
Physics is on the verge of an Earth-shattering discovery? - Oletros
https://aeon.co/opinions/physics-is-on-the-verge-of-an-earth-shattering-discovery
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jessriedel
Among the particle theorists and phenomenologists I talked to at lunch at the
Perimeter Institute, the probability assigned to this being real was in the
5%-20% range, with older physicists more skeptical.

Still no liquid betting market though...

[http://www.overcomingbias.com/2014/05/how-to-reform-
academia...](http://www.overcomingbias.com/2014/05/how-to-reform-academia-
with-prediction-markets.html)

[http://infoproc.blogspot.ca/2006/01/prediction-markets-
and-l...](http://infoproc.blogspot.ca/2006/01/prediction-markets-and-lhc.html)

~~~
madaxe_again
It's over three sigma, which makes it more like 5-20% that it's _not_ real.

My money is on it being our first observed sparticle.

~~~
jessriedel
Lots wrong with this comment. Here's one place to start:

[http://www.science20.com/a_quantum_diaries_survivor/true_and...](http://www.science20.com/a_quantum_diaries_survivor/true_and_false_discoveries_how_to_tell_them_apart-141024)

~~~
madaxe_again
Thanks, that's really interesting - I was just going with the raw definition
of sigma. Consider me corrected!

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petewailes
Hyperbole, but the actual article isn't entirely awful.

The TL;DR of this is that no-one's entirely certain as to what it is that's
being created, if anything is being created at all. It's still very possible
that this is noisy data.

That being said, the main contender at this point is a boson. At the far end
of the possible options are things like a graviton, or a fermion, which would
make the supersymmetry crowd happy.

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torrance
That title is some serious clickbait. It's just as strongly expected that the
signal will disappear on closer inspection.

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astannard
Yeah very early but the detected the signal in both ATLAS AND CMS but well
below the 5 sigma rating currently. I'm excited to see what happens next

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tzs
They are about to synthesize Illudium PU-36?

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PaulHoule
Note the book author only lists past tense academic affiliations so she might
be a member of the great silent majority of unemployed physicists.

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rubidium
Paul, not sure what the point of your comment was. But it reads like a
speculative, vaguely ad hominem attack.

As I'm sure you could have found out with a little digging, the author is 61
years old. She had a long career in research and now seems to be focusing on
science writing and communication.

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redsummer
Literally earth-shattering perhaps. Why have we never discovered alien life
despite statisticians saying there must be thousands of alien civilisations?
Probably because they blow themselves up looking for new particles.

~~~
kabdib
Particles of _much_ higher energy than the LHC is capable of generating slam
into the earth's upper atmosphere every day. It's been going on for billions
of years. If something exotic were to happen, it would have happened a long
time ago.

~~~
zamalek
And the effects reach all far enough down to flip bits. The experiments that
we run probably can't reach out further than a few meters. We have a very long
way to go before we start competing with nature.

