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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Comment
Sabine Hossenfelder

No one in physics dares say so, but the race to invent new particles is pointless

A technician works on the Large Hadron Collider, near Geneva, Switzerland.
‘The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) hasn’t seen any of the particles theoretical physicists have hypothesised, even though many were confident it would.’ A technician works on the LHC, near Geneva, Switzerland. Photograph: Laurent Gilliéron/AP

Imagine you go to a zoology conference. The first speaker talks about her 3D model of a 12-legged purple spider that lives in the Arctic. There’s no evidence it exists, she admits, but it’s a testable hypothesis, and she argues that a mission should be sent off to search the Arctic for spiders.

The second speaker has a model for a flying earthworm, but it flies only in caves. There’s no evidence for that either, but he petitions to search the world’s caves. The third one has a model for octopuses on Mars. It’s testable, he stresses.

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