First collisions at the LHC with unprecedented Energy! (Ask a particle physisicist)

[Pyrrho]

Okay.  What questions should we be asking?  And what are the answers to those questions?

Seriously, if you can't come up with good questions, how do you expect non-physicists to come up with good questions?

What is it that we should know that we probably don't know about physics?  And why have you not told us these things before?

Although it wasn't clearly marked, I was specifically responding to JuliaL who mentioned that she had some more concrete questions, but after a round of googling didn't dare to ask them any more because they seemed too trivial. I was trying to encourage her to ask them anyway.

But to answer your question...

1. I kinda lost track of what I have mentioned before specifically, but I think what most people are not aware of, or underestimate, is: how well the theory describing the underlying rules for every process in our everyday lives is already known. Calling the scientific discipline "particle physics" is misleading - it actually is the study of the fundamental laws of nature. We have already come scary far, so for all practical intents and purposes, we already have the theory of everything. Everything you observe around you, and everything going on in your body, is based on laws that are well understood and tested to precision. No wiggle room.

Okay.  So what are the laws of nature?  Or can you recommend a short book?  Would something like this be a good choice?  If not, what do you recommend that is on that reading level?  Of course, you may feel free to just explain it all here.

This brings me to the second point: people should be more aware of what it means to know the fundamental laws of nature, and what one can do with them and where the limitations of interpretation are.

Okay.  So what does it mean to know the fundamental laws of nature, and what can one do with them and where are the limits of interpretation?

What Effective Theories are and what role they play in our understanding of nature. How the concept can loosely be applied universally beyond particle physics.

Okay.  So what are Effective Theories and what role do they play in our understanding of nature?  How can this be loosely applied beyond particle physics?

2. Then there are more specific questions: I think there are a lot of misconceptions and outdated notions about what the Big Bang is, what the scientific claims about it and evidence for it are, and what it is not. Where speculation begins

I am a bit less interested in the Big Bang, because unlike a lot of people, I am not obsessed with "knowing" the origins of the universe (I think it matters far less than many people seem to think; certainly, most people have lived their entire lives without knowing the answer to the question, and they still could have good lives that way).  But since you bring it up, what are the misconceptions that people have about the Big Bang?  What are the scientific claims about it?  What is the evidence for it?  And where does speculation begin on it?


That should be enough questions for the moment.