
Major Experiments That Still Haven’t Found What They’re Looking For - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/blog/7-major-experiments-that-still-havent-found-what-theyre-looking-for
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mdturnerphys
Member of the Eöt-Wash gravity group here. Happy to answer questions :)

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TorKlingberg
If inertial mass and gravitational mass could be different, what sort of
effects would that have? If we were able to make a material with much more
mass of one kind than the other, what sort of things would be possible?

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mdturnerphys
This is something I hadn't thought through before and made my morning bus ride
substantially more interesting :)

I'm moving this disclaimer to the beginning, as I don't want anyone to get too
excited: We haven't observed differences between the two yet, at a level of a
part in 10^13. The following outcomes would only be possible with a different
sort of matter than what we're aware of.

Energy is still conserved, so there aren't any perpetual motion machines that
result. Such materials would fall differently--both in terms of acceleration
and direction. (The later is because objects are also subject to inertial
"forces", e.g. centrifugal force, Coriolis force, due to us living on a
rotating reference frame called the Earth.). Orbital radii for given orbital
periods could be different, so you could have geostationary satellites at
different distances from the Earth. You could also make objects that are
harder to push than to lift, or vice versa, but I can't think of a practical
application for this other than demonstrating the effect.

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na85
Easy to lift but a ton of inertia?

Weaponry sounds like a good application.

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marcosdumay
Can't imagine how it would be better than any other material.

But a sofa made of that thing would be great for the times one's moving.

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na85
Imagine bullets with the impact of a 20 mm anti-materiel round that weigh as
much as BB's.

Would be great for infantry. NATO nations standardized on 5.56mm in lieu of
7.62 in part because a soldier can carry more 5.56 rounds for the same weight.

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77pt77
Proton decay, proton decay.

Always the same thing.

The Kamiokande experiments are amazing.

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akiselev
That's an understatement! The Super Kamiokande project alone pioneered at
least a dozen technologies and improvements now used by much of the particle
physics, nanotech, semiconductor fabrication, high precision sensing, and even
biotech fields.

The technologies developed for water purification are especially marvelous.
The Super Kamiokande is full of water that is likely the purest substance in
the solar system (at a macroscopic level, although maybe there's crazy bulk
gluon plasma at the center of the sun).

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tbrowbdidnso
Seen the pictures of guys in boats floating out in the kamiokande? I always
thought it was the coolest looking experiment.

I was really sad when all the bulbs broke years back :'(

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konschubert
Honest question: Wouldn't people floating in boats thought the water induce
impurities?

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akiselev
Yes but they shut down the experiment and partially drain the detector to let
crews in for repair, maintenance, etc. In order to get it started again, there
is a whole complex procedure to flush the chamber and refill it.

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Arthur8
It seems that the part about the Neutron EDM is outdated. As far as I know
CryoEDM was deconstructed (The experiment hall was empty two years ago) [1].
Maybe there is a follow up experiment, but it has been very quiet recently.

As an current example the nEDM experiment is actively developed [2].

[1] [https://www.ill.eu/instruments-support/instruments-
groups/in...](https://www.ill.eu/instruments-support/instruments-
groups/instruments/cryoedm/description/a-view-of-the-cryoedm-instrument/) [2]
[https://www.psi.ch/nedm/amazing-nedm](https://www.psi.ch/nedm/amazing-nedm)

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imglorp
In real science, not the TV kind, negative results are important, too.

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nerdponx
Tell that to the journals...

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saboot
Journals usually publish negative results from major experiments. Here's the
one for LUX

[http://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.118...](http://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.118.021303)

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simcop2387
Yea my layman understanding is that it's a social pressure to not publish the
results in the first place.

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saboot
It depends, lots of these experiments result in better bounds on theories. LUX
for example pushed down the cross-section for WIMP dark matter below the
previous measurement. That in itself is an advancement, with implications on
what theories for dark matter are possible.

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gpsx
You could claim LHC hasn't found anything in the sense that it hasn't found
anything that disagrees with the standard model. I consider finding the Higgs
as we expected a letdown, though it is of course very important. There is a
lot of data collection to be done so hopefully they will find something
unexpected.

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restalis
Interesting, I've never heard of that Mr. Clarke's quote before. I don't
understand though, if we'd be alone in the universe, why would that be
terrifying?

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Larrikin
The very first link for more information about the first experiment is dead
[http://luxdarkmatter.org/](http://luxdarkmatter.org/)

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77pt77
[https://archive.is/JiJXh](https://archive.is/JiJXh)

for those not being able to access it like myself.

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77pt77
The actual page is
[http://lux.brown.edu/LUX_dark_matter/Home.html](http://lux.brown.edu/LUX_dark_matter/Home.html)

The original page has almost all links broken.

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zyztem
TBF, Michelson–Morley experiment did not found anything too

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marcosdumay
I hate this phrasing. Like most of the experiments on the article, Michelson-
Morley did find the lack of something.

And it did expand the number of digits beyond the colon for the physics
predictions, just like Michelson promised :)

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sapsan
Thanks for posting this. As a side note, I really like the style of nautil.us
and their idea of writing about a single topic from different perspectives.
How is this journal not very popular? (Or is it?)

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lorenzhs
They've been criticised for twisting physics to support the conclusions they
want to draw from it, even if there is an alternative and much simpler
interpretation of the results, see
[http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=9053](http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=9053)
— quote:

 _The group driving [Fake Physics] is small but determined, ideology-driven
and well-funded by rich people with an ax to grind. The majority of the
community is unwilling to take on the unpleasant and unrewarding task of
challenging them. While Multiverse Fake Physics plays a large role in media
coverage of fundamental physics, partially because of funding from the
Templeton Foundation, there are very few actual papers on the subject and
“research” in this area is a small fraction of what theorists are doing. Most
physicists just hope that if they ignore this it will go away._

The Templeton Foundation, a religious organisation which has been funding
them, has received a lot of criticism from the scientific community for
linking science and religion.

I don't think we should dismiss Nautilus outright but I do feel like they get
more traction on HN than they deserve.

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wallace_f
Without clinking-through each of the links given in the article you linked to,
can you help me, as a layman, summarize the criticism of Nautilus with regard
to multiverse physics? Is the criticism more that they are disproportionately
covering it, or is it misrepresenting it?

Related: From the blog you linked, "not even wrong" is a phrase used as an
attack by experts on outsiders, but it does not need to be an attack. It can
simply be: "that is outside the realm of mainstream scientific research." I
think experts would do well not to be condescending, but rather more
explanatory here.

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lorenzhs
Well I think it's a mixture of both, "disproportionate coverage" is a fair
description, insofar as it misrepresents the activities and opinions of the
research community (most of which appears to consider it hokum). I'll have to
defer to the experts for the details, however, as I'm merely relaying their
concerns.

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wallace_f
I watch Sixty Symbols on Youtube and they have a number of episodes on string
theory--which I've read necessarily implies extra dimensions(can't vouch for
that conclusion personally), leading to multiverse theories. These episodes
are straight from researchers themselves so I was surprised to read these
ideas in the link provided, supporting your idea that the multiverse is hokum.

Anyways it's interesting.

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jfig
it's forty-two

(couldn't resist)

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al2o3cr
Dedicated to the letter U, the numeral 2, and a little dog called Snuggles.

