write an answer.

Sean

5:22 PM

-1

A: Can we really see new objects in future?

No. As time elapsed since the Big Bang increases, we will actually be able to see less in our observable universe. The reason why is because of the metric expansion of space where, on the largest scales, space itself is actually expanding, so that the distance between galaxies, galactic groups,...

Is my answer to this question wrong? I thought it was pretty uncontroversial that our cosmic horizon was shrinking

I'm just having a rough day on physics.SE I guess...

Kyle Kanos

@JimdalftheGrey How would you be stealing rep?

vzn

5:50 PM

@innisfree think you have some valid pt here. however historically (over many decades of the 20th century) new particles were discovered at higher energies. so what is the flaw with the induction here? there may actually be some unexamined human bias (presumably popper's main bogeyman wrt induction), and what? namely that there are a finite number of (fundamental) particles... and in fact there are other models of reality with another pov on that which physicists do not "yet" take seriously...

ACuriousMind

@vzn Uh, the flaw is that the discovery of more particles at higher energies shows that you would not have been justified in just extending the contemporary particle physics models to higher energies?

vzn

@Danu sowa has carefully concealed his identity & gives few hints. why do you think he is polish? think have seen a rumor he is russian.

AC there are different ways to interpret "new particles" & its a great test/ application of philosophical ideas; in one sense, any new particles discovered (are/ or could be) a flaw in the prior theory that does not predict them...

physicists have been able to take some "shortcuts" on theory evolution based on the strong (historical) correspondence between "increasing energies in collider experiments" and "new discoveries".... philosophers would question that....

Higgs is an interesting case study also. it was predicted but its energy range not very well pinned down beforehand. it was speculated to "live" somewhere in a wide energy range.

ACuriousMind

@vzn I'm not sure we're disagreeing

vzn

who said anything about disagreement? :)

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