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by antt 2741 days ago
You do realize you just said what the author said but in a mocking tone?

Their point is exactly that the trigger systems are controlled by algorithms based on current theories, which so far have shown nothing for all their efforts.

I haven't been in the field since the LHC started operating but from memory it was exactly billions of events per second and storage could only keep up with hundreds.
2 comments
XorNot 2741 days ago
The trigger mechanisms aren't throwing away "data which doesn't fit" - they're throwing away data which does. That's the point - the vast majority of CERN's output is going to be extremely common events we'd expect to see all the time.

No one is setting these things up to go "hmm a particle on a totally unusual trajectory - but not where the Higgs should be so junk it".

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abeld 2741 days ago
Every experiment will be based on some sort of theory: without that, you can't design the equipment, and you wouldn't be able to interpret the data that is generated.

If by "so far have shown nothing for all their effort" you mean that no new results were found, that isn't due to the current theories being bad: in fact, it is due to them being too good: they describe the results too well and thus there is not enough difference between the current theories and current results that would require a new theory.

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antt 2741 days ago
If we threw out 99% of data based on current theories we wouldn't have figured out that there was a problem with heliocentric until the 20th century.
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ubernostrum 2741 days ago
The counterpoint is that if we were more eager to ditch theories as soon as they fail to explain absolutely everything in the universe, we'd have tossed Newton's laws in the early 1800s because they didn't accurately predict the orbit of Uranus.

(turned out they did, but nobody at the time knew to account for perturbations caused by the as-yet-undiscovered Neptune)

And depending on how far you want to take this, the neutrino probably would've been dismissed, too, before eventually being detected.

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antt 2741 days ago
Which is nonsensical since we are talking about collecting data, not changing theories because of the data.

"Oh look, Uranus is doing that odd things again. Doesn't fit in with Newtonian mechanics or my current pet theory so better throw it out."

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