Finding What We're Looking For - Science style

Jul 30, 2024, 2:35 PM

Here's an interesting article I stumbled onto regarding our latest sub-atomic tool, Titanium 50. It's an upgrade over our previous top-of-the-line tool, Calcium 48.

The long and short of the article is that when smashing atoms, a bigger (and more stable) tool opens more subatomic doors. Thus, we should be able to make more elements with Titanium 50 than Calcium 48.

But what caught my attention is that we're not stumbling onto these discoveries. We are seeking them out. And that, in my mind, falls as much into the realm of philosophy and psychology as it does science. Because we are finding what we are looking for.

The sub-atomic workshop at CERN

I mentioned in another post that Colombus didn't find Native Americans when he landed in the New World. He found Indians, because that's what he set out to do...find India, not a new continent. His discovery fit his mind-set, until it didn't.

And that's what we do in science too. Sometimes, we do make unexpected discoveries. And those can be very problematic when they don't fit our existing thought framework. For instance, we can explain a lot more of the universe when we don’t consider the earth nor the Sun to be the center of the universe.

But it's important to note though that both those older explanations work to a limited degree. For thousands of years man lived his day-to day-life with the earth at the center of the universe. It's only when new information arrives that change has to be dealt with.

Here’s a completely scientific, observable, predictable, and mostly accurate view of the orbits of the planets, with the Earth as the center of the universe, from the 1700s. We saw our evidence, and we explained it, and it worked, then, and it still does today. I could use this map to predict the location of the path of Venus through the sky, today.

But understanding the Solar System in this way is much simpler. Both ways work as a predictive scientific model, but one is more 'graceful."

We do the same thing in sub-atomic physics. About 30 years ago, a Nobel Prize winning physicist wrote a book called "The God Particle." It was pretty popular, and in it, he described the hunt for the Higgs Boson, named after this guy, Peter Higgs.

In the mid 60's, Peter and some of his colleagues had a problem. In the simplest terms, they were missing a piece to their puzzle. Their model of atomic particles had a gap. Just like this...

They had the whole framework to their puzzle filled out, but they couldn't find the missing piece. That's the important part...because their puzzle, their mind-set, their theory, was only missing one piece. They weren't looking for two pieces, because their theory didn't have two gaps. It had one gap, and so that's what they went looking for. Just like Columbus went looking for India. And so the very way they approached the problem colored their discovery.

Not that that’s bad, it’s just that they were working in a context and with a world view that required 1-piece to complete – The so called “God Particle” that would fill-in their puzzle and explain sub atomic physics, once and for all. At the time, it was the Holy Grail of particle science.

So it’s not really a surprising that they found it. It took them over 40 years to do it, but with all energies focused on one and only one outcome, it might have been considered inevitable in some sense. By that I mean, the reality existed all along, it was really only a matter of describing that reality in terms that fit their model.

And so it was with great fanfare that the ‘discovery’ of the Higgs Boson was announced in 2013, along with 2 Nobel Prize winners. It was a great moment for science. We found what we were looking for.

(For atomic nerds, pure energy particles have no mass by definition, and the Higgs Boson helps explain how they gain mass as they slow down.)

Here’s a graphic made before the “missing puzzle piece” was discovered.

Anyhow, how all of that ties into this article is that our anticipated cap for elemental discoveries using Calcium 48 was just under element 120. Calcium 48 took us as far as we could go. We maxed it out. But Titanium 50 may take us over 120.

And that raises exciting new questions as we continue to tinker with matter. Playing demi-Gods in science. The things we are making now can’t be created under normal earth conditions. They last only fractions of milliseconds in a lab and then they break up and are gone again. But they do exist. We ‘summon’ them, like a ghost, and then they vanish again. So where in the universe, or in the past, might they have existed for longer periods?

And even more exciting, when will one of these change our way of thinking again? When our current model doesn’t explain what we see? At what point will we realize that we mis-labeled the Native Americans as Indians, or mis-attributed the Sun as being the center of the universe? Or have been too simplistic in our now filled in sub-atomic particle puzzle?

And we have to change the way we see our world, and our existence, yet again, because we find something we AREN’T looking for?

https://www.yahoo.com/news/scientists-discovered-pathway-element-120-143000759.html

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Re: Finding What We're Looking For - Science style

"They weren't looking for two pieces, because their theory didn't have two gaps."

How did they know it didn't have 2 gaps? How did they know that the gap they were filling would not open other gaps? They were looking for THE gap filler that would prove their theory correct. Lo and behold, they found it. Just as in 1492, Columbus "discovered" the new route to India. Until they found out he didn't.

I posted sometime back "how do you know what you know?" In science (or just about anything else really), when you find something "new", you have to determine whether this is just an anomaly or a paradigm shift. Looking for that one "gap filler" can lead you one way or another. And that works. Until it doesn't.

I have several friends that have been working on their doctoral thesis. One in public policy, one in physics and one in theology. Each one told me pretty much the same thing about research in modern day higher education. State your hypothesis and then gather all the data and information to support your hypothesis. In peer reviews, making contrary statements or any effort to state contradicting data or findings is frowned upon. Just toss out the data that doesn't fit the gap. Granted, these guys aren't working on anything that would be called "earth shattering". But still seems to be rather self-fulfilling. One could say that they found exactly what they were looking for.

Columbus didn't find what he was looking for, but he did find something.

Re: Finding What We're Looking For - Science style

Finding What We're Looking For - Science style

Re: Finding What We're Looking For - Science style

Re: Finding What We're Looking For - Science style

Re: Finding What We're Looking For - Science style

Re: Finding What We're Looking For - Science style

Re: Finding What We're Looking For - Science style

Re: Finding What We're Looking For - Science style

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