Precision may matter

The latest paper I have produced is an example of an often overlooked part of scientific research: It is not enough to get a qualitative picture. Sometimes the quantitative details modify or even alter the picture. Or, put more bluntly, sometimes precision matters.

When we encounter a new problem, we usually first try to get a rough idea of what is going on. It starts with a first rough calculation. Such an approach is often not very precise. Still, this creates a first qualitative picture of what is going on. This may be rough around the edges, and often does not perfectly fit the bill. But it usually gets the basic features right. Performing such a first estimate is often not a too serious challenge.

But once this rough picture is there, the real work begins. Almost fitting is not quite the same as fitting. This is the time where we need to get quantitative. This implies that we need to use more precise, probably different, but almost certainly more tedious methods. These calculations are usually not as simple, and a lot of work gets involved. Furthermore, we usually cannot solve the problem perfectly in the first round of improvement. We get things a bit rounder at the edges, and the picture normally starts to fit better. Still not everywhere, but better. Often, a second, and sometimes many more, rounds are necessary.

Fine, you may say. If things are improving, why bother doing even better? Is not almost fitting as good as fitting? But this is not quite the same. The best known examples we find in history. At the beginning of the 20th century, the picture of physics seem to fit the real world almost perfectly. There were just some small corners, where it seems to still require a bit of polishing. These small problems actually led to one of the greatest change in our understanding of the world, giving birth to both quantum physics and the theory of relativity. Actually, today we are again in a similar situation. Most of what we know, especially the standard model, fits the bill very nicely. But we still have some rough patches. This time, we have learned our lesson, and keep digging into these rough patches. Our secret hope is, of course, that a similar disruption will occur, and that our view of the world will be fundamentally changed. Whether this will be the case, or we just have to slightly augment things, we do not yet know. But it will be surely a great experience to figure it out.

Returning to my own research, it is precisely this situation which I am looking at. However, rather than looking at the whole world, I have been just looking at a very simplified theory. One that involves only the gluons. This is a much simpler theory than the standard model. Still, it is so complicated that we were not (yet) able to solve it completely. We made great progress, though, and it seems that we almost got it right. Still, also here, some rough edges remain. In this paper, I am looking precisely at these edges, and just check how rough they really are. I am not even trying to round them further. I am not the first to do it, and many other people have looked at them in one or the other way. However, doing it more than once, and especially from slightly different angles, is important. It is part of a system of check and balances, to avoid any error. Tt is also in science true: Nobody is perfect. And though there are many calculations, which are correct, even the greatest mind may fail sometime. And therefore it is very important to cross check any result.

In this particular case, everything is correct. But, by looking more precisely, I found some slight deviations. These were previously not found, as precision is almost always also a question of the amount of resources invested. In this case, the resources are mostly computing time, and I have just poured a lot of it into it. These slight deviations do not require a completely new view of the whole theory. But it changes some slight aspects. This may sound like not much. But if they should be confirmed, they provide closure in the following sense: Previously, some conclusions remained dangling, and seemed to be not at ease with each other. There were some ways out, but the previously known results rather suggested a more fundamental problem. My new contribution shifts these old results slightly, and makes them more precise. The new interpretation fits now much better with the suspected ways out rather than with a fundamental problem. Hence, looking closer has in this case improved our understanding.

Hence, theoretical physics has often more in common with a detective's work. We start with a suspicion. But then tedious work on the details is required to uncover more and more of the whole picture, until either the original suspicion is confirmed, or it shifts to a different suspect, which may have even been completely overlooked in the beginning. However, at least normally nobody tries to kill us if we come too close to the truth.