
For One Tiny Instant, Physicists May Have Broken a Law of Nature - nreece
http://www.physorg.com/news188211977.html
======
baguasquirrel
Between this and Schroedinger's cat, is it that the universe is lazy-by-
default evaluation, and eventually consistent (AP on the CAP axis)?

------
jackdawjack
Yet another article about the parity breaking at rhic, i work in this field
and while this would be very exciting it's not a cut and dry result. Running
the numbers for the proposed theoretical cause of the parity violation leads
to something a lot smaller than what is observed. While making simpler, non
parity violating, arguments based on geometry and the elliptic flow in the
fireball can get you near the right numbers.

See this paper for another explanation of the observed charge correlations
<http://arxiv.org/abs/1002.1758>

_edit_ clarification

------
nhebb
This writing is kind of silly. It goes from waffling _May Have Broken a Law of
Nature_ in the title to the definitive _a law of nature had been broken_ in
the first paragraph.

(I'm not a physicist, so I may be making an ass of myself. But...) If it was
already demonstrated back in the 50's that the weak force violated the parity
law, then it's not much of a law, is it? Tune in next week when law
enforcement agents from the Dept. of Nature identify Zaphod Beeblebrox as a
"person of interest".

~~~
jrockway
To be fair, "Science experiment to disprove hypothesis disproves hypothesis,"
is a less exciting title.

------
TrevorBurnham
What a letdown! The article begins with high drama ("Action still resulted in
an equal and opposite reaction, gravity kept the Earth circling the Sun..."),
then explains that scientists observed the parity law being violated by the
strong force, which "was thought to adhere to the law of parity, at least
under normal circumstances."

 _At least under normal circumstances???_ Now I remember why I don't study
particle physics!

------
itistoday
Eh... this sort of double-speak annoys me, please forgive me for nit-picking
but nature's laws are _never_ broken. By definition. It is some human model of
nature's laws that is broken.

~~~
pyre
"Nature's Laws" are constructs created by humans to describe nature. 'Nature'
doesn't have laws, it is what it is.

~~~
itistoday
This is a silly semantics game.

Nature behaves a certain way. That "is what it is" _is_ what we call "nature's
laws."

I think you're confusing "nature's laws" with the "laws of physics." The field
of physics is a human construct, whereas nature is not. But really, it all
depends on what you consider the definition to be, so I will not debate this
further, as we both should understand what we each mean by this point.
(Hopefully.)

~~~
shard
You would think.

I took a course at Caltech named _Philosophy_ _of_ _Science_ , and we spent
weeks discussing what a "law of nature" is.

I think the article title is incorrect though. The law wasn't _broken_ (that'd
make sense if it was a legal system law), the law had been _disproved_ ,
perhaps.

~~~
ahk
Broken could also be correct if it was a "law" currently in effect universally
and only the high energy of the event lead to its violation i.e the physicists
using high energies managed to circumvent something that usually holds true.

