LHC portal

So weird this talk.

http://www.ted.com/talks/james_beacham_ ... in_physics

Particles and Cosmic rays have been detected for more than 100 years and he talks like we have just discovered a new planet. Fact is that we have been already going through the fine sand for decades. The time to do and think about different things is now.

This is not "particles and cosmic rays". The introduction is about the attempts to unify quantum mechanics and general relativity, and the bump that appeared in 2015 could have been a graviton - a first experimental hint how to combine those two. That wouldn't have been just another particle, it would have been a massive revolution.

Fact is that we have been already going through the fine sand for decades.

No we haven't.

mfb wrote:This is not "particles and cosmic rays". The introduction is about the attempts to unify quantum mechanics and general relativity, and the bump that appeared in 2015 could have been a graviton - a first experimental hint how to combine those two. That wouldn't have been just another particle, it would have been a massive revolution.

Of course the intro was about unification, the bigger the better … and there was no shortage of theories for the bump in 2015, 200 papers were proposed, so sure why not include one for the graviton.

It all goes to show that there is …

mfb wrote:

Fact is that we have been already going through the fine sand for decades.

No we haven't.

… no longer any meat on the bone.

What James Beacham and you are doing is something like in the movie A Weekend at Bernie's, draging a dead corps around pretending that it is still alive.

Interesting story. To be honest, I don't think there's anything wrong on LHC guys publishing information about a promising bump. They're paid to collect the data, analyze them, and report on their finds and that's exactly what they did.

But the fact that there was over 500 papers written about it at the phase when it was clear to everyone that it can easily go away with more data is ridiculous. Don't theoretical physicists have anything better to do with their time? Yes I understand that the vision of Nobel prize floating around in case they were right was a strong motive but I think that's not what should motivate people to do research.

To put it in real-world perspective, imagine a land owner mentioning on a party that he might consider financing a bridge over one of his valleys, and group of unrelated architects jumping on that and preparing 50 different detailed bridge projects in stage when the owner isn't even decided if he wants it or not. Except that those architects would probably get fired from their companies for wasting their time.

Kasuha wrote:To put it in real-world perspective …

It is nicely described in this article:

"Einstein and Feynman ushered me into grad school, reality ushered me out."

http://nautil.us/issue/43/heroes/what-d ... th-physics

chelle: "he is dead"
experts: "uh, we are chatting with him right now"
chelle: "I can see clearly that he is dead from my 100 km of distance to the field"

mfb wrote:chelle: "he is dead"
mfb: "uh, we are chatting with him right now"

experts: “Physicists are excited when there’s something wrong with physics, and we’re in a situation now where there’s not a lot that’s wrong, … It’s a disheartening place for a physicist to be in.”

Source: https://www.wired.com/2017/01/move-code ... con-valley