Theoretical physicist reassures public, they’re not just making it up

She is a specialist in the “axion,” a hypothetical particle:





The existence of the axion was originally hypothesised with a far from frivolous purpose: to prevent particles that we know to be real from developing properties that we are pretty sure they don’t have. It originates in the Peccei-Quinn mechanism, named after its inventors Roberto Peccei and Helen Quinn. Here, it exists to stop the standard model of particle physics – our best stab yet at explaining how material reality works – from endowing a particle in the centre of all atoms, the neutron, with properties that are inconsistent with our laboratory observations…

Professor Sceptic was right. This is all hypothetical. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, “Axions may or may not exist – but we’re not just making things up” at New Scientist





Okay. But perhaps some physicists will still choose to research particles for whose existence there is actually evidence. One hopes that’s okay.





See also: Researchers: Experiment Turns Up No Evidence Of Theoretical Particle, The Axion











Follow UD News at Twitter!


Copyright © 2019 Uncommon Descent . This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this material in your news aggregator, the site you are looking at is guilty of copyright infringement UNLESS EXPLICIT PERMISSION OTHERWISE HAS BEEN GIVEN. Please contact legal@uncommondescent.com so we can take legal action immediately.
Plugin by Taragana
 •  0 comments  •  flag
Share on Twitter
Published on May 17, 2019 17:30
No comments have been added yet.


Michael J. Behe's Blog

Michael J. Behe
Michael J. Behe isn't a Goodreads Author (yet), but they do have a blog, so here are some recent posts imported from their feed.
Follow Michael J. Behe's blog with rss.