The First Formula to Compute the Mass of All Particles

Arbitrageur
It would have to be a different formula, wouldn't it?

Naturally.

Arbitrageur
Wouldn't be easier to just look up the mass in a table, instead of using the formulas above that will change whenever experimental results or observations change?

Now that's a question I was kinda expecting to see on page one...

I personally would find it easier to look up a table. But again, look at it this way: There exist formulas to approximate the cosine for any degrees between 0 and 90 inclusively. It's far less complicated to just look up the degree's cosine in a table, but formulas exist nonetheless.

I guess it's more of a philosophical problem than an usefulness problem. Sure, looking up something in a table is easier (it's the option I would choose, anyway). But spending time (5 years in my case - 5 years! ) and figuring out an approximation formula is our first step to at least try and understand the phenomena. Only then will a formula come out which has true predictive powers.

By the way here is the table that phycists use though this one is a little dated from 2010, but for neutrino mass it just says "mass m < 2eV (tritium decay)" which I would say is not only easier to just look up than crunching some numbers, but it's also more accurate since it only applies an upper bound, and the lower bound is not that well known except that it's not zero.

Hm, many thanks, until now I was relying on 4-year old data from Wikipedia. I can't wait to see what's new.

If as you say it's just "curve fitting" (which with the unit problems it hasn't quite done that yet either, but for the sake of argument lets say you resolve that problem), has it brought us any closer to a solution? I don't see how.

Except, perhaps, that now that mere approximation is possible, we might expect a true, predictive, problem-free formula to come up in the future. As I said, before being able to predict something, one has to be able to at least curve-fit this very something.

As I said previously, the formula in my OP is not ultimate. I myself am currently working on a better one (might take me another 5 years).

We can never stop searching.

regards

swanne
I personally would find it easier to look up a table. But again, look at it this way: There exist formulas to approximate the cosine for any degrees between 0 and 90 inclusively. It's far less complicated to just look up the degree's cosine in a table, but formulas exist nonetheless.

Thanks for that example, because I think it serves to illustrate the point I was trying to make. Let's say the table shows the cosine for each degree.

If you want to know the cosine of 89.5 degrees, since that's between the table values of 89 and 90 degrees, we can't get that value from the table, hence, the formula can be more useful than the table. Not only that but it's a little easier to plug the formula into a computer model than a table, (though either can be done).

We could make a more comprehensive table, with 90,000 entries to three decimal places (like 89.500, 89.501 degrees, etc) but then it wouldn't be so easy to use the table and again we see how the formula can be more useful than the table.

So yes, formulas can be more useful than tables, when the formulas are useful, but I'm having trouble figuring out how that might be the case with this subject formula.

swanne
Hm, many thanks, until now I was relying on 4-year old data from Wikipedia. I can't wait to see what's new.

You're welcome. You may want to use the online version which is more up-to-date:

pdg.lbl.gov...

2013 Review of Particle Physics.
Please use this CITATION: J. Beringer et al. (Particle Data Group), Phys. Rev. D86, 010001 (2012) and 2013 partial update for the 2014 edition.

Speaking of condensed tables and expanded tables, that's sort of the way that reference is structured if you click the different tabs at the top.

I wasn't trying to be mean in any way, I was just attempting to steer you perhaps towards a more physically correct path. What the formula shows is your problem solving and pattern finding skills. The formula is not trivial and I wish not to trivialize it.

A theory of everything, is what is sought by particle physicists, this theory in its final form should start from first principles to marry all the force carriers, deduce masses of all particles in the standard model (including virtual) and allow the derivation of all standard model processes ie, all interactions, all decay modes and branches, in order to provide testable cross sections.

The hill to climb is quite honestly staggering, the standard model as is, is a hell of a good way up that hill, with it and understanding of it you can say "If i smash a proton into another proton at 1 TeV, what will happen" and the standard model will be able to tell you to within a good degree.

You can also say things like "I created a particle a charmed Lambda (udc), how does it decay?" and be able to say not only every mode but also the branching ratios... there are about... 78 of them observed so far.

The standard model can do that (not sure of the accuracy of it right this moment in time, but having sat through many flavour physics conference talks... they are not doing THAT bad. That is just one single particle decay! There are quite a good number of baryons and mesons...

Like I said the task is enormous.

To the previous post about labelling it as Math and not numerology... I do understand the difference, Iv a PhD in physics and this to me looks like a spectacular example of numerology. I say spectacular because It is very impressive. Though it has problems of units and physical meaning, complexity and circular calculation, it is still pretty impressive.

I hate to say this knowing you put so much time into this, but a much better version of your formula was already discovered years ago and posted on another ats thread by a guy named... ah, crap... I'm not good at making up names on the spot that don't sound made up. I just wanted to try to have a little fun before I got all serious face when I told you that just the fact that you put this much time and effort into something is worthy of being an accomplishment of some sort, let alone actually being able to understand this subject matter enough to actually even attempt to postulate a theory. You get a pat on the back and flag from me, unfortunately I don't know enough to be of any other help than to offer some encouragement. So, keep it up!