Revolutions in Physics.

By now, most people will have heard about the paper that was published yesterday by scientists at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Physics (if you haven't, read this first).  Essentially, they obeserved results in their huge underground partice accelerator that are inconsistent with our current understanding of physics. The mass media avaliable to most people who have a basic understanding of science is making this sound like a very big deal... which it could be... but it also could not be.

Papers detailing the results of scientific studies are published to make the rest of the scientific community aware of what the researchers did, and how it worked out. Another reason is to allow peer scrutiny of the results. The CERN researchers are publishing their data, not because they think they can explain it (in the last line of the paper they explicitly state "We deliberately do not attempt any theoretical or phenomenological interpretation of the results.") but because they want other people to attempt to replicate their results before any attempt is made to try to formulate an explanation.

This blog discussion explains very nicely why we shouldn't be jumping up and down just yet...

And of course Randall Munroe gives us this witty perspective...

 To be sure, the results are unusual. Einsteinian physics states that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. The speed limit of the universe is 300 000 kilometers per second, and while objects can get close to this, they aren't ever allowed to actually exceed it. These are exciting times; these results could be explained away using our current model, or a larger theory may need to be developed to explain them.


Is this the face of a man who
would lie to you?
From here.



It is worth noting however, that the headlines that say "Einstein proved wrong!" are grossly overestimating the matter. Einstein revealed the incompleteness of Newton's physics, yet Newtonian physics continues to be a reasonable explanation for how things in our daily lives work. Newtonian physics works very well with objects that are travelling at slow speeds; when looking at objects that are travelling at very high speeds, we need to use relativity. Newton wasn't "proved wrong" so much as he was proved "not totally right"... there was missing information, and the technology avaliable at the time wasn't advanced enough to say otherwise.

We know that Einstein's physics works (thanks to time dilation and the mass-energy equivalence the GPS in your phone works... and so do atomic bombs) but the question is about whether or not it offers a complete picture. It's worth remembering that it  has been 106 years since Einstein first published his Theory of Special Relativity. Think about how far much more we know now!

Just like the Michelson-Morely experiments revealed the holes in Newtonian physics, this recent CERN could reveal the incompleteness of Einstein's Relativity. It will take years to do the many trials that need to be done to confirm or deny the results. It is just far too early to say.

This is the heart of science, the mindset that sets it apart from so many other disciplines. Scientists know their knowledge of the universe is incomplete... new evidence that contradicts what we think we know needs to be examined and rigorously tested. If it proves "true" our explanations for the ways of the world need to be modified... not the other way around.

Aside... Reading "science articles" in regular newspapers always makes me giggle. The media's understanding of science is so naive that a study can be published (by very wonderful and smart researchers I'm sure) that suggests a possible link between two factors, and the media will jump all over it with the enthusiasm of Tom Cruise on Oprah's couch. "Guess what!" they will shout, "Scientists just discovered that X causes Y!!" Well, maybe. Suggesting that two things are related and saying that one causes another are two totally different things. One study does not a rule make.