Physicists Hunt for Mirror Universe to Explain Neutron Decay Mystery & Dark Matt

Started by Unbeliever, July 08, 2019, 02:29:34 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

josephpalazzo

Quote from: Unbeliever on July 09, 2019, 01:22:26 PM
Could the 10 second difference in neutron decay have anything to do with the difference in motion of the respective cases? It seems like someone would've ruled that out already though, so I guess not.

Right. I'm pretty sure that time dilation, known for over 100 years, has been factored in and doesn't explain the 10-second discrepancy.

Hydra009

Quote from: Sal1981 on July 09, 2019, 10:56:43 AM
Well, that conclusion seems flawed.

I'm probably talking out my ass, but if you looked at a million different clocks, and they all started at the same time at midnight, and you only waited for 11 hours, and somehow, expected some of them to strike at noon, you wouldn't see any of them strike at noon.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but radioactive decacy is probabilistic - a gram of a substance with a half life of one second means that on average, half of it has decayed into something else in a second - individual atoms might decay faster or slower than one second.  So you wouldn't necessarily have to watch the full second.

josephpalazzo

Quote from: Hydra009 on July 09, 2019, 02:47:52 PM
Correct me if I'm wrong, but radioactive decacy is probabilistic - a gram of a substance with a half life of one second means that on average, half of it has decayed into something else in a second - individual atoms might decay faster or slower than one second.  So you wouldn't necessarily have to watch the full second.

It's not a question of "individual atoms might decay faster or slower than one second", but more that each individual atom has its own internal clock, and not all clocks were synchronized to read zero at the same time.  If we had the power/knowledge to synchronize them - read: all clocks are set at zero and then release, they would all decay at exactly the same time. But we are a long way to understand that internal clock.

Baruch

Quote from: Unbeliever on July 09, 2019, 01:22:26 PM
Could the 10 second difference in neutron decay have anything to do with the difference in motion of the respective cases? It seems like someone would've ruled that out already though, so I guess not.

There may be multiple decay paths (different timings).  Decay, per se, is a process of tunneling from low potential to lower potential, thru a higher potential.  Classically it can't happen (say alpha particle decay).  But with Heisenberg, you can do impossible things, but not on demand, it is statistical.  How probable over 100 years, with a million particles, will a decay happen on average etc.  You can't predict which particular system will decay either.

A lot of particle physics is just that ... multiple paths to greater entropy, with different rates and details.  In the end you get to something stable, that has a virtually infinite half life.  The emission of photons by atomic/molecular systems is a simpler version than nuclear, or elementary particle.
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.

trdsf

About all you can say regarding parallel universes is that they're not impossibleâ€"although I think they're quite a bit less impossible than a god existing.

It was put forward that one of the cold spots on the Cosmic Microwave Background could have been caused by a collision with a neighboring universe, but that remains only a proposal, it's nowhere near the theory stage.  It's just a way to try to explain a cold spot on the CMB that doesn't have an intergalactic void associated with it, and current cosmological theories state such a cold spot has a 1 to 2% chance of occurring naturally.  Hardly lottery odds, that, and a much simpler explanation than having to reach for the universe next door.

Still, I don't see the harm in looking.  You never know what might turn up along the way.  Remember that the teams that uncovered the accelerating expansion of the universe were actually looking to measure the rate at which it was decelerating.
"My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total, and I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution." -- Barbara Jordan

Baruch

Quote from: trdsf on July 15, 2019, 06:02:51 AM
About all you can say regarding parallel universes is that they're not impossibleâ€"although I think they're quite a bit less impossible than a god existing.

It was put forward that one of the cold spots on the Cosmic Microwave Background could have been caused by a collision with a neighboring universe, but that remains only a proposal, it's nowhere near the theory stage.  It's just a way to try to explain a cold spot on the CMB that doesn't have an intergalactic void associated with it, and current cosmological theories state such a cold spot has a 1 to 2% chance of occurring naturally.  Hardly lottery odds, that, and a much simpler explanation than having to reach for the universe next door.

Still, I don't see the harm in looking.  You never know what might turn up along the way.  Remember that the teams that uncovered the accelerating expansion of the universe were actually looking to measure the rate at which it was decelerating.

Multiple universes can make a scientific method into complete rubbish, because of denial of uniformitarianism.  There can be, for example, different temperatures in different parts of the universe, but the laws of thermodynamics have to be the same everywhere.  If by "multiple universes" you mean ... different laws at different places and times ... then that has to be rubbish.  If by "multiple universes" you mean ... different conditions at different places and times, then it is a truism.  This is why controlled experiments, done repeatedly on or near the Earth, are so superior to astrophysical observations.

I can only admire the attempt to try to determine some revision of physical law, using some event that happened 13 billion years ago - 13 billion light years away (same thing) ... say polarization of 3.4K radiation.  Amazing stuff just to measure that.  The recent confirmed gravitational wave observation, even more so!  Next time you need to check your gas level in your car, don't do it by looking at the gauge, do it indirectly while it is 1000 miles away from you ;-)  But either way, your can runs the same here and now as it did 1000 miles away a year ago.

You can look for Vulcans and warp drive.  No harm looking.  But not on my tax money.  Colliding branes of parallel universes ... try to set up a controlled experiment.  Otherwise you have "saving appearances" not an explanation.  At least some "early universe" theory is confirmed by elementary particle collisions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZDa6d93ywE

... is a fair review.  At some distant point in the past, the universe was definitely hot and optically opaque (because it is ionized) plasma mostly made up of hydrogen and a little helium.  Extrapolation before that is hard (because it is opaque).  We don't have quantum gravity.  And we don't know if our very small LHC collisions scale up.  In most cases, you can't even calculate results in QFT.  That one time only plasma would be some kind of quantum foam ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYDokJ2A_vU

... unlike LHC experiments where the interaction is over a very small space over a very short time.

Some explanation of the actual physical aspects of quantum foam ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IRcmqZkGOK4

Didn't know about dynamic Casimir effect, and that it had been verified!
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.

josephpalazzo

Quote from: trdsf on July 15, 2019, 06:02:51 AM


Still, I don't see the harm in looking.  You never know what might turn up along the way.  Remember that the teams that uncovered the accelerating expansion of the universe were actually looking to measure the rate at which it was decelerating.

There would be no harm done except some of these people are now trying to change the very definition of what is a scientific theory. Unknown to the public there is a deep riff between those who want to consider such things as multiverse, parallel universe, etc. as valuable fields of research and those who see the futility. So much so there is an attempt to revise the traditional concept of what is science. The danger is that we might end up in the obfuscation that prevailed the Medieval Age.


https://platofootnote.wordpress.com/2018/01/22/peter-woit-vs-sean-carroll-string-theory-the-multiverse-and-popperazism/

Baruch

Quote from: josephpalazzo on July 15, 2019, 11:32:03 AM
There would be no harm done except some of these people are now trying to change the very definition of what is a scientific theory. Unknown to the public there is a deep riff between those who want to consider such things as multiverse, parallel universe, etc. as valuable fields of research and those who see the futility. So much so there is an attempt to revise the traditional concept of what is science. The danger is that we might end up in the obfuscation that prevailed the Medieval Age.


https://platofootnote.wordpress.com/2018/01/22/peter-woit-vs-sean-carroll-string-theory-the-multiverse-and-popperazism/

Do you support the Anthropic Principle or the Landscape view?  I hope not.  Philosophy isn't science.

https://www.quantamagazine.org/there-are-no-laws-of-physics-theres-only-the-landscape-20180604/

Yes, "there are no laws of physics" ... sure, I believe that ;-(

The current state of speculation ,,,

https://www.quantamagazine.org/frontier-of-physics-interactive-map-20150803/
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.

Unbeliever

Yeah, there are no laws of physics, there are only suggestions of physics. :-P
God Not Found
"There is a sucker born-again every minute." - C. Spellman

Baruch

Quote from: Unbeliever on July 15, 2019, 01:20:17 PM
Yeah, there are no laws of physics, there are only suggestions of physics. :-P

With Lysenko science, suggestions carry a threat of the Gulag.
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.

josephpalazzo

Quote from: Unbeliever on July 15, 2019, 01:20:17 PM
Yeah, there are no laws of physics, there are only suggestions of physics. :-P

There's a lot of misconception about the meaning of the word "law" in physics - plainly speaking, it's just a description of what is observed. If you have an aversion to facts, then "law" is just a suggestion or an opinion. The dude in the oval office is a good companion to our permanent troll.

Baruch

Quote from: josephpalazzo on July 15, 2019, 02:44:02 PM
There's a lot of misconception about the meaning of the word "law" in physics - plainly speaking, it's just a description of what is observed. If you have an aversion to facts, then "law" is just a suggestion or an opinion. The dude in the oval office is a good companion to our permanent troll.

Yes, humans make anthropomorphic analogies all the time.  But if the observed thing, can be anything qualitatively and quantitatively (landscape), then that isn't science.  There has to be some describable common materialist thread.  Then it can't claim any objectivity, isn't science.  Things that aren't quantitative, aren't repetitively observable (say multiple observations of the same supernova by multiple observatories being a hard example, though you can always correlate across multiple supernovas) can't be treated.  Like that one time monopole event that might never happen again.
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.

Hydra009

Quote from: josephpalazzo on July 15, 2019, 02:44:02 PM
There's a lot of misconception about the meaning of the word "law" in physics - plainly speaking, it's just a description of what is observed. If you have an aversion to facts, then "law" is just a suggestion or an opinion. The dude in the oval office is a good companion to our permanent troll.


That's been bothering me for a long time now.  From the way people talk about them, you'd think they were divine edicts or governmental laws, as if the speed of light was enforced by some photonic traffic cop.  Utter nonsense brought about by the inability to conceptualize the same word having two wholly different meanings.

Physical laws are descriptive, not prescriptive.  They just tell us about how things usually behave and interact.  Laws are useful in that they inform us that some phenomena have predictable results - by anticipating what will happen (and what will not) we can make useful predictions (and reverse it to figure out what did happen in the past).  Refining these generalizations to greater and greater precision is the true virtue of science - slowly but surely bringing to humanity a rigorous awareness of what exactly is going on around us and allowing humanity the potential to act rather than just be acted upon.

It's disgusting that this wonder of hard-fought knowledge is conflated with things that are either comparatively banal or utterly ridiculous.

Baruch

And the ship in the bottle isn't the same as the actual ship.  A model is useful, even an abstract quantitative one.  But it isn't the thing itself.  I find neo-Pythagoreans like Max Tegmark to be ... ignorant.  Their ideas are what led to the meme that our reality is a computer game in a higher reality.
Ha’át’íísh baa naniná?
Azee’ Å,a’ish nanídį́į́h?
Táadoo ánít’iní.
What are you doing?
Are you taking any medications?
Don't do that.

josephpalazzo

Quote from: Hydra009 on July 15, 2019, 11:34:39 PM


That's been bothering me for a long time now.  From the way people talk about them, you'd think they were divine edicts or governmental laws, as if the speed of light was enforced by some photonic traffic cop.  Utter nonsense brought about by the inability to conceptualize the same word having two wholly different meanings.

Physical laws are descriptive, not prescriptive.  They just tell us about how things usually behave and interact.  Laws are useful in that they inform us that some phenomena have predictable results - by anticipating what will happen (and what will not) we can make useful predictions (and reverse it to figure out what did happen in the past).  Refining these generalizations to greater and greater precision is the true virtue of science - slowly but surely bringing to humanity a rigorous awareness of what exactly is going on around us and allowing humanity the potential to act rather than just be acted upon.

It's disgusting that this wonder of hard-fought knowledge is conflated with things that are either comparatively banal or utterly ridiculous.

Truth and power often find themselves at opposite poles: those in power don't want you to know the truth. So they will subvert the truth in every possible way. And since the people are often uninformed, naive and gullible, the unscrupulous con artist wins the day. It's in the interest of those in power to spread fairy tales, falsehoods, and conspiracy theories. The more they muddle the waters, the more they consolidate their hold on power.