Birbla

Join the discussion

Write your take first — we'll ask for email only when you're ready to publish.

Sign in
  • Hacker News
  • The framing that there is some unknown particle affecting the results is probably an understatement. Probably there are a LOT of unknown 'forces' affecting the results. Look at the size of the machine, the aging components, the number of components involved, the amount of software required, surely all of that is affecting the results.

    Are humans even capable of building perfectly reliable systems?

    by jongjong
  • That's the best part about science.
    by ThrowawayTestr
  • Worst Feynman diagrams ever.
    by thisisauserid
  • I bet on a loose cable as explanation for the difference.

    See

    https://www.sciencenews.org/article/loose-cable-blamed-speed...

    by amai
  • If old results do not add up then I can see two immediate reasons:

    - The new results are wrong. That's why there is a difference.

    - The old results were wrong. In this case all involved scientists should be very much ashamed to have helpfully participated in worshipping wrongness and fakery.

    A third option could be partial wrongness, but I group this into the second case. In the modern era I no longer buy into honesty of scientists at all times. Case in point: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1197258 - bacterium growing via arsenic. Totally fabricated, hence lateron "retracted" (originally published in 2010).

    by shevy-java
  • I bet you that old results still add up in the parallel universe in which the muon mystery has not yet been solved!
    by kazinator
  • 9 years of philosophy and I'm over platonic realism and reading contemporary philosophy of science.

    The thing is, we are wrong, but this stuff is useful to make predictions. Everyone knows about the copernican revolution. But when it first happened, the old models(earth at the center of the solar system) were more accurate at predicting where the plenets would be.

    Scientists pragmatically spend their time doing best fits. (Typically)

    But then the paradigm shifts and we are closer to reality than the current local minimum/maximum.

    Before reading philosophy of science, I was into m theory and string theory. Now I'm nearly sure it's bunk that might be replaced in our lifetime.

    I thank scientists, but I do not envy them.

    by whatsThisBtn4
  • Glad I didn’t spend the last ten years on that problem! As my CERN advisor suggested :)
    by lokimedes

Explore Birbla archives