Showing posts with label Physics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Physics. Show all posts

Tuesday, 29 December 2015

Year-End Post-Mortem: Science


  • There seems to have been some evidence of  Cyrovolcanism on Pluto and Charon (see articles here and here.)  It is not clear to me if this evidence is "clear" enough to count for this question.  Thus, I have decided to void this question.
  • No new Moons of Pluto were found by New Horizons.  I said that there was a 25% chance of no moons being discovered.  I still think the absence of additional moons was rather surprising.
  • As far as I can tell, no significant evidence of a liquid ocean has been discovered on Ceres (see my post Ceres Ocean).  I said there was a 75% chance of no discovery.  This question was originally supposed to be resolved by SciCast Predict, but that site is no longer operating.  I believe that the SciCast question was to end at the end of 2015, so I am declaring my question to be closed as well.
  • There has been no Scicast Re-Opening in 2015.  I said there was a 40% chance of SciCast Predict not re-opening in 2015.  Obviously, I may have been somewhat optimistic.
Overall, many of my science questions have had serious issues with interpretation; it is hard to come up with questions that could plausibly resolve as either a clear yes or a clear no.

Monday, 8 June 2015

Primordial Gravity Waves

Q146: Before the end of 2016, will a reputable group of scientists announce that they have detected evidence of primordial gravity waves?
Yes: 20%
(This question is very similar to SciCast question 387)

Primordial gravitational waves are an expected consequence of some theories of (cosmological) inflation.  In 2014, researchers using the BICEP2 telescope claimed to have detected these waves, but their findings were later retracted due to evidence of intervening dust clouds responsible for the signal (see story here).  However, there still seem to be several teams attempting to find primordial gravity waves.

Scientific discovery often takes a long time, and I see no evidence that a new announcement is imminent.  I am thus going to go with a fairly low estimate.

Sunday, 5 April 2015

LHC Supersymmetry

Q89: Before the end of 2016, will the LHC discover a new particle heavier than the Higgs Boson whose existence was predicted by supersymmetry?
Yes: 30%
(This question will resolve as yes if Scicast question 1289 resolves as yes before the end of 2016, although this is not a necessary condition.  A new particle whose existence has not been predicted by any variant of supersymmetry would not count)

The LHC has just restarted, after a 2 year upgrade.  There is speculation that it may discover a heavier "supersymmetric twin particle" in its latest run.  In the last run, the LHC did not find any supersymmetric particles, to the surprise of many.  

I do not think that any new particle will be discovered.  Although supersymmetry seems to have some theoretical appeal, the failure to find particles so far seems to be a serious blow.  Also, the time period of this question might not be long enough to discover a new particle.