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Post by abacus9900 on Feb 12, 2011 17:14:57 GMT 1
Are quarks and leptons really the most basic particles or are these composed of even smaller entities?
Quarks and leptons are described as 'points' possessing no spatial extension but it has been found impossible to predict the mass of the top quark accurately from the theoretical 'standard model.' In fact, the standard model does not allow us to calculate the experimentally observed mass of the top quark, so what's wrong with the standard model?
Another problem is the fact that of the three families of quarks and leptons only the first is stable (up/down quarks, e-neutrinos and electrons) so there seems no need of the other two families in nature yet there they are. Why?
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Post by carnyx on Feb 12, 2011 18:49:08 GMT 1
I may have said this before; so pardon the repetiton, but the practical experiments to try to divine the innards of atoms seen to me to be suspect. It is as if we were a race of giants that could not resolve objects smaller than a car, but try to divine what such things are made of by smashing them into each other at ever-higher speeds, and classifying the bits that fly off as components by their trajectory-trails.
OK after squillions of crashes they have detected the equivalent of wheels; boot and bonnet lids, doors, and even engine lumps. But this kind of analysis wil tell you nothing about how they work, surely. And, what ultimate use is this searching?
A blue whale would be astounded to know of embroidery, but I guess that emotional 'coo!' is about the limit of the consequence .. to blue whales.
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Post by abacus9900 on Feb 13, 2011 14:37:56 GMT 1
I may have said this before; so pardon the repetiton, but the practical experiments to try to divine the innards of atoms seen to me to be suspect. It is as if we were a race of giants that could not resolve objects smaller than a car, but try to divine what such things are made of by smashing them into each other at ever-higher speeds, and classifying the bits that fly off as components by their trajectory-trails. OK after squillions of crashes they have detected the equivalent of wheels; boot and bonnet lids, doors, and even engine lumps. But this kind of analysis wil tell you nothing about how they work, surely. And, what ultimate use is this searching? A blue whale would be astounded to know of embroidery, but I guess that emotional 'coo!' is about the limit of the consequence .. to blue whales. Well, at the end of the day all that can be done is to construct models of reality based on experimentation. This is the hallmark of the 'scientific method', surely. Without subjecting philosophical musings to testing we can never really know whether our 'brilliant' ideas are in fact correct. What is the alternative?
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Post by carnyx on Feb 13, 2011 15:18:55 GMT 1
Abacus,
In fact, we may have reached the end of the scientific process, at least as far as subatomic particles are concerned.
So, we may be left with just philosophic musings, which might then be judged on their brilliance alone, which is what I suspect has already happened to much of pure maths, and also great areas of pure physics, too.
I am not saying that there is no mileage left in the scientific method as far as applied science is concerned, because when you look at the history of science, it is remarkable how much the 'pure' sciences and mathematic have relied on being fed entirely practical realworld problems, ( .... that have indeed found practical solutions in their own way)
So I don't think this 'end of science' is a disaster for humanity, but it may well be for the practitioners.
But, they may find consolation in reading the work of Bacon; a splendid Elizabethan Gent. who actually invented 'science'.
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Post by abacus9900 on Feb 13, 2011 15:52:12 GMT 1
I can see your point of view carnyx, and it is undeniable that it is becoming much more problematical to construct scientific experiments that provide new insights to the deeper structure of matter and energy etc., but what about experiments like the LHC is attempting to perform? Is it not worth doing those?
Of course, another perspective on this could be that it is simply naive to keep reducing everything to materialism because we are living in a mental world, at least partially, so to gain real progress in comprehending what we loosely term as 'reality' we have to include in that definition a better model of what mind or consciousness is, something we have yet to achieve. Many physicists (STA for one) would probably reject this approach yet philosophically it cannot be so easily dismissed and I think it is just a 'cop-out' to completely isolate science from philosophy. They both attempt to decribe reality and often disagree but are, nevertheless, inextricably entwined; it was philosophical musings that eventually led to the scientific method after all.
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Post by carnyx on Feb 13, 2011 16:22:37 GMT 1
I agree with that.
And re LHC; yes, carry on with the experiments by all means, but as is likely they will turn up nothing new, don't build yet another 'bigger' one, but call it a day instead.
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Post by eamonnshute on Feb 13, 2011 16:31:33 GMT 1
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Post by abacus9900 on Feb 13, 2011 17:05:45 GMT 1
I agree with that. And re LHC; yes, carry on with the experiments by all means, but as is likely they will turn up nothing new, don't build yet another 'bigger' one, but call it a day instead. Problem is if people give up on experiments how do we know they will not turn up something important a little way down the road? If we just give up we will certainly not discover anything new.
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Post by carnyx on Feb 13, 2011 19:18:04 GMT 1
Abacus,
The point is, that if you look at the history of these devices, they have turned into a proxy international competition, with macho bigger and bigger and more expensive machines .. but no real results except temporary 'leadership' in the form of bigger bills.
And the other point is, that they are there to prove or disprove the existence of particles that will only exist in human terms, within these great devices. No chance of them ever having any consequence other than in some ever-more-abstract theory requiring bigger machines to 'confirm' them. And in a deep sense, they are not designed to discover anything 'new' that did not already exist in one theory or another .. i.e. in the mind .. which is kind of your point in the first place, isn't it? I really do suspect the LHC wil be the largest .. and if not, the most expensive ...of its kind.
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Post by abacus9900 on Feb 13, 2011 19:33:28 GMT 1
Yes, but surely there is an important difference between an idea that exists in the mind and an idea that has been experimentally tested, unless one also wants to maintain that experiments also exist essentially in the mind too. Even if the latter is the case at least it becomes a permanent feature of the universe and can thus be used to make predictions. I mean, obviously, questions will never stop because as soon as one question is answered many others are raised - this is simply the scientific quest for knowledge.
A question for you carnyx: is reality only as complicated and mysterious as the mind asking questions about it or is it already there and has been for eternity just waiting for organisms like us to discover it? If you think the latter is true then how complicated can reality get - infinitely so? You could argue that when there are no more questions to ask reality has no more to tell you.
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Post by carnyx on Feb 13, 2011 20:47:22 GMT 1
I incline to an objective physical world. And any one person's comprehension of it can only ever be partial .. and less so with groups.
But your equating the idea of 'reality' being internal and subjective, or external and objective seems to hinge on your definition of 'discover' ... What do you mean by it?
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Post by abacus9900 on Feb 13, 2011 21:31:41 GMT 1
I incline to an objective physical world. And any one person's comprehension of it can only ever be partial .. and less so with groups. But your equating the idea of 'reality' being internal and subjective, or external and objective seems to hinge on your definition of 'discover' ... What do you mean by it? Well, in any experiment we are an intrinsic part of the outcome because how can the result of any experiment be known without an 'experimenter?'
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Post by speakertoanimals on Feb 14, 2011 10:03:59 GMT 1
Always astounding what nonsense people can come out with based on almost total ignorance!
As regards leptons, the evidence from those same accelerators that some try to deride is that they are pointlike as far as we can discern.
As regards the top quark, the unknown in all this is of course the mass of the higgs boson. And you have to keep in mind exactly how heavy the top quark is -- about the same mass as a gold nucleus, yet an elementary particle!
As to why only the first is stable -- because it is the lightest, hence any particle from a heavier generation decays into the lightest. hence however many generations we had, we would end up with only one stable one.
To those confused by the seeming numbers of elementary particles, the standard model is a heck of an improvement over the previous situation, where the sheer number of hadrons was becoming an embarrassment! Then like the way the periodic table gave a greatly simplified picture of the plethora of 'fundamental' chemical elements, so the quark model elegantly explained the hadron zoo.
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Post by carnyx on Feb 14, 2011 10:55:49 GMT 1
In lumbers STA, heralding herself with a Great Fart In All Directions, she then proceeds to pebble-dash the Board with pellets of undigested factoid. And having delivered herself of these droppings, she lumbers off back into outer orbit.
(BTW Abacus, do you think that this 'subatomic knowledge' is worth another even larger LHC? )
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Post by abacus9900 on Feb 14, 2011 12:12:04 GMT 1
Why would it have to be larger?
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