No one in physics dares say so, but the race to invent new particles is pointless | Sabine Hossenfelder

In private, many physicists admit they do not believe the particles they are paid to search for exist – they do it because their colleagues are doing itImagine you go to a zoology conference. The first speaker talks about her 3D model of a 12-legged purple spider that lives in the Arctic. There ’s no evidence it exists, she admits, but it’s a testable hypothesis, and she argues that a mission should be sent off to search the Arctic for spiders.The second speaker has a model for a flying earthworm, but it flies only in caves. There ’s no evidence for that either, but he petitions to search the world’s caves. The third one has a model for octopuses on Mars. It’s testable, he stresses.Sabine Hossenfelder is a physicist at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies, Germany. She is author of Existential Physics: A Scientist ’s Guide to Life’s Biggest Questions and creator of the YouTube Channel Science Without the Gobbledygook.Continue reading...
Source: Guardian Unlimited Science - Category: Science Authors: Tags: Particle physics Science UK news World news Source Type: news