{"id":279,"date":"2020-10-22T02:42:16","date_gmt":"2020-10-22T07:42:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oddlysincere.com\/?p=279"},"modified":"2026-01-01T22:31:39","modified_gmt":"2026-01-02T04:31:39","slug":"all-theoretical","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oddlysincere.com\/?p=279","title":{"rendered":"All Theoretical"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I found myself following a random link to a YouTube video<\/a> (by the way, “the LHC” [mentioned in the video] is the Large Hadron Collider<\/a>, if you were wondering). There was a lot of time in the video given to words by a woman named Dorota Grabowska<\/a>. Dr. Grabowska is currently working as a Postdoctoral Fellow Alumna<\/a> at Washington University<\/a> in Seattle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

I still haven’t watched the whole video, but there was a quote that gave me such strong feels<\/em>, that I decided I needed to write this while I was still feeling them. Dr. Grabowska said something that fiercely<\/em> led me to remember a post I made on Sliding Constant<\/a> over twelve years ago<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Grabowska was asked these questions:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

“…Does that mean that we know <\/em>that there are these types of dark matter?…” [critical<\/em><\/strong> aside by Jeff<\/em>:<\/strong> Dr. Grabowska nodded at this point, before <\/em>the next words] “…or they’re still all theoretical?”<\/p>\nasked to Dr. Grabowska<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

\n

“They’re still all theoretical.”<\/p>\nDr. Grabowska<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

I think this concerns the core <\/em>of what “theory” means to most people versus what it means to a scientist speaking in a formal context. I really <\/em>think that most of us see “theory” as meaning something much closer to “hypothesis”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I understand the thought process here. “Knowledge” means experimental result<\/em>. However, for Dr. Grabowska, the word “theoretical” caries a lot more weight<\/em> than for most of the viewers. Theories are certainly not the end of things, but they’re far from the beginning<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I found myself following a random link to a YouTube video (by the way, “the LHC” [mentioned in the video] is the Large Hadron Collider, if you were wondering). There was a lot of time in the video given to words by a woman named Dorota Grabowska. Dr. Grabowska is currently working as a Postdoctoral […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[19,20],"class_list":["post-279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-science","tag-theory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oddlysincere.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oddlysincere.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oddlysincere.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oddlysincere.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oddlysincere.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=279"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/oddlysincere.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":675,"href":"https:\/\/oddlysincere.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279\/revisions\/675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oddlysincere.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oddlysincere.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oddlysincere.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}