Physicists Uncover Strange Numbers in Particle Collisions

There is an excellent article in Wired Magazine regarding the difficulty Physicists are having with the Feynman diagrams and associated maths that go with it when examining collisions between protons vs. electrons. Here's a snippet:

AT THE LARGE Hadron Collider in Geneva, physicists shoot protons around a 17-mile track and smash them together at nearly the speed of light. It’s one of the most finely tuned scientific experiments in the world, but when trying to make sense of the quantum debris, physicists begin with a strikingly simple tool called a Feynman diagram that’s not that different from how a child would depict the situation.

Feynman diagrams were devised by Richard Feynman in the 1940s. They feature lines representing elementary particles that converge at a vertex (which represents a collision) and then diverge from there to represent the pieces that emerge from the crash. Those lines either shoot off alone or converge again. The chain of collisions can be as long as a physicist dares to consider. To that schematic physicists then add numbers, for the mass, momentum and direction of the particles involved. Then they begin a laborious accounting procedure—integrate these, add that, square this. The final result is a single number, called a Feynman probability, which quantifies the chance that the particle collision will play out as sketched. “In some sense Feynman invented this diagram to encode complicated math as a bookkeeping device,” said Sergei Gukov, a theoretical physicist and mathematician at the California Institute of Technology. Feynman diagrams have served physics well over the years, but they have limitations. One is strictly procedural. Physicists are pursuing increasingly high-energy particle collisions that require greater precision of measurement—and as the precision goes up, so does the intricacy of the Feynman diagrams that need to be calculated to generate a prediction.

As we get ever closer to understanding what this universe is really made of, the struggles our physicists are having figuring this all out, is part and parcel of the adventure.

Great article. And BTW - it was reprinted with permission from Quanta magazine. I wonder what they focus on...

Physicists Uncover Strange Numbers in Particle Collisions

a reply to: Riffrafter

What they are doing there will require more difficult calculations. They will find new events from particle collisions probably daily. It is a great adventure!

a reply to: Riffrafter

Thats a rabbit hole i have no interest in..

originally posted by: tikbalang
a reply to: Riffrafter

Thats a rabbit hole i have no interest in..

Gee, thanks for stopping by to share that with us.

And to think I was concerned with what rabbit holes you were jumping into....

a reply to: Riffrafter

I leave the quantum leaps to the ones who 420

originally posted by: tikbalang
a reply to: Riffrafter

I leave the quantum leaps to the ones who 420

LOL!

Great answer!

a reply to: Riffrafter

You've left out the interesting part

There seem to be certain patterns (strange numbers) In the complex calculations, which hint at an underlying structure. If there is one, it could greatly simplify the calculations, eventually lead to a better understanding of the nature of particles.

a reply to: Riffrafter

So, from what I understand about this article, it seems that another layer of synchronicity has made itself apparent, a strange and unexplained correlation between abstract mathematical constructs arising from pure mathematics, and the sorts of numbers being generated by studies of particle collisions.

There ought be no reason, so it seems, why such a correlation between these values ought to come about, and yet there come about they do. Is that the size of it?

I think this will turn out to be yet another expression of the interconnected nature of all things, and I hope that those working on the numbers involved with both the pure mathematical exploration, and the theoretical physics element appreciate the potential importance of this connection in time, and share what they learn from it for the betterment of the future!

2 words........
Stargate Universe.......
Make it happen

Good to see that there is a shake up under way and an new algorithm is on the horizon to help explain and better piece this world together, It is all in the numbers.

a reply to: tikbalang

Don't forget 17 though (you know what I mean)
Makes sense in a wave based model.

a reply to: moebius

The underlying structure which is the simulation we exist inside of.

just a little bummed the single number wasn't " 42 ".

What if we're just being monitored and everytime we get close another layer of " junk " is added to increase the time it will take to solve further. Kinda like moving the cheese further away when the mouse gets close, the old carrot on a stick concept.

originally posted by: moebius
a reply to: Riffrafter

You've left out the interesting part

There seem to be certain patterns (strange numbers) In the complex calculations, which hint at an underlying structure. If there is one, it could greatly simplify the calculations, eventually lead to a better understanding of the nature of particles.

Doesn't it seem as if they are trying to calculate chaos, or perhaps chaos is fractal in nature, or perhaps fractal in that particular chamber?

For those who like a little bit of imagery to enhance a description (and haven't already used Google):

The comparison between Feynman Diagrams and Electrical Circuit Diagrams helped me comprehend these nifty squiggles. As far as the math behind them, I would need to borrow some extra gray-matter to get anywhere.

originally posted by: moebius
a reply to: Riffrafter

You've left out the interesting part

There seem to be certain patterns (strange numbers) In the complex calculations, which hint at an underlying structure. If there is one, it could greatly simplify the calculations, eventually lead to a better understanding of the nature of particles.

You're right I did.



I didn't want to bury the lead so to speak.

Great article - I'm glad others also took advantage of the opportunity to read it. It's mind-bending stuff.

And we continue to push on the envelope that is understanding the nature of our existence...

a reply to: seattlerat

Thanks!

Yes - visuals always help, and these speak volumes...

The Quanta article is a great read! Thanks for the share. How to explain to non-math types?... here is my lame attempt.

Repeated patterns are called "periods" like sine waves. You can measure the distance between peaks, what a uniform wave should look like, how noise disrupts that regularity (the period), describe it mathematically, etc. Oddly enough, Pi usually makes an appearance.

They are doing the same with abstract algebra used to describe Feynman diagrams (FD). Since there is an unknown limit of how many FDs one needs to include (the case where particles loop back and interfere with the original, basic FD. It is noticed that the complexity grows exponentially. The example given is 3 looped FD results in 72 integrals, 4 looped FD yields 891, while 5 looped FD yields 12,672 (Quanta article)) they used gometric algebra to see if there is a trend. Using this complex analysis upon looped Feynman diagrams yields Galois numbers hinting at some unknown structure.

What that means...

Every Feynman diagram has a motive attached to it, but what exactly the structure of a motive is saying about the structure of its related diagram remains anyone’s guess.

-Quanta article

The "motive" is thought of as like the same in music (aka, motif) the tendency for different equations (cohomology is the that branch of math) to reach the same answer, like the main melody being resolved to at the end of a performance. Except this is happening in math terms upon complex FDs!

I think this is a long, roundabout, way of saying, "math describes the world" and no matter what path is taken, math or physics, at the end of the day, you stand beholding the power of numbers!

OP, thanks for the brain ache this morning!

a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

I think this is a long, roundabout, way of saying, "math describes the world" and no matter what path is taken, math or physics, at the end of the day, you stand beholding the power of numbers!

And the beauty of creation and the long ways were are from understanding.

a reply to: SeaWorthy

Preaching to the choir!

Just looking at the timeline, 1960s people were fighting for their pet cohomology theory, and then 1990s, the realization of motives came about. Now in 2016, finding what should be unrelated values in two vastly different fields describing the unknown application of complex FDs, yeah, what a wondrous world we live in!

55 years is not that long in science terms. Heck, they have not figured out twin primes from Euclid's time!

Kind of reminds me of the internet correction codes found in string theory from a few years back.

a reply to: TEOTWAWKIAIFF

I think this is a long, roundabout, way of saying, "math describes the world" and no matter what path is taken, math or physics, at the end of the day, you stand beholding the power of numbers! OP, thanks for the brain ache this morning!

You're welcome - join the club, or party as it's becoming.

I read this very late at night and it had my head spinning and I studied QT for my grad degree - lol. It still has my head spinning, but in a cool, "buzzed" sort of way.

It kind of reminds of that scene in the book (and movie) Contact by Carl Sagan where at the very end of the book after Ellie has completed her adventure she writes a computer program to compute the digits of π to heretofore-unprecedented lengths, and in so doing (at around 10 to the 20th places in the base 11 representation of π) beautiful pictures start to emerge within the digits.

As someone once said a long time ago - "God is in the details" - whatever you imagine that infinite creator to be.