
Higgs on the Moon - panic
http://inference-review.com/article/higgs-on-the-moon
======
madaxe_again
As a physicist, I find the treatment of gravity as a "force" rather bizarre.

It's not a force per se, rather a perceived force as a result of the curvature
of spacetime - it's no more a force than centripetal acceleration, which is a
perceived force brought about by a rotating frame of reference.

Gravity similarly is a perceived force as a result of a moving frame of
reference in a dimension we aren't built to directly perceive, other than as
an acceleration towards mass.

But that's physics for you - the particle physicists want particles
everywhere. The quantum physicists want collapsing waveforms everywhere. The
cosmologists just see warped space.

If anything, the thing preventing resolution of any variety of GUT is culture.

~~~
terminado

      as a result of the curvature of spacetime
    

So... why does this curvature, or slope have any affect on systems of bodies
at all?

An abstract gradation of some property alone doesn't necessarily provoke
further side effects, so why would gravity (this curvature of spacetime) set
objects in motion?

If you have an undisturbed system of cold stones suspended in a void, that are
otherwise motionless over time, and then place a strong, cold, static gravity
well in proximity, what impels the stones into the curvature? Why does an
otherwise motionless stone move into the curvature of said given gravity well
at all?

~~~
whatshisface
>"otherwise motionless"

There's the trick to it - in any context where you are talking about space's
curvature, those "motionless" rocks are going to be moving through time. The
geodesics that they will follow are parametric curves of the form
f:(s)->(x,y,z,t).

While there are many possible choices of parameter s (as with any parametric
curve), one that physicists particularly like is proper time: the time as
shown on the watch of the walking man.

So, the only "truly" motionless object would be one that for every second of
time it experienced, it would find itself zero seconds in the future. Quite
impossible - which is why you can't "pause" yourself along gravitational
geodesics and float.

~~~
terminado
Ah, see, but this is where the communication breakdown emerges.

Most people do not intuitively consider a body suspended in space as a
constituency of atoms, with subatomic particles operating in static, yet
relativistic motion about a nucleus of protons and the like, subject to such
curvatures.

This is where the fundamental shift in teaching the conceptual principles of
gravitation and motion need to occur.

Whether it's intuitive or not, one needs to lift away from the concept of the
stone moving from point _A_ to point _B_ , and instead, think in terms of a
collective glob of photons and other particles being subjected to the same
warping of paths that affects the paths of photons, when they transit too
close to the sun's gravity well.

~~~
ajarmst
I thought the problem was that you can't teach both of those things at the
same time (masses in spacetime vs. matter as clouds of bosons and fermions
statistically obeying laws of quantum behaviour) . Hence the interest in
finding a theory that accounts for both of them.

~~~
terminado
I don't agree about that being a problem.

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jessriedel
With a cryptic title, no byline or abstract, and a supremely generic
introduction, how is anyone supposed to determine whether it's worth reading
this article?

~~~
geuis
Yep. Just read it.

Basically, the author is proposing the question of whether or not it makes
sense to spend vast amounts of money to build an even larger collider than the
LHC, currently being planned by CERN to be built in about 20 years.

An analogy is made to the US space program, wherein rather than the Apollo
missions being the first step in manned expansion into the solar system it was
the apex. Since then we've spent hundreds of billions of dollars on the ISS
and shuttles for little practical benefit, while generations of scientists and
engineers have wasted their careers on these projects that seemingly have gone
nowhere. The author likens the clearly defined need for the next larger
collider as an ISS type of project, fearing it will absorb the careers of many
physicists and ultimately lead to nowhere.

Can't say I agree with the position, but it is well written and makes some
good points.

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nategri
I know the author is legit because he got the order of magnitude factor
between LHC energy and the highest energy cosmic ray correct. A lot of
otherwise clever people forget to correct for center of mass energy.

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wilder
Inference Review is quite simply the most undeservedly under the radar journal
online. And I hope it is not alway so.

