When your fundamental assumptions are wrong, there will be a lot of rethinking to do.
Interesting article in the Stanford University News
...a scientific detective investigation that could end up protecting the lives of space-walking astronauts and maybe rewriting some of the assumptions of physics....
...The story begins, in a sense, in classrooms around the world, where students are taught that the rate of decay of a specific radioactive material is a constant. This concept is relied upon, for example, when anthropologists use carbon-14 to date ancient artifacts and when doctors determine the proper dose of radioactivity to treat a cancer patient.
...
But that assumption was challenged in an unexpected way by a group of researchers from Purdue University...
...It's an effect that no one yet understands," agreed Sturrock. "Theorists are starting to say, 'What's going on?' But that's what the evidence points to. It's a challenge for the physicists and a challenge for the solar people too."
****
From an area of physics where one really would expect that the 'science is settled'.
that's kinda cool...
ReplyDelete