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Physics Said These Quantum Particles Couldn't Exist. Now, Math Has Proven They Can (www.iflscience.com)

submitted 2 weeks ago by UniversalMonk@mander.xyz to c/science@mander.xyz

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[–] bjoern_tantau@swg-empire.de 15 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

You can prove a lot of things with math. Doesn't mean they're real.

[–] UniversalMonk@mander.xyz 6 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Fair point. And another poster voiced his frustration with the headline. And I guess I am not smart enough to realize that this was a poor article.

I'm not being smarmy, I honestly didn't realize it was a bad science article.

[–] Fermion@feddit.nl 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

As a rule of thumb, you can usually assume anything from iflscience is trash tier.

[–] UniversalMonk@mander.xyz 2 points 2 weeks ago

Understood. I'll note that moving forward. Thanks!

[–] Hamartiogonic@sopuli.xyz 6 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

“And math’s just physics unconstrained by precepts of reality ”

Source: xkcd, every major’s terrible, square 2

[–] ogmios@sh.itjust.works 5 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

Very first thing my statistics professor taught us was that numbers will tell you anything you want them to, if you torture them enough.

The renowned physicist Richard Feynman is reputed to have once said that “physics is to math what sex is to masturbation”. Exactly what comparison he was making, he didn’t clarify – but if the orgasm gap is anything to go by, he presumably meant that math is often more fun, more effective, and better at getting the desired result in the face of adverse real-world conditions.

I had to tap out after one paragraph to save whatever brain cells haven't committed suicide yet.

[–] BB84@mander.xyz 5 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Here's a better media coverage of the same paper https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-025-00030-5

[–] ogmios@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 weeks ago

You rock!

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

In statistics and with arbitrarily questionable assumptions that might be true, but there's other math.

[–] ogmios@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

Unfortunately there are many ways one can fool oneself into believing all sorts of asinine things with numbers. That was the point of the lesson: That math is effectively meaningless without an earnest desire to arrive at the correct answer, not just an attempt to confirm what one already believes. This article is actually a great example of that, because it presumes that our mathematical models are definitely correct, which is the farthest thing from the truth. Physics is a really interesting field because it's constantly discovering odd nuances of our world where our models don't actually align with reality, giving us the chance to improve them.

[–] CanadaPlus@lemmy.sdf.org 1 points 2 weeks ago

On the contrary, fundamental physics has been completely static for half a century. That doesn't really have much to do with your main point, though.

I mean, you're right in statistics, and statistics comes up constantly, but there's no way to directly prove there's only 100 prime numbers, for example. In number theory, there's absolute truths, and a correct proof will inevitably align with them.

[–] azi@mander.xyz 1 points 1 week ago

When you predict a new phenomenon from a current model, either you've opened the door to the discovery of this new phenomenon or you've demonstrated a shortcoming in the model. Both are useful to science.