Thank you @lemouth for the post. I have had a sumptuous meal of introduction to particle physics. I will be glad if you could spare some of your precious time to throw more light on two things that seems unclear to me in the post viz:
Second, I mostly do research on beyond the Standard Model physics
My question about your statement above is this: If Standard Model physics is accurate and infallible its prediction and explanation of what goes on in the universe, what is the motivation for probing beyond it?
My second question has to do with a statement you made in passing about humans. I know that is not the focus of the article and that you acknowledged that the statement is debatable, nevertheless, I would appreciate if you could explain what you mean by
humans are nothing in our universe (humans should actually keep this in mind more often, but this is another debate)
This is important to me because I think and believe that humans are the most important thing in the universe. Everything else in the universe exist because of us!
The Standard Model works well, but it includes conceptual issues and has limitations. For instance, there is no dark matter in the Standard Model, or neutrinos are predicted to be massless (which is contradicted by experimental data). For that reason, we believe that the Standard Model is only the tip of an iceberg. The challenge is to get information of the hidden part of this iceberg.
Note that I purposely didn't enter into details, as this will be the topic of one of my next blogs.
I was actually referring to the fact that many humans behave as they would be kings of the universe, and do crazy stuff for that reason. In fact, humans are just nothing compared to everything that lies in the universe (and we actually do not even know precisely what most of this everything is). For that reason, I believe humans should be a little bit humbler once in a while.
Does it clarify? Do you agree?
Thank you for the clarification. I got your first point but I have reservation about the answer you gave to the second question. Yes, I agree that human should be humble and stop doing crazy things but where I disagree with you is the part where you say:
I am convince humans are truly the kings of the universe! Yes, we should be humble and not do crazy thing but we are still the king and will remain so as long as the universe exist.
You probably we have to write your proposed post sooner than planned to educate me and others like me on your stand.
I strongly disagree with you.
How can you say that humans are the kings of the universe, once you account for the fact that we do not know nothing about the universe? Moreover, I recall that in terms of exploration, we never went very far.
In other words, for which reason(s) do you consider that humans have all rights on the universe?
It is for the simple reason that the universe exist to serve humans as a matter of fact. The sun and the planets all exist to serve human.
Humans are the only personality capable of exploring and manipulating the universe. Humans are capable of harnessing the marvels of the universe to serve its own end. Therefore human is the king of the universe.
I await your blog on the subject. I am willing to see from your perspective.
There is no proof of that. That's a belief, and not a scientific statement. By the way, the sun and the planets were there well before humans. That's a fact :)
This statement cannot be proved as well. The universe is so vast and we only checked a little (negligible in fact) part of it.
PS: I hope you don't mind, but I am tagging @agmoore as we debated on the same sentence of this post earlier.
Checking a little or negligible part of it is called exploring and manipulating!
Perhaps you need to answer these questions: (1) Why does the universe exist? (2) What is the purpose of your research as a physicist?
I can answer the second question, but not the first one (no one can). However, this has nothing to do with the fact that a belief is not scientifically sound (and I won't thus answer that here, although this is done partly in the post).
I would like instead to insist on the point that a belief is not a fact. In addition, it is not because we cannot prove that a statement is wrong that this statement is correct. In other words, you may believe in what you want. That's clear and it is up to you. Anyone else has also the option to believe differently.
Now, let's go back to the topic. What I discuss is different. I say that considering that humans are above everything in the universe... is just being not humble. There is no reason to do so, especially as we know nothing. This is why we should be humbler as humans, and we may not be the only intelligent species in the universe.