[HN Gopher] New evidence shows water separates into two differen... ___________________________________________________________________ New evidence shows water separates into two different liquids at low temperature Author : voisin Score : 49 points Date : 2022-08-21 21:00 UTC (1 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.birmingham.ac.uk) (TXT) w3m dump (www.birmingham.ac.uk) | sidlls wrote: | Nature article link: | https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-022-01698-6 | exmadscientist wrote: | Evidence? | | > computer simulations | | > model | | > model | | > computational work | | > computational evidence | | > colloidal model | | I'm sorry, theory's great and all, but I'm not interested. Call | me when you see this in water _not_ dreamed up in silico, okay? | Yeah, I know, supercritical is hard, but... that 's kind of the | point, yeah? Why trust your model if we know this stuff is hard? | Why care if it can never be realized? (Okay, you got me, I'm a | constructivist too.) | | (Must every press release by a British university be trash?) | indymike wrote: | > Call me when you see this in water not dreamed up in silico, | okay? | | The article, surprisingly was pretty clear about this. The | headline? Pretty sensationalist. | | > (Must every press release by a British university be trash?) | | This has been the bane of science for as long as science has | been around: How do you take something that isn't particularly | interesting to laypersons and help them understand how | important this little micro-bit of progress might be... on not | be... It's hard. | jaywalk wrote: | This little micro-bit of progress simply is not important to | laypersons. I'm sure it's interesting to people in the field, | but otherwise it's nothing. | indymike wrote: | > This little micro-bit of progress simply is not important | to laypersons | | Yes. Unfortunately, a little press goes a long way in | getting funded, so we'll all be reading these over-hyped | science press releases for a long time. | exmadscientist wrote: | > This has been the bane of science for as long as science | has been around: How do you take something that isn't | particularly interesting to laypersons and help them | understand how important this little micro-bit of progress | might be... on not be... It's hard. | | I mean, I've seen my own work go through the Science News | Cycle ( https://phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1174 | ). I know what it's like. I'm just pointing out that British | universities have a reputation for being absolutely terrible | about this, to the degree that there's no point trusting a | single thing their PR departments say anymore. | [deleted] | arrrg wrote: | It seems the article extremely clearly communicates (as your | plentiful quotes aptly demonstrate) that the evidence in | question is a computational model. | | I do not get your point about this being bad science | communication at all. Your own quotes demonstrate that the | press release is crystal clear about the type of evidence. | | Your beef is with the science, not the communication. And you | shouldn't mix those two up. | exmadscientist wrote: | > Your beef is with the science, not the communication. And | you shouldn't mix those two up. | | No, my beef is that communicating this was irresponsible | because it does not represent meaningful progress in an | accurate understanding of the physics of water, and thus no | impression should be given that it does. | | Science grows through communication. The two are not | separable. | throwawaymaths wrote: | I am someone that regularly rails against in silico work, | but come on. Treat this as a sanity check to start | understanding | | 1. if the colloidal thought model explains unexplained | observables | | 2. If the colloidal model makes predictions not observed | yet. | | It might be too harsh to say this is not a meaningful | advance. The system may be too difficult to make | predictions without a computer, so having a thought model | is useless. Now that we have a computer model, we can start | doing experimental work that we _wouldn 't have chosen to | do otherwise_. | [deleted] | mdaniel wrote: | > New evidence > ... > The team has used computer simulations to | help explain what features distinguish the two liquids at the | microscopic level | | I regrettably(?) don't have the physics background to interpret | the actual paper (linked in the sibling comment), but saying | "computer simulations" are "evidence" seems suspect to me | galaxyLogic wrote: | Evidence is not proof, it is evidence. It is still valuable | because it can guide the way to experiments that give us | empirical proof, or refutation of the conjecture. | hackernewds wrote: | It behooves the authors to present the limitations of the | study. Lay people, unfortunately the majority, will interpret | this to be definitive. | thfuran wrote: | >Lay people, unfortunately the majority, will interpret | this to be definitive. | | They're not the target audience of scientific papers. | colinsane wrote: | > The researchers used a colloidal model of water in their | simulation, and then two widely used molecular models of water. | Colloids are particles that can be a thousand times larger than a | single water molecule. By virtue of their relatively bigger size, | and hence slower movements, colloids are used to observe and | understand physical phenomena that also occur at the much smaller | atomic and molecular length scales. | | > Dr Chakrabarti, a co-author, says: "This colloidal model of | water provides a magnifying glass into molecular water, and | enables us to unravel the secrets of water concerning the tale of | two liquids." | | this seems backward to me? the colloidal model sounds like a | higher level model of molecular water: the opposite of a | magnifying glass. or is it that they model several molecules | _within_ the context of a single colloid, and by modeling only | one colloid instead of a larger volume it becomes computationally | feasible to use a more detailed model of the molecular behavior | within that small space? | throwawaymaths wrote: | The key preposition being "into". It gives us the ability to | peer _into_ molecular water [from our macroscopic perspective] ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-08-21 23:00 UTC)