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A bestiary of exotic hadrons

(cerncourier.com)
152 points rbanffy | 3 comments | 20 Dec 24 15:29 UTC | HN request time: 0.626s | source
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FabHK ◴[20 Dec 24 16:36 UTC] No.42472523[source]▶
Do we have anomalies accumulating here that indicate the early phase of a scientific revolution in Thomas Kuhn's terminology, that is, a replacement of the standard model/QCD? Or is it still "so far, so good"?
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drpossum ◴[20 Dec 24 16:54 UTC] No.42472672[source]▶
Do you feel like those two options would cover all possible scenarios for "the state of the field"?
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anyfoo ◴[20 Dec 24 17:56 UTC] No.42473208[source]▶
Well, either the standard model is right, or it isn't, isn't it? They asked for indication of an "early phase", not that we're ready to throw the standard model out (which, boringly, held up extremely well so far).
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whatshisface ◴[20 Dec 24 18:13 UTC] No.42473343[source]▶
The standard model Lagrangian is a sum of many terms, and changing one of them, adding a new one or even a radical revolution in our understanding of the results of integrals taken over it would not count as a Kuhnian revolution. Physics has not had one of those since Newton.
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Keysh ◴[20 Dec 24 19:22 UTC] No.42474043[source]▶
Physics has obviously had Kuhnian revolutions since Newton, the emergence of relativity and quantum mechanics being two obvious examples.
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whatshisface ◴[20 Dec 24 20:28 UTC] No.42474705[source]▶
Physics advances like geography: there's a New World in the Americas, but Libson is still there. Newtonian mechanics remains as the consequence of relativity and quantum mechanics where we "live," and the existence of other things under different conditions doesn't change that. Kuhnian revolutions involve the old models being discarded.
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1. libraryofbabel ◴[20 Dec 24 23:11 UTC] No.42476053[source]▶
If you read Kuhn's book, you'll see he uses quantum mechanics as one of his examples of a scientific revolution. I mean, you might think he's wrong, but that's stretching the definition of "Kuhnian Revolution" a bit. And sure, Newtonian mechanics might come out in the classical limit, but the probabilistic aspect of QM alone represents a completely different way of viewing the universe than the Newtonian model.
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2. whatshisface ◴[20 Dec 24 23:18 UTC] No.42476091[source]▶
I do think Khun is wrong under his own definitions. Quantum amplitudes are over mechanical possibilities, and they no more overturn them than icing overturns cake. :-)
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3. ordu ◴[21 Dec 24 04:20 UTC] No.42477531[source]▶
I think you make a mistake when you look at physics with your modern eyes. Knowledge should make you see more, but this is the case when it makes it hard to see the history. Try to look at it with eyes of 19 centuries physicist.

Physics was all deterministic and objective. And then comes QM saying that there is no determinism and about the role of an observer, and comes GR saying there is no objective observer, because different observers can't agree about time and length.

I heard that physics professors in 19 century told their students that they had chosen the wrong career because physics was almost done. There were slight difficulties with electromagnetism, but they surely is going to be resolved in coming years. And then all that shiny and almost complete physics was blown up because very foundations of it were destroyed.

It was a paradigm shift. If it wasn't then what is? Copernicus? But the Ptolemaic astronomy did work and it works today. With its limitations of course, but it works. You can calculate positions of heavenly bodies with epicycles. Galilean laws of motions? But the laws of Aristotle works no worse then when Aristotle invented them.