A splendid video about evolution

There’s nothing suspect about the existence of fractional charges. The spin of an electron happens to of magnitude h/2 where h is Planck’s reduced constant - something that’s verifiable in high school experiments.

What I actually did was to point out what a momentous discovery free quarks would be! The problem is they don't seem to exist!

Wouldn't it be a bit more honest if everyone discussing quarks admitted that these have never been seen on their own?

So why shouldn’t fractional coloumbs exists? I’m not impressed by your arguments for science denialism which I find very harmful. (and misguided - why don’t you just flatly state that you think we live in one big conspiracy?)

I have nothing against fractionally charged particles if they can be made and studied in some way. I'd have loved these things to exist back in the time when I did chemistry. I mean if you absorb a quark into a chunk of matter, it can't be destroyed until it meets up with at least one other quark because of charge conservation. Even if several quarks were to exist in a chunk of matter, they would last some time until they met and combined. The change to the spectrum of hydrogen (say) would be quite interesting to calculate - but as it is physicists have a wonderful theory that rules out the existence of these particles, but allows theories to flourish which are couched in a way that pretends they do exist!

It just doesn't seem an honest way to do science.



I am maybe a bit more cautious about some of these discoveries than you are. One of the problems is that modern mathematical theories can be very elaborate and I therefore think there is a serious chance of one of these theories matching some data by pure chance.

David

There’s nothing suspect about the existence of fractional charges.

We should be suspect if a particle has never actually been observed, and seems to only exist to make otherwise broken mathematics function. It's a bit like epicycles ~ it technically makes correct predictions, but is fundamentally broken as a theory.

The spin of an electron happens to of magnitude h/2 where h is Planck’s reduced constant - something that’s verifiable in high school experiments. So why shouldn’t fractional coloumbs exists? I’m not impressed by your arguments for science denialism which I find very harmful. (and misguided - why don’t you just flatly state that you think we live in one big conspiracy?)

Now, this is just a strawman. Has David ever implied or stated such a thing? Just because we can be critical of a few aspects of a particular field of science does not mean that we are suddenly denying all of science or the scientific method itself, nor does it suddenly mean we believe everything is corrupt.

Physics genuinely has some uncomfortable issues plaguing it that are outright ignored, downplayed or dismissed.

Physicists of the late 19th century were arrogantly convinced that they had solved physics! Everyone could go home, and stop doing science! This was during Newton's era, before Einstein demonstrated just how wrong and arrogant they were.

So, you see... Planck was pretty correct ~ science doesn't progress through current generations of scientists being convinced of a superior hypothesis ~ it progresses one funeral at a time, as new scientists come in who side more with the new hypothesis than not.

@sbu Sbu,

Don't you come across children and adults who have learned about quarks (and gluons) and assume they are directly observable? If they ask you for more details, don't you feel the tiniest twinge of discomfort, explaining that these particles can't actually be produced as such?

David