5 ms·
Phlogiston, C-field... the list of such "placeholders" is pretty long.
by V-2 3y ago
Phlogiston, C-field... the list of such "placeholders" is pretty long.
- eigenket 3y agoThe list includes the neutrino (added to explain missing momentum in observed nuclear decays), the Higgs (added to explain mass which would otherwise not make sense in electro-weak theory) and arguably antimatter (added to fix incompatibility between special relativity and quantum mechanics). Reality is more complicated than slogans would suggest. Sometimes adding new types of matter to our understanding of physics was the right choice, sometimes it wasn't.
- analog31 3y agoAnother example might be anomalies in planetary orbits that could be explained by a missing planet.
- eigenket 3y agoThis is how Neptune was discovered, for example. Astronomers noticed Uranus was moving "wrong" based on their physics of the time and worked out where Neptune should be based on that. When they pointed their telescopes there they found it.