
Physicists Aim to Classify All Possible Phases of Matter - vinnyglennon
https://www.quantamagazine.org/physicists-aim-to-classify-all-possible-phases-of-matter-20180103/
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ta1234567890
> Instead, the classification of phases is “more like a periodic table. There
> are many elements, but they fall into categories and we can understand the
> categories.”

> Before these zero-temperature phases cropped up, physicists thought they had
> phases all figured out.

Ahh, the irony. This is an endless loop: hey, we figured it all out! Some
years/decades later: hah! Past scientists didn't have the full picture. Now we
have figured it all out...

~~~
infogulch
Physics usually works in cycles. Someone finds some new weird observation that
our current models don't yet explain. People swarm it, poking at the edge
trying to find cases that the current model fails to explain. Eventually
someone comes up with a new model that fits all the newly found observations
in addition to all the old observations. Sometimes the new model is an
addendum/special case/clarification of the existing model, sometimes it's a
'deeper' more fundamental model from which the entire old model is a special
case. The new model's predictions are exercised and stretched until some
prediction that the new model makes doesn't line up with experiment and the
whole thing starts over.

This process is happening for basically every aspect of every model all the
time, all at different stages and timescales.

We've known that all kinds of weird states of matter exist for quite a while
now, but all these observations have so far resisted being made into nice,
neat predictive models. So in this case the 'poking it' stage has been decades
long, and we're stuck on the modeling stage. Hopefully the team in the article
has found a model that can be useful and kicks us over the hump.

It _is_ an endless loop, but it's not irony. It's just the way science works.

~~~
stareatgoats
> _it 's not irony_

Well, it is irony when _some_ scientists don't seem to remember the nature of
the scientific inquiry as you describe it. Maybe because some seeming paradox
or aberration is easier discarded as irrelevant or untrue rather than
upsetting the whole theoretic framework that he/she has built their whole
career on ...

It is human of course. But also ironic.

------
nealabq
Discussion from January 2018:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16080907](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16080907)

