New measurements of W Boson mass may have 'broken' our understanding of the physics of the Universe: "Weighing the W boson
W bosons mediate the weak interaction, one of the fundamental forces in physics. Because the Standard Model (SM) of particle physics places tight constraints on the mass of the W boson, measuring the mass puts the SM to the test. The Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF) Collaboration now reports a precise measurement of the W boson mass extracted from data taken at the Tevatron particle accelerator (see the Perspective by Campagnari and Mulders). Surprisingly, the researchers found that the mass of the boson was significantly higher than the SM predicts, with a discrepancy of 7 standard deviations. —JS" https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abk1781

Uh... this is bad news?

Naw. This is how progress is made. Watch closely now.

Mathematics has Proofs because it is an abstract construct with tightly defined rules. Science is more about "disproof" than "proof" because it deals with The Real which tends to be messy and surprising. IOW Science embraces Evolution, aka Progress.

BTW thank you, mjolnir, for posting an actually scientific link instead of the all-too-common average news from some untrained journalist looking for a splashy headline for this weeks OpEd that reads "Science Upheaval: Back to the Drawing Board" as if Science == Religion. Science actually embraces updates and dismisses dogma.

@enorbet Thanks. I won't pretend I understood all of it but it will be interesting watching particle physicists integrate or chip away at this possible deviation from the 'Standard Model.'

That's a lot to take in, even though I have been interested in this for a while.

Some reference videos.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=s1f68EWjOiw
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=no3qLqUYBLo

Thanks, especially enjoyed that first link. I have to admit it had been so long since I had thought much about statistical analysis that before I posted this morning I had to dig into the significance of sigma values. I found this helpful: "Explained: Sigma
How do you know when a new finding is significant? The sigma value can tell you — but watch out for dead fish."
https://news.mit.edu/2012/explained-sigma-0209

Scientific progress has never been advanced by anything that "proved that we were right." It has only been advanced by things that "suggested that we might be wrong." That the world wasn't flat. And, so on.

(And, P.S.: "Religion" has never had anything to do with "science.")

I'm gonna guess this is going to end up being some kind of measurement error. Looks like this measurement isn't really that far off from previous ones, it's just that it's (theoretically) much more precise.

https://profmattstrassler.com/2022/0...isnt-behaving/

Hmmmmm... well technically that isn't quite so. Science functions mostly as a sort of statistical body of evidence, whether For or Against. For example, the scale of Sigma calculates the likelihood that a conclusion could be false or better described by anything else including simple chance. So currently Science accepts that there is littyle or no reality in seeking, let alone claiming 100% certainty, but 99.9999% is "close enough for Jazz". Right now, Probability is king, and that is probably true .

Oh yeah, and up until the early 20th Century many Religions actively sought Science as "knowing God's work". It's only when many started noting contradictions with dogma, meaning Religion refused to adapt or progress, that the Love/Hate relationship between Science and Religion, at least by the religious, began blossoming.

Galileo was forced to "recant" his position – but that didn't relocate the planets nor the sun.

I still maintain my position that "religion and science are distinct." Religion presumes a model and then accepts that model "by faith." Religion also boldly considers topics that can't be "scientifically proven." Meanwhile, science strictly adheres either to evidence-based findings or a narrowly-circumscribed branch of "the philosophy of science." (e.g. "evolution beyond the species level" falls into the latter camp.) So we have several tools with which to contemplate our world, and I find no quarrel between any of them.

I also draw a distinction between "religion" and "dogma." You won't get very far trying to tell me what "my religion" (if any) is "supposed" to be.

So, sundialsvcs, do you like "canon" any better? A rose....

No, I don't look to anyone else to tell me what to think. Especially not about religion.

In the largely-theoretical world of subatomic physics, we are always just "one measurement away" from another source of consternation.

So, sundialsvcs, is the understanding of the subatomic world as "largely theoretical" a distinction to you? Do you think what may be called Human Scale isn't largely theoretical? or do you just believe what you "see with your own eyes"?

Much of what we "understand" about such incredibly-tiny things is, indeed, theoretical, because we cannot directly observe them. We try to very carefully observe and then to construct mathematical and other observations which explain and are consistent with what we think we observe. From these, we construct "hypotheses" and then "theories." But there will always be another observation.

But then again, we can say exactly the same thing about Isaac Newton. One day, this young patent examiner named Alfred looked at all the accumulated data from centuries past, but he did so differently. His new findings did not per se refute Newton, but instead added an entirely new dimension to them. Maybe someday, someone in like manner will add a new dimension to Alfred's work. We should, in fact, expect that.

In science, you always have to be willing to "scrap everything and start over." Maybe just because – if you will – "God will never run out of mysteries."

Actually, sundialsvcs, I was referring to the fact that everything we experience is filtered through our senses which, along with the coordinating brain, detects representative patterns. It is translation.

Take vision for example. We don't see anything as it is. We see a representation that makes sense to us on our plane. We can't see air but we can feel wind so we know we have an atmosphere and we can detect and measure it's constituents through our senses and sense enhancers/translators that extend through magnification, breakdown by spectrum, and conversion of the electromagnetic radiation of which "human visible" is only a small part.

We can't see a molecule or atom directly with our eyes because of the wavelength of visible light. It is impossible to magnify visible light enough to see an atom. However, We can build machines that can translate other wavelengths into wavelengths we can sense. In fact, I've seen plans for hobby building tunneling microscopes that the parts total ~$100 USD and one can take photos of molecules and even atoms.

It is thought that "proto eyes" were merely sensitive to the presence of light vs/ the absence of it... sounds reasonable. Such a lifeform possessing such crude sensitivity didn't need to identify a predator if it wisely just used light to signify warmth and hid from nearby shadows across it's "vision". Obviously the ability to differentiate through more acuity improved odds of survival.

Notice that at once you state that Albert's work didn't refute Newton, yet you later mention "scrap everything and start over". As the body of knowledge progresses, especially in a given area, less and less scrapping takes place. Yes it's wild and wooly out in speculation land but we hjave our own plane of scale and then some, down here on good ol' planet Earth really solid, even if our reality is "shadows on the cave wall".