Doesn't matter. That is what is so exiting! Physics will need to be rewritten if we find it. And it will need to be rewritten if we don't find it. Something like the Higgs vector boson has already shown up at Fermilab, so I suspect we see it within a year. Interesting. My sexual mind must shut off when I am thinking about Physics. It never even occurred to me.
I like this passage (out of context): "...Psychology is not applied biology, nor is biology applied chemistry. We can now see that the whole becomes not merely more, but very different from the sum of its parts." I'm surfacely familiar with emergent science. I stumbled across it years back when I was studying esoteric patterns and trying to fit in to my trading (fractals)... but I digress. I look at it as just another branch of the physics tree. The interesting thing is, on a subatomic level, there is no difference or preference per say, how atoms arrange themselves. Animate/inanimate - sentient/non-sentient, the fact is, there is always either attraction or repulsion(?). What I'm getting at, and you are probably more familiar with it than I, is an experiment done years ago, and please correct me if I'm wrong, where, simply put, robots with a very primitive random motorization system (non-sentient) were distributed throughout a large room and over time, all ended up huddled in one corner. Now this can be explained in a myriad of ways but it all leads (IMO) to attraction/repulsion, no matter how you slice it. Getting back to the passage - eventually as we become more enlightened, every single one of these boundaries separating these disciplines from physics to metaphysics, from biology to psychology, onto chemistry and wizardry, will melt away and TOE will no longer be a theory... but also, won't be needed. ...I'll get to the other stuff in a bit.
Right, although some elementary chemistry is applied physics. Not really. It is its own discipline, and applies equally to all of them (biology is emergent from chemistry, etc.) Hmmmm, I am not aware of this experiment. It is an interesting result though. I would expect that if the robot actions were indeed random, then one would expect entropy and diffusion to occurr. That they all end up in one corner could be a result of either hidden correlations in the code that governs the robots movements, or perhaps the random number generators have some sort of undetected attractor unbeknown to the programmers. It is amazing to me, [and I am not even sure I believe it], that all the diversity we see is a result ultimately of subatomic scattering. That is not the opinion of current science. In fact, some scientist think that unification is a dead end, a dreamed up luxury of Einstein's. Thing is, many [most, every ?] advance in the elementary sciences have come as the result of some unification of what was once thought to be different phenomena. I don't know what to believe, but if I were allowed wishful thinking, I would wish for unification.
"A new record peak luminosity for the LHC Two weeks of dedicated machine development paid off last weekend when the LHC ran for physics with three nominal intensity (∼10^11 protons) bunches in each beam...thus achieving the objective of recording one inverse femtobarn of data in total." http://cdsweb.cern.ch/journal/CERNBulletin/2010/27/News Articles/1274486?ln=en Expecting big news within the year.
Some surprising physics already coming in from the LHC: http://cdsweb.cern.ch/journal/CERNBulletin/2010/31/News Articles/1281659?ln=en One interesting comment that traders and model makers should note is: "....The ALICE experimentâs new measurement of the number of charged particles produced from proton collisions at 7 TeV does not agree with predictions from theoretical models, and will send physicists back to their computers to further refine the models so that they better reflect the way the Universe works and better predict new phenomena..." Even in a discipline as old as physics, with extremely brilliant people working in the field, we have to go back and tweak as nature teaches us. It should be no shame when we have to do the same in an econometrics or trading model.
Gigantic taxpayer boondogle. Sold via outlandish claims of discoveries that will occur "in the near future", always just down the road, never arriving at said place in road, and the grandiose hyping of the results of every experiment, as though it's just about to change civilization. Changes to occur, once again, "very soon". Promising that there will be forthcoming applications for numerous other disciplines very soon. Billions of taxpayer dollars borrowed from the chinese so that a few individuals with delusions of grandeur can <s>debate the number of angels on the head of a pin</s> do a scientific experiment. And we know that we're all supposed to bow down when someone says that magic word...science. At some point down the road, when taxpayers begin to grumble about a lack of anything substantial from their investment, we're likely to see a very predictable result. The "scientists" will "find" the magnificent discovery they've been looking for, but will refuse to divulge the information, even in the face of freedom of information legal requests, all the while proclaiming there to be a scientific consensus among those with credibility. Yes, I am anti-science. But, when the definition of science has been perverted and turned on it's head, what choice do I have?
Hilarious, you can bet on finding the Higgs Vector Boson on Intrade. Look under scientific category. http://www.intrade.com/aav2/trading/tradingHTML.jsp#
"LHC sets world record beam intensity" http://press.web.cern.ch/press/PressReleases/Releases2011/PR02.11E.html LHC is now on territory not seen before, and it is nowhere near capacity. Within the year as they dial the luminosity dial harder (I think they are progressing carefully they don't want another accident), we will have some very interesting physics to ponder.