![]() In some cases, the new particles’ task is to make a theory more aesthetically appealing, but in many cases their purpose is to fit statistical anomalies. The modern new particles don’t solve any problems. ![]() The antiparticles that Paul Dirac predicted were likewise necessary to solve a problem, and so were the neutrinos that were predicted by Wolfgang Pauli. The Higgs boson, on the other hand, was required to solve a problem. For example, the currently accepted theory of elementary particles – the Standard Model – doesn’t require new particles it works just fine the way it is. In the past, predictions for new particles were correct only when adding them solved a problem with the existing theories. Particle physicists seem to have misconstrued this to mean that any falsifiable idea is also good science. Partly the problem is social: most people who work in the field (I used to be one of them) genuinely believe that inventing particles is good procedure because it’s what they have learned, and what all their colleagues are doing.īut I believe the biggest contributor to this trend is a misunderstanding of Karl Popper’s philosophy of science, which, to make a long story short, demands that a good scientific idea has to be falsifiable. There are many factors that have contributed to this sad decline of particle physics. This leaves people like me, who have left the field – I now work in astrophysics – as the only ones able and willing to criticise the situation. And so the experimentalists keep their mouths shut, too. At the same time, they profit from it, because all those hypothetical particles are used in grant proposals to justify experiments. But is this a good strategy?Įxperimental particle physicists know of the problem, and try to distance themselves from what their colleagues in theory development do. An army of typewriting monkeys may also sometimes produce a useful sentence. They justify their work by claiming that it is good practice, or that every once in a while one of them accidentally comes up with an idea that is useful for something else. Talk to particle physicists in private, and many of them will admit they do not actually believe those particles exist. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) hasn’t seen any of those particles either, even though, before its launch, many theoretical physicists were confident it would see at least a few. However, we do not know that dark matter is indeed made of particles and even if it is, to explain astrophysical observations one does not need to know details of the particles’ behaviour. We even had a (luckily short-lived) fad of “unparticles”.Īll experiments looking for those particles have come back empty-handed, in particular those that have looked for particles that make up dark matter, a type of matter that supposedly fills the universe and makes itself noticeable by its gravitational pull. Since the 1980s, physicists have invented an entire particle zoo, whose inhabitants carry names like preons, sfermions, dyons, magnetic monopoles, simps, wimps, wimpzillas, axions, flaxions, erebons, accelerons, cornucopions, giant magnons, maximons, macros, wisps, fips, branons, skyrmions, chameleons, cuscutons, planckons and sterile neutrinos, to mention just a few. Many of these tests have actually been done, and more are being commissioned as we speak. It has become common among physicists to invent new particles for which there is no evidence, publish papers about them, write more papers about these particles’ properties, and demand the hypothesis be experimentally tested. But almost every particle physics conference has sessions just like this, except they do it with more maths. Under the President’s order today, the time period for 100 percent Federal funding for debris removal and emergency protective measures, including direct Federal assistance, has been extended for an additional 30-day period.Kudos to zoologists, I’ve never heard of such a conference. Under the President’s major disaster declaration issued for the State of Florida on September 29, 2022, Federal funding was made available for debris removal and emergency protective measures, including direct Federal assistance, at 100 percent of the total eligible costs for a period of 30 days from the start of the incident period. made additional disaster assistance available to the State of Florida by authorizing an increase in the level of Federal funding for debris removal and emergency protective measures undertaken in the State of Florida as a result of Hurricane Ian beginning September 23, 2022, and continuing. ![]() Get Involved Show submenu for “Get Involved””.The White House Show submenu for “The White House””.Office of the United States Trade Representative. ![]()
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