Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Back in August 2010, WUWT ran an article wherein it was claimed that variations in the sun changed the rate of radioactive decay. This, of course, flew in the face of years and years of experimental evidence, starting with the Curies, that the rate of radioactive decay is constant, unaffected by pressure or temperature or anything else.
However, this claim that the sun could change radioactive decay rates was shortly challenged by a follow-up article at WUWT and then a second follow-up, both of which threw cold water on the idea.
Figure 1. Mass of the universe, by type. SOURCE
So I was interested to stumble across an announcement issued by Purdue University in August 2012, which strongly confirmed the reality of the phenomenon. Purdue has applied for a patent for the use of this effect as a means to supply advance warning of solar flares.
I found this most interesting, however, not because it affords a chance to have warning of another Carrington Event, although that would be great in itself. Instead, I found it interesting for a curious reason involving the mechanism whereby the sun is able to affect the rate of radioactive decay.
The thing I really like about the mechanism, about the way that the sun is able to influence the rate of radioactive decay, is that we don’t have any idea what it is or how it works.
Truly. Nobody has a clue. It was first noticed in 2006, and to date we have no idea how the sun does it. But Purdue says it clearly, repeatably, and demonstrably works. When the sun changes, radioactive substances all over the world change their rate of decay.
There have been years and years of attempts to see if we could artificially change the rate of radioactive decay. Obviously, if you could do that, it would be incredibly useful. But despite experiment after experiment, no one has ever discovered any combination of environmental variables that would change the rate of radioactive decay … until now, or so it seems at this time.
Now, don’t get me wrong here. I don’t think that the sun rules the climate, and I’m not discussing the sun for that reason. I’m not one of the “It’s the sun, stupid” folks. I don’t think any of the forcings rules the climate—not the sun, not CO2, not methane, not volcanoes, none of them.
Instead, I think the earth’s temperature is set by interlocking homeostatic mechanisms. These natural and poorly studied emergent phenomena have laughed off the effects of huge meteor strikes, and long-term vulcanism, and a slow rise in the solar output, and kept the earth within a surprisingly narrow temperature range at all scales, from centuries to millions of years. We think nothing of the fact that next year won’t be much different from this year … and yet that stability, of plus or minus one tenth of a percent in the global average surface air temperature variation over the last century, is actually quite surprising and demands explanation.
So I’m not talking about the sun affecting the climate. I bring up this question of the sun affecting the rate of radioactive decay for one reason—to highlight just how much we don’t know about this marvelous, mysterious infinity that surrounds us. People talk about Trenberth’s famous “missing heat”, where he described one of the many parts of climate science that is poorly understood—energy that he says is incoming but can’t be found or accounted for.
But given that we seem to have misplaced both the dark energy and the dark matter that make up 96% of the mass of the universe … well, when you can’t find hide nor hair of almost everything the universe contains, that kinda makes not finding a few zetajoules in the climate system pale by comparison …
Let me take another example. In 2010 it was discovered that thunderstorms function as huge natural particle accelerators. Who knew? Here’s a description of the mechanism:
… when particularly intense lightning discharges in thunderstorms coincide with high-energy particles coming in from space (cosmic rays), nature provides the right conditions to form a giant particle accelerator above the thunderclouds.
The cosmic rays strip off electrons from air molecules and these electrons are accelerated upwards by the electric field of the lightning discharge. The free electrons and the lightning electric field then make up a natural particle accelerator.
The accelerated electrons then develop into a narrow particle beam which can propagate from the lowest level of the atmosphere (the troposphere), through the middle atmosphere and into near-Earth space, where the energetic electrons are trapped in the Earth’s radiation belt and can eventually cause problems for orbiting satellites.
I loved that last bit. Using a giant particle accelerator to affect a satellite? Good science fiction, but utterly outrageous that it’s actually happening. One way to recognize emergent behavior is that it is not readily predictable from a knowledge of the conditions. I’d say a thunderstorm suddenly forming a giant particle accelerator that can blast a satellite, well, that would definitely qualify as unexpected and not predictable … and here’s another one.
Thunderstorms give off burst of gamma rays. They found out by accident a few years ago when the gamma ray satellite “Fermi” looked at the Earth. Not only that, but the gamma rays in turn give off bursts of antimatter, which get shot off into outer space …
I’ve had no success trying to establish the amount of energy in one of these terrestrial gamma-ray bursts, no clue. But there are about 1,100 of them per day, and although they are short they are very energetic … so how much energy is lost to space that way?
I find both of these phenomena quite interesting in that they appear, at least, to be a way that the world loses energy to space that is not accounted for in the usual budget. Among other things, we’re blasting positrons into space … go figure.
Remember that the tropical thunderstorms are an emergent phenomenon. They are formed and cluster around the hot spots, so they are removing energy directly where it is needed. As a result, although it may not seem like a lot when it is averaged over the surface of the planet, in the area where it is happening it is very significant.
Here’s another way the planet loses energy that’s not in the conventional accounting. Consider lightning. My back of the envelope calculations show that at something like 5 billion joules per strike, it accounts for about 0.2 W/m2 of energy averaged over the earth’s surface. Some of that is released in the form of heat, and some in the form of light … and that’s where it gets interesting, because something like half of that light will be radiated upwards. You can see it clearly from the space station.
Now, very rough calculations I’m sure someone can improve upon, if light is half the lightning energy and heat is the rest, and half the light escapes to space, that’s less than a tenth of a W/m2 … but again, that’s averaged around the globe. The thunderstorms mostly occur in certain areas and certain times where they are needed to cool the surface. And in those areas and times, the loss of energy to space in the form of light could easily reach several watts per square metre.
I bring up all of this stuff because it’s unknown, it’s stuff we barely understand, or not even that much. But it’s hard for me to describe the point I’m trying to get across, so let me give a couple of quotes that may explain it. First, from the famous scientist J. B. S. Haldane:
Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine.
I find that greatly encouraging. It means there will always be new things to find out. Like the poet Robert Browning said, “A man’s reach should exceed his grasp. Or what’s a meta phor?”
Then we have the famous scientist William Shakespeare, who might have been describing the sun affecting radioactive decay when he has Horatio say: :
HORATIO
O day and night, but this is wondrous strange!
HAMLET
And therefore as a stranger give it welcome.
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
I suspect that eventually we’ll figure out just how it is that the sun is able to affect radioactivity, something that we thought could not be affected by anything. Of course, by then there will be some new phenomenon that’s just as mysterious.
And in the meantime, as we discover any new and fascinating thing about the climate, it seems to me that we should “as a stranger give it welcome”.
My point relates to the famous claim by Gro Harland Bruntland, the chief climate cheerleader for the IPCC, who said:
So what is it that is new today? What is new is that doubt has been eliminated. The report of the International Panel on Climate Change is clear. And so is the Stern report. It is irresponsible, reckless and deeply immoral to question the seriousness of the situation. The time for diagnosis is over. Now it is time to act (Brundtland 2007).
Well … no. Doubt has not been eliminated, nor will it ever be … and that’s great news.
And as for the consensus of more than 97% of scientists, you know, the ones who said that nothing could change the rate of radioactive decay? …
It’s doing about as well as consensus science ever does, meaning it’s right until it’s wrong, and in neither case does it affect the truth on the ground.
My best to all, keep up the questioning,
w.
Johan i Kanada says:
> I suggest amateurs should be somewhat careful questioning fundamental physics.
Only somewhat careful? I just wonder what are the downsides of not being careful at all. Since this sounds like an admonition from a senior fellow, I want to be properly warned. What exactly is going to happen if I am not careful? The gods of physics will frown on me? The sky will fall? Will I I lose my grant money? I’ve got none. Will we no longer be friends? Don’t mean to be disrespectful, but scare me properly, please. Wagging your finger is not enough.
Radioactive decay is determined by quantum mechanics (quantum tunneling [see Gamow, 1927], a probabilistic system. The probability that a decay might coincidentally agree with a rare correlation to another phenomena does not demonstrate a cause. The Sun does not modify radioactive decay (at least in this universe). “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”
There I’ll stop practicing physics without a license.
I think that ‘dark matter/energy’ is just a modern version of ‘the aether’ or planetary epicycles. It is a kludge to make up for the fact that the operative theory is wrong.
If only I knew what the right theory was!
Willis, I also am disappointed with this article because it mixes apples and oranges. Your plot about our ignorance of the way the cosmos works , where most of the circle is defined so that observations agree with General Relativity and kinematics is correct. What you gloss over is our extensive and well established knowledge of particle physics, encapsulated in the Standard Model ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Model ). This represents thousands upon thousands of experiments and has been theoretically framed for many years now. In a similar way that a good householder knows his backyard we know a lot about particle physics. Now cosmologists and astronomers use particle physics to model the cosmos, but their framework is huge and many changes may appear in the future.
Certainly this specific observation about beta decay rates, if corroborated by many independent experiments in the future, cannot be due to the weak interactions of neutrinos. It is called weak interaction because it is so much weaker than the electromagnetic one that the probability of a neutrino to interact with a nucleus is 10^-8 smaller than the interaction of a photon (http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/forces/couple.html ). Neutrinos see mainly empty space even if they are many (6.5 × 10^14 m^‒2 s^‒1 http://physics.uoregon.edu/~soper/Sun/solarneutrinos.html ) since there are of order 10^23 nuclei in a mole of matter.
One has to explain too that “constant” does not mean constant with energy. In particle physics it means the coupling constant for the expansion of the quantum mechanical solutions for that given energy transfer: constant versus the other variables in the solution. All coupling constants are expected to change/run as the energy transferred rises , and have already been seen to do so ( .http://www.clab.edc.uoc.gr/materials/pc/proj/running_alphas.html ) .at the energies we have explored.
Now I also with TomVonk think that this so called effect will
1)either go the way of the faster than light neutrinos
2)or will be repeatedly corroborated and thus will need a theoretical explanation, certainly without neutrinos.
Mosher said:
When an observation conflicts with theory you have 3 choices, not 1.
A) question your data
B) modify your theory
C) Toss the theory
Feynman is assuming you’ve already done A), and he assumes B) and C) to be the same, since both are possible when “Wrong” (as he says in that famous, awesome video!). Nice try though.
Bruckner8 replies to Steven Mosher:
> Mosher said:
>> When an observation conflicts with theory you have 3 choices, not 1.
>>
>> A) question your data
>> B) modify your theory
>> C) Toss the theory
>>
> Feynman is assuming you’ve already done A), and he assumes B) and C) to be the same, since both are possible when “Wrong” (as he says in that famous, awesome video!). Nice try though.
Both these remarks illustrate beautifully what is wrong with mainstream physics: it does not want to be tossed. The practitioners of the postmodern physics only care about theory matching data (if that), but instead of looking for a better theory to match new discrepant data, they prefer to coerce and torture the existing (fundamental and unquestionable) theory until it matches the data to within the error of measurement. Thus we get constants that are not constants, extra terms, meaningless transformations, extra dimensions, supercalculus, perturbations, strings — just to name a few of the spectacularly bizarre forms of mental diarrhoea that are piled together to match a pair of numbers. When there is a match, it is called “prediction”. When it matches here but blows there, it is claimed that the corresponding “singularities” must exist in nature and a Nobel-winning discovery is claimed. Einstein can’t be wrong. Nobody with his name enshrined in Wikipedia can be wrong. You can’t toss those things; you have to build upon them.
I don’t think Feynman really thought B and C were equivalent, but he himself was predominantly a B-man.
Willis Eschenbach says:
May 14, 2013 at 9:25 am
johnmarshall says:
May 14, 2013 at 2:20 am
If the sun does not ”rule” climate then where does the heat come from to run climate. It may not be the major driver, there are clearly minor drivers not from the sun, but it the only source of heat.
Thanks, John. Think of it as a car with cruise control, going down the road at sixty miles an hour. Despite the fact that the heat clearly comes from the gasoline, the gasoline isn’t controlling the speed … the cruise control is doing that.
Similarly, although the heat in the climate system clearly comes from the sun, it’s not controlling the temperature … the interlocking thermostatic mechanisms are doing that.
All the best,
w.
Willis –
While you weren’t responding directly to my post on May 14, 2913 at 7:25am above, John Marshall and I were both addressing the same point.
The problem with what you’ve stated is the fact that the sun is not a constant source and fluctuates often.
In your analogy, while the “heat clearly comes from the gasoline” (for climate, it comes from the sun), the gasoline would have a fluctuating octane rating that would be enough to effect the efficiency of the engine while travelling down the road with the cruise control set (as do many factors relating to climate).
I hope I don’t sound argumentative, but I feel it is important that while we don’t agree with the simplistic “It is the sun, stupid” concept, we do recognize that it all starts with the sun.
Regards,
John .
Max™ says:
Magnetism is an exchange of virtual photons, photons have momentum, add momentum to one side of an object, take it away from the other, what happens?
—-
Funny with those virtual photons. I especially like the explanations where one is told that by throwing photons between particles one can achieve attraction between particles. Somebody from Fermi lab tried to explain the situation as:
I suggest to think of two people, each one standing on a boat in the middle of a lake. Then one person throws a basketball to the person in the other boat. What will happen?
The boats will move away from each other. The person throwing the ball will move against the direction the ball is moving, the person catching the ball will move in the same direction as the ball is thrown. The basketball carries energy and momentum, and the two boats seem to “repel” each other.
How can an exchange of a photon describe the attractive force between two objects with opposite charge?
…
Well, think again about two people standing in two different boats. Now imagine them standing with their backs turned toward each other, and one person is throwing a boomerang. Throwing the boomerang this person will move towards the other boat as he gets a push against the direction he threw the boomerang. The boomerang, being in the air, flies a curve, and it will eventually arrive at the person in the second boat. Catching the boomerang this person will now be pushed towards the person that threw the boomerang, and they both move closer to each other, they “attract” each other.
Summary: A photon can act either as a basketball or as a boomerang, depending on the charges of the two objects that exchange that photon.
—
As a physicist I would call bullshit to that explanation. In a “real world” (whatever that is) you need something to force your photon to change its direction twice during the flight. What are the forces that allow the photon to be emitted say towards the west away from the first particle and allowing the second particle that is located to the east of the emitting one to receive it from the east.
This is a nice quasi explanation that shuts off the brain of interested students trying to understand what really happens. Of course the result is very easy to calculate but the explanation is nothing but a smoke screen. Personally I simply don’t think that simply because a mathematical process gives the correct answer the mathematical “model” necessarily represents reality.
Does anybody have a better explanation for attraction through exchange of photons that doesn’t involve magic? I am really genuinely interested in a better explanation 😉 !
sa says:
May 14, 2013 at 3:10 am
Williston,
correlation is not causation.
True, but it’s a strong hint where to start looking 🙂
JohnWho says:
May 14, 2013 at 2:52 pm
Thanks, John. Actually, the whole point of cruise control is that imbalances between the load and the engine are automatically compensated for. As a result, a proper cruise control will pay no attention at all to the octane rating. If the fuel is weak, it just delivers more of it. So your claim is incorrect, root and branch.
John, it is just as important to recognize that in a governed system, variations in the input (whether from solar, volcanoes, CO2, or whatever) are offset by opposing shifts in things like albedo and thunderstorm onset time and variations in the El Nino/La Nina pump and the like.
w.
I am surprised Tom V responded in the condesending manner he did. It is not his normal M.O. Most of all this is far beyond the average person. ( Me, (-; ) However I did wish to begin to understand how much energy is involved in such transactions as what is described as within and well above thunderstorms.
Tom V, if you are there, and capapable of articulating an answer to that in a way that climate scientist (see, I am not raising the bar to high) can understand, it would be much appreciated. However such a response should begin with an apology to Willis. (everything you wished to say could have been said with respect, it was not.)
At your service
David
I would be interested in peoples view on this question I was going to rewright this but desided to leave it as it was. http://au.answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AuPHKdRVhpu5cx9R4JhJYRPh5gt;_ylv=3?qid=20121230144334AAm8eAd
Ok I’ve tested the link and you will have to copy and paste in the whole address to access the page
If so, this answers the mystery of how thunderstorms generate antimatter. The cosmic ray is the source of the antimatter. Cosmic rays have plenty of energy to create all sorts of particles as they pass through the atmosphere.
BTW, Paddikj, the electrons accelerate upward if upward is opposite the direction of the electric field. (We define the field direction for positive ions.)
Both Selkov and Berple illuminate the danger of amateurs critiquing basic physics. Selkov says dark energy and black holes a fiction!! He is a good example of one who is overmatched by the subject,imo..You can’t just make guesses Boys!
Dark matter, far from being fictional is essential.
My former roommate Jack Sarfatti, is a well known theorist who is working on an extension to QM
i I tried to explain dark matter as virtual electron-positron pairs (mostly) and dark energy as virtual light – both inside vacuum. Hence no WIMPS ever detected (apart from physics faculty ;-)). Also discussed new high frequency Hawking radiation prediction (peak wavelength (LA^1/2)^1/2 compared to Hawking’s A^1/2, where A = area-entropy of black hole horizon, L = coordinate length cutoff. Note that (LA^1/2)^1/2 = proper thickness of the black hole horizon. Also discussed dark energy density hc/Lp^2A as Hawking radiation back from our future de Sitter horizon in contrast to WMAP CMB as retarded radiation from our past particle horizon (after surface of last scattering).
Alexander Feht says (May 14, 2013 at 1:07 am): “Rate of radioactive decay theoretically always remains constant but the pace of time (influencing the observer’s measurement of the rate of decay) fluctuates a little.”
Fred Allen says (May 14, 2013 at 4:29 am): “Maybe it’s not changes in the rate of radiative decay, but changes in space/time.”
Changing space/time would presumably affect both sample and nearby observer/dectectors, making the effect undetectable. Also the effect would have to vary with the earth’s orbit around the sun to cause the reported seasonal variation.
In the thread accompanying the first WUWT article, it was suggested that the Voyager probes’ radioisotope thermoelectric generators be checked for evidence of the effect, but apparently there are too many confounding factors. The second article reported the failure to find a neutrino influence on decay of gold-198. As TC and Izen point out above, the reported results apparently haven’t been replicated outside the original group.
Wamron says (May 14, 2013 at 11:15 am): “All the same, this underlines my view that the better illustration of the fallacy of validity by consensus in science is that of Semmelweis. No scientist today can deny he was right. But almost every scientist in his lifetime did deny he was right…”
To quote Dr. Isaac Asimov, “Though many of the products of genius seem crackpot at first, very few of the creations that seem crackpot turn out, after all, to be products of genius.”
Willis, like a kid on Christmas morn, I look forward to your posts. No exception, this. Even better, you tell deserving folks to ‘pound sand’ with such delightful flair — or is that flare? Keep writing!
Gene Selkov said:
I don’t think Feynman really thought B and C were equivalent, but he himself was predominantly a B-man.
Wow, both you and Mosher are touchy on this; something so simple. “If observations don’t match the theory, the theory is wrong.” What is so difficult about that? Of course the observations are assumed to be valid, or the statement is incorrect from the git-go. And the theory IS WRONG…whether not the observer chooses to modify (most likely, duh!), or throw away (maybe it has been modified a number of times!) is not even in question…that’s pure science, and up to the Scientist. It doesn’t change the truth of the simple statement.
This is almost silly, like arguing that a “real” coin can land in its side, not come down when tossed, or roll away to a space not permitting observation, lol. You want points for “thinking outside the box” when you know darn well what Feynman meant, and that he’s correct. The epitome of pomposity, really.
[Formatting fixed. -w.]
Gary Hladik says:
May 14, 2013 at 6:51 pm
Changing space/time would presumably affect both sample and nearby observer/dectectors, making the effect undetectable.
Not necessarily. Radioactive decay may be a quantum process independent of the macro-cosmic fluctuations of time caused by large masses and energy flows. Time could be a very different thing on subatomic, stellar, and galactic scales. Faster-than-predicted by models rotation of outer galactic spiral arms could be also explained by the difference in pace of time.
I am reluctant to discuss anything in this thread, given the amount of nauseating obsequiousness coming from Mr. Eschenbach’s admirers. It just chokes me, sorry.
Willis Eschenbach says:
May 14, 2013 at 10:32 am
It was a simple question, too—how much energy is lost through the gamma-ray bursts and the resulting generation of antimatter?
When a gamma ray disintegrates to produce an electron and a positron, the total mass that is created is 2(9.11 x 10^-31 kg) = 1.822 x 10^-30 kg. According to Einstein’s equation E =mc^2, the total energy that is lost is 1.822 x 10-30 kg(3.00 x 10^8 m/s)^2 = 1.6398 x 10^-13 J.
This is the minimum energy that is lost in the production of an electron and a positron. The energy of a photon is given by the formula E = hf, so the frequency of this photon has to be f = E/h = 1.6398 x 10^-13 J/6.6260754 x 10^-34 Js = 2.47 x 10^20 Hz to 3 significant digits.
Well, Willis, this is an example of electric universe nonsense starting to creep into the thread, essentially it is a bunch of ridiculous assertions about galaxies creating matter which fakes redshifts and stars spit out planets and Einstein was wrong because magnets, and lots of other silly bunk like that. I wasn’t saying what you were posting was the same as the Thunderbolts nonsense, your posts range from interesting observations to unlikely but interesting if confirmed phenomena, and at no point did you jump from “the sun seems to affect the rate of certain types of radioactive decay” all the way to “therefore Einstein was a kook and gravity doesn’t exist” like the electric universe folks do.
As for the other part…
The energy of those gamma rays isn’t something I can easily put an upper bound on, I suppose it may have seemed like I was being just being vague, but electron masses are commonly used as a rough unit in particle physics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronvolt
If the events involve gamma rays and anti-matter, you can work out a low end of a gigaelectronvolt per event.
Alexander Feht says:
May 14, 2013 at 8:23 pm
And yet, here you are …
If it really nauseated you as you claim, you’d go and puke somewhere else, and I wouldn’t be bothered with your weak stomach. I say this because in the past you’ve been a fairly uniformly shrill, divisive, and unpleasant commenter. I see that time has not changed your ways. Once again you claim you want to leave because of how terrible this place is, and once again you’d rather stay and bitch and whine about things instead.
I’m not sad that you are choked up and nauseated, sorry. On my planet, that’s good news. Your disgust is generally a good indication that I’m doing something right.
Go ahead and leave, Alexander, you won’t be missed on my part. But if you want to stay around, leave out the nasty insults … you’ll only get them back in spades. Karma’s a bitch that way …
w.
REPLY: Mr. Feht is welcome to leave at any time if he simply wants to denigrate. – Anthony
Alexander Feht says: May 14, 2013 at 8:23 pm
Time could be a very different thing on subatomic, stellar, and galactic scales. Faster-than-predicted by models rotation of outer galactic spiral arms could be also explained by the difference in pace of time.
Here you go on to prove one of Willis’ main points – How little we know …. and, great ideas, now please explain them. Dark matter seems a far simpler explanation at this stage, right?
I am reluctant to discuss anything in this thread, given the amount of nauseating obsequiousness coming from Mr. Eschenbach’s admirers. It just chokes me, sorry.
One of the great attractions of Willis is his ability to draw the common man (that’t be me) into his discussion and his thoughts …. I imagine others in here could make hundreds of amazing points in a story, but if it is only to be read by the elite few they are not succeeding in getting points across to the rest of us.
Further on Tom Vonk’s statement; (paraphrased):
“Well, some of us know a bit more than the rest of you, but we can’t explain it, because you wouldn’t understand it anyway, and even then, we still don’t know how much there is that we don’t understand!”
While I appreciate the call to caution, if not the tone, it is not so helpful to some of us.
Out of necessity and interest, then, I’m going to keep reading and pondering and enjoying the things Willis brings up. And encouraging him to keep doing what he does.
Gene Selkov says:
May 14, 2013 at 2:51 pm
“Both these remarks illustrate beautifully what is wrong with mainstream physics: it does not want to be tossed. ”
This is a prejudice on your part.
You would be surprised on how many physicists start physics with the intention of tossing out from relativity to quantum mechanics. That is why a huge bruhaha happens whenever a controversial discovery is mooted., as the fastest than light neutrinos recently brought to size, and cold fusion when it first appeared. When cold fusion first appeared all the solid state physicists in my department started research on the subject and were all excited that something new at last appeared. We were all disappointed.
If you look at the history of physics two things are important for progress:
1) correct data
2)theories that describe existing data and predict new phenomena to be measured
A theory can never be proven. It can be validated by the data but even one falsification is enough to disprove it. That is why we put quotation marks around climate “science”. It has been falsified on many points but is still going strong as if it is not torpedoed by the data.
History of physics shows that what happens after the falsification
1)might be epicycles on the old theory
2)drastically new theories which, and this is important, at the limit of validity of the old theories mathematically merge with them
Examples for 2) quantum mechanics merges with classical mechanics at the limit of validity
classical electrodynamics with quantum electrodynamics etc.( A very good blog entry on how we get classical fields from quantum mechanical fields can be found here http://motls.blogspot.com/2011/11/how-classical-fields-particles-emerge.html ).
Thus the old theories which fitted the data before the drastically new ones appeared are reduced in their region of validity, not trashed, because in a sense they encapsulated a lot of measurements in their description, a short hand of measurements so to speak.
I was amused when playing with a computer planetarium to see all those epicycles there when the geocentric system was chosen. Even the maligned epicycles are there in all their glory, because of course they should be, they were encapsulated measurements. The difference between the two frameworks is in the mathematical description of the data which in the case of heliocentrism is not only descriptive but also predictive .
Now as an experimentalist I know first hand the excitement of seeing something new in the data that would stomp current theories and the excitement that produced. I also know the deflation when other experiments did not corroborate our findings and further statistical analysis showed the datum to be a statistical fluctuation, the probabilities being estimated wrongly.
I also know how technical errors can introduce excitement of new discoveries and the deflation that follows. So extraordinary experimental claims, as this decay rate is, require extraordinary experimental checks by different groups in many locations. This has not happened yet, so tooting ones horn like this announcement is a grant catching mechanism at the moment, imo.
To comeback to your original statement , science fortunately is not postmodern . It is what it has been since the age of enlightenment.
anna v., as always good to hear from you. I was in agreement with much of what you said. However, this bothered me:
Consider the theory of illness before Pasteur or Semmelweiss. Noxious fluxes in the air and the like. Trashed by their discoveries. Consider the idea that continents never move. Rubbished completely. How about phlogiston? Is it “reduced in its region of validity”, or is it on the trash heap of history.
Sometimes old theories just get modified. Other times, they are nothing but junk once the new theory is accepted.
w.
Max™ says:
May 14, 2013 at 8:57 pm
Thanks for the clarification, Max. Certainly there is a lot of unsupportable and very questionable stuff out on the fringes of science. And in fact, the slow process by which observation of an unknown phenomenon goes from anecdotal to scientific is an interesting study in itself.
For me, I don’t mind too much if people want to expound on their own theories, as long as the exposition is short and polite. Yes, you get a lot of nonsense that way … but that’s what science is about, separating the wheat from the chaff.
And the people who populate this site are good at that separation. Stuff that is off the rails usually gets either ignored or shot down in flames. It’s the beauty of crowdsourcing the peer review. As I have found at times to my sorrow, any mistakes are inevitably found and pointed out, often in capital letters, by the argus-eyed denizens of the intarwebs.
Heck, we’ve had head posts that from my perspective were nothing but cyclomania. And not even good cyclomania at that, but amateur cyclomania on steroids … but there’s no better cure for that than sunshine. People keep saying oh, publishing that stuff makes the WUWT site look like kooks … I disagree.
How better to expose the flaws of that kind of ideas than to put them in front of the hungry lions?
In addition, it makes the site look honest in that we take on bad science from both sides of the climate divide, bad science from skeptics as well as from AGW supporters.
This is not a site for proclaiming scientific truth. It is a site for transparently expounding and attacking and defending and exploring various scientific ideas and theories. The cream will rise, the quacks will continue to quack, and science will move forwards.
Best regards,
w.