[HN Gopher] NIST research reveals new details about a possible f...
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NIST research reveals new details about a possible fifth force of
nature
Author : geox
Score : 132 points
Date : 2021-09-09 20:18 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nist.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nist.gov)
| monocasa wrote:
| > Each neutron in an atomic nucleus is made up of three
| elementary particles called quarks.
|
| Well and tons and tons of virtual particles popping in and out of
| existance. Only a little over 1% the mass of a neutron is the
| three quarks normally listed.
| tomrod wrote:
| I love that our fundamental reality is built on virtual
| particles. Physics rocks!
| JackFr wrote:
| I love that our mental model of reality is built on virtual
| particles. Metaphysics rocks!
| LeegleechN wrote:
| The headline is misleading. The work tightened the range of
| possible strengths of a fifth force by a factor of 10. In other
| words it ruled out the existence of a fifth force within a wide
| range of parameters that were previously open.
| RedShift1 wrote:
| Is this fifth force something that could disappear with more
| precise measurements of the known 4 forces?
| garmaine wrote:
| There is nothing to disappear. There isn't a fifth force to
| within experimental precision. TFA is about an increase in
| that experimental precision which further reduces the
| possibility (or at least the magnitude) of any yet
| undiscovered "fifth force."
| Out_of_Characte wrote:
| The fifth force is already a hypothetical. More precise
| measurements would make the hypothetical force weaker and
| weaker.
| kibwen wrote:
| Note that the original article's headline is "Groundbreaking
| Technique Yields Important New Details on Silicon, Subatomic
| Particles and Possible 'Fifth Force'" (which is too long for
| HN), which makes it clear that the focus is on the technique.
| It's the abbreviated HN title that sort of makes it sound as
| though the focus is on the force.
| criticaltinker wrote:
| It seems like the title length constraint on HN is a bit too
| limiting and often results in these types of clarifying
| comments.
|
| Couldn't we expect more accurate and higher quality titles by
| relaxing the length constraint? I'm sure it's been discussed
| before here, but I'm struggling to think of downsides from
| such a change.
| nl wrote:
| It would involve a change to HN.
|
| There's still no mobile friendly stylesheet. I wouldn't
| hold your breath.
| Cederfjard wrote:
| I mostly read HN on my phone and I think the experience
| is fine. So maybe there's just not enough demand on that
| front.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| People have been clamoring for mobile friendly blockquote
| for a while.
| reificator wrote:
| > _There 's still no mobile friendly stylesheet. I
| wouldn't hold your breath._
|
| Beyond code blocks having line wrap, the HN mobile
| stylesheet seems fine to me. What issue do you take with
| it?
| nl wrote:
| Well there isn't a mobile stylesheet. It's the same as
| the desktop styling (and that code block issue affects
| desktop too).
|
| There are multiple issues with using the desktop styling,
| but most are related to Fitt's law[1].
|
| The whole UI is terrible for finger interactions, but the
| best example is the _tiny_ upvote /downvote buttons
| immediately above/below each other well within the
| diameter of a normal finger. It's literally impossible to
| use that without zooming, and if you try to then there is
| no way to know if you vote up or down. It should be used
| in textbooks for how not to do a mobile interaction.
|
| [1] https://www.interaction-
| design.org/literature/article/fitts-...
| saalweachter wrote:
| Maybe a different limit for links versus "ask HN"s?
|
| External links have some sort of constraint, weak as it may
| be. The limit more forces people to editorialize rather
| than focusing their thoughts toward concisitude.
| vikingerik wrote:
| Good point. The details are "constraints on a fifth force _if
| one exists_ ", NOT behavior that indicates it does or might.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| If anything, it can be viewed as evidence that this fifth
| force _does not_ exist - as we can rule out more
| possibilities.
| Raineer wrote:
| As a Boulderite and a huge fan of NIST, I am bummed out that the
| misleading headline does come from NIST itself and not an
| overzealous contributor.
|
| Exciting results, all the same.
| blondin wrote:
| wait, how is what they wrote misleading?
| prutschman wrote:
| It's not literally false, but I got an inaccurate impression
| based on the headline. To me it implied a positive discovery
| of evidence rather than a ruling-out.
|
| If they'd said "determined new constraints on a hypothetical
| 5th force" or something I would have gotten a correct
| impression.
| redis_mlc wrote:
| Because there's no fifth force.
| potatoman22 wrote:
| I've always wondered why there has to be a discrete number of
| forces, rather than it being a spectrum describing types of
| interactions.
| roywiggins wrote:
| The known forces, other than gravity, are mediated by specific
| particles that have characteristic masses and other properties.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauge_boson
|
| (there might be a graviton, too)
|
| With a Grand Unification Theory, they might turn out to be one
| force with several aspects (eg electroweak force), but that's
| not really a continuum.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Is "particle" the correct model, or is it just very useful?
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Is the "correct model" even well-defined or remotely
| falsifiable?
|
| In my view, we're sailing awfully close to metaphysical
| waters with phrases like that.
| drsnow wrote:
| The latter.
| Y_Y wrote:
| What do you think a model is?
|
| There are phenomena explained by the particle model, and
| there are phenomena that are not. This is true of all
| models, and it's a a strong claim that we could eventually
| land on a "correct" model at all.
|
| To be fair, a "particle" as the term is used in quantum
| field theory doesn't refer to a billiard ball, it's a
| perturbation in a "field" and encapsulates behaviour which
| could be described as wave or particle or neither.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Oh come on, what do you think a leading question is?
| amackera wrote:
| "All models are wrong, but some are useful." [1]
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_models_are_wrong
| macksd wrote:
| There may not have to be, as far as we know. From the Wikipedia
| page[1]:
|
| _Many theoretical physicists believe these fundamental forces
| to be related and to become unified into a single force at very
| high energies on a minuscule scale, the Planck scale, but
| particle accelerators cannot produce the enormous energies
| required to experimentally probe this. Devising a common
| theoretical framework that would explain the relation between
| the forces in a single theory is perhaps the greatest goal of
| today 's theoretical physicists. The weak and electromagnetic
| forces have already been unified with the electroweak theory of
| Sheldon Glashow, Abdus Salam, and Steven Weinberg for which
| they received the 1979 Nobel Prize in physics. Some physicists
| seek to unite the electroweak and strong fields within what is
| called a Grand Unified Theory (GUT). An even bigger challenge
| is to find a way to quantize the gravitational field, resulting
| in a theory of quantum gravity (QG) which would unite gravity
| in a common theoretical framework with the other three forces.
| Some theories, notably string theory, seek both QG and GUT
| within one framework, unifying all four fundamental
| interactions along with mass generation within a theory of
| everything (ToE)._
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_interaction
| at_a_remove wrote:
| Forces are mediated by fields (or particles, depends on your
| interpretation). If you want 4.5 forces, what does that .5 look
| like?
|
| Essentially, each force does describe a type of interaction. So
| what does one-third of a type look like?
| klodolph wrote:
| We used to think that electricity and magnetism were
| different types of interaction, but it turns out that they
| are more coherently described as a single "electromagnetic"
| force.
|
| The same may be true of other seemingly different forces:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Unified_Theory
| at_a_remove wrote:
| This is a true statement, but it does not disprove anything
| I said.
|
| Before, we thought there were _two_. Now we know there are
| _one_. We do not say "one and a half."
| jakeinspace wrote:
| Sure, there might be 1 equation for 1 force. But that is a
| very different thing from a "spectrum" of forces.
| malwarebytess wrote:
| Maybe something like fractional dimension in fractals. lol
| cybernautique wrote:
| https://www.quantamagazine.org/fractons-the-weirdest-
| matter-...
|
| I'm not conversant enough with physics to do more with this
| article than say "wow, that's cool!" and let my mind run
| into all sorts of fun science-fictional speculation... but
| wow! Fractals are cool, and fractals in _physics_ are
| _very_ cool!
| cybernautique wrote:
| I'm not very knowledgeable of physics, but my intuition is
| that a fractional type should just be a type that falls
| between the characteristics of two integer types. So if A is
| the electromagnetic force and B is the strong nuclear force,
| A.5 should be some interaction that exhibits characteristics
| of both, is fully described by neither, yet exhibits no
| properties which can't be typified by some combination of the
| integer endpoints.
|
| Of course that raises the question of "shouldn't A.5 then
| just be considered its own type?" at which point I suppose
| we'd have to refer to how these "types" are constructed,
| which seems more like a mathematical/computational
| (ontological?) question than a purely physics question. Then,
| I suppose, the question further resolves to: which assumption
| makes our equations easier to work with?
|
| Please correct me if I'm entirely off-base.
| sroussey wrote:
| Actual title:
|
| Groundbreaking Technique Yields Important New Details on Silicon,
| Subatomic Particles and Possible 'Fifth Force'
| sroussey wrote:
| "A vastly improved understanding of the crystal structure of
| silicon, the 'universal' substrate or foundation material on
| which everything is built, will be crucial in understanding the
| nature of components operating near the point at which the
| accuracy of measurements is limited by quantum effects," said
| NIST senior project scientist Michael Huber.
| dexwiz wrote:
| If this came from almost any other group it would be an easy
| write off. But NIST really does have some of the best analytical
| chemists and physicists around.
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| Headline is misleading. The "new details" are of the sort "if
| there is a fifth force, you won't find it over here."
|
| > The scientists' results improve constraints on the strength
| of a potential fifth force by tenfold over a length scale
| between 0.02 nanometers (nm, billionths of a meter) and 10 nm,
| giving fifth-force hunters a narrowed range over which to look.
|
| This is not surprising and it would be possible believe this
| sort of a thing from a variety of qualified groups.
| lilyball wrote:
| I'm not sure what's misleading about it. "If this force
| exists, you'll find it in this range" seems to be a valuable
| detail to know when searching for this force.
|
| It feels to me like this is very similar to the trend of only
| caring about positive experiment results and thinking
| negative experiment results aren't interesting. But they are!
| Negative results are useful and give us information! And are
| often crucial contributions toward positive results from
| later experiments.
| roywiggins wrote:
| Yes, technically _it 's not over there_ is a "New detail
| about a possible fifth force", but it's not exactly what
| first jumps to mind?
|
| Consider "New details about a possible Game of Thrones book
| release date" being a similarly unsatisfactory headline if
| the article content is "it's not in the next 12 months".
| Technically true, that is a new detail, but is it really
| what the headline implies?
| sidlls wrote:
| A constraint on the domain and range of values _is_ a
| detail. Restricting the possible range of action for a
| force is certainly something physicists look for.
| jcranberry wrote:
| I think that's not the best example since it is assumed
| this book is eventually coming out. Maybe if it was "New
| details about a possible Game of Thrones seasons 5-8 do-
| over" essentially being "no plans in the next 12 months".
| fennecfoxen wrote:
| It is misleading because it suggests that they have found
| new signs, previously unknown, that such a force might
| exist, rather than new details that demote it from
| "possible with certain limitations" to "possible with
| narrower limitations".
|
| This is presumably why dexwis seemed to think that it was
| so remarkable and that it might easily be written off as
| too-fantastic.
| vagrantJin wrote:
| > the trend of only caring about positive experiment
| results
|
| Probably starts in school. Negative results are just a loss
| of marks rather than a potential point of interest. Even if
| the lab report states that the results were unexpected and
| possible reasons given - it was an automatic fail. Never
| has it been considered, at least in my alma mata, that a
| negative result reasoned about might actually be
| interesting on its own and worth the time. Since _aint
| nobody got time for that_ , said trend will probably
| continue for a long time.
| retbull wrote:
| From what I read in this article they didn't prove that the
| force exists at all they actually showed that it wasn't present
| in several areas. This helps other people who are doing
| experiments in the area by cutting down on the range of sizes
| they need to look in for it but it doesn't provide evidence for
| its existence.
| analog31 wrote:
| Indeed, and in addition, their research programs focus on
| improving the science and technology behind making
| measurements. So they have the best metrologists around too.
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