Hoping to gain insight into domains of nature that lie beyond experimental reach — the interiors of black holes, the subtleties of the quantum realm, the Big Bang — physicists are experimenting on “analogue” systems made of fluids and other easily manipulable materials that can be modeled by similar equations. Results from these analogue experiments often end up in top scientific journals, with a sense that they say something about the systems of interest. But do they? And how do we know?
As Stephan Hartmann, philosopher of physics at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich put it, “Under which conditions can evidence that we obtain here in a certain experiment confirm or support claims about a different system, which is far away?”
The issue keeps coming up.
In 2014, researchers reported in Nature that they had discovered a particle-like state in a fluid of supercold rubidium atoms that is analogous to a magnetic monopole — a long-sought, hypothetical elementary particle that would act like one end of a magnet. One physicist quoted in Nature News deemed the discovery “one more reason why the magnetic monopole as a fundamental particle should exist.” But is it really?
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