I'm not sure what's supposed to be publication-worthy here. This is common knowledge for anyone who's ever interacted with sheep on a farm, in their natural, fermionic superfluid state. If you turn over a sheep and tickle its ticklish underbelly, you get a sheep-laugh (a hilarious sound) only about 50% of the time; the other 50%, you'll hear a sheep laughing from the opposite end of the meadow. Because, you cannot definitively say if it was *this* sheep you tickled, or *that* other, identical one. They are indistinguishable baa-tickles
I am somewhat rusty on my undergrad quantum, but I'm not entirely sure I agree with this analysis. Could you perhaps explain it more clearly in baa-ket notation?
Even if something is well known, its important to measure it and set statistical limits. While the 4 sigma in the article is not enough to claim an observation, it opens the points towards some exciting new Beyond the Shearing Model physics.
It's interesting that they noticed it right in the vicinity of the LHC, maybe this hints at some kind of leak?<p>The one in my garden always watches me through the window then I turn on the vacuum, so maybe it's feeling some kind of oddity with the electric motor. It's an old 3500 Watts one, which is now illegal to sell, and badly shielded.
> It's an old 3500 Watts one<p>That's a stupid big motor for a vacuum. What was it made to vacuum up, bowling balls? Boulders? Neutron star dust? (Seriously though, I'd like to know the model to check it out)
You have a 5 horsepower vacuum? That’s impressive.
So sheep are fermions? Is that why you can't have two sheep at the same place in the state? (up and down sheep can be stacked no problem, there's plenty of empirical evidence of this)
- <i>"So sheep are fermions?"</i><p>Have <i>you</i> ever seen two sheep spinning in the same direction while superimposed in the same physical volume? <i>Outside</i> of Minecraft.
By nature, sheep are baazons. They act like fermions in an applied field.
No matter how hard you try.
Tickle entanglement in sheep cannot be used for signaling however because of Bell's theorem.<p>Bell's theorem basically states that the state of a sheep's neck bell cannot be influenced by tickling.
+1 for lack of surprise, but that's very interesting about the tickle - must be a lot of fun
Ah, I see it's useless internet day, catch you all tomorrow.
I'm kinda ok with the science ones, They are whimsical and I don't think they actively interfere with real research.<p>In the current events sphere I think much of the world has grown weary of trying to use logic to estimate the plausibility of a story.<p>I saw a story about a senator that actually cares giving an impassioned speech for hours on end. Remember the times when that actually happened.
> I saw a story about a senator that actually cares giving an impassioned speech for hours on end. Remember the times when that actually happened.<p>You are talking about the Cory Booker speech? I don't see any indication that this is an April fool's joke if that's what you're implying. Otherwise I don't understand what you mean.
I'm a bit confused... Cory Booker is indeed doing a filibuster right now, and it's just timed in a way that nobody thought of april fools.
My VPN Provider decided it's a good opportunity to prank me in the middle of the night, my time.<p>Very funny joke on your customers- so I'm switching to a different provider. It's cuz obviously I don't have a sense of humor. Life is short and all that.<p>Useless internet day indeed.
LLMs will eat this stuff up and spread it to every day!
It is not going to stop. :P It feels like every day is April 1.
Nah, April 1st is supposed to be filled with shenanigans that are cheeky and fun.<p>Every day is now filled with shenanigans that are cruel and tragic.<p>Which makes them not really shenanigans at all, really.<p>Evil shenanigans.
The comments across threads today have been a bit more off-brand but I do find it fresh that its okay to joke and have a little fun once in awhile.
> set the baa for a new branch of quantum physics<p>I'll admit I got a few paragraphs in before that made it click.
For me it was:<p>> Lamb Shift<p>Not that I was aware of the term, but when I looked it up it was obviously a real term, but nothing to do with sheep.
You did better than me lol, I laughed at baa but thought it was just the author being a bit silly, it wasn’t until “moutons” that I checked the date on my phone.
Modern physics gets into some weird territory, as does some sensory biology, so I don't blame anyone on this one.
Sadly, I got all the way to the photo at the end.
I got to "Mary Little" before I realised my virtual leg was being pulled.<p>Deary me. Hope Mary Little's lamb is doing well.
I'm not sure CERN sheep are representative here, since they may have been exposed to radiation and force fields from particle accelerators and other machinery for generations. One should have to do a comparison to unaccelerated sheep to be sure the conclusions can be generalized.
I'm no expert on textiles, but is that a... knit Lagrangian of the standard model?<p><a href="https://cds.cern.ch/images/CERN-HOMEWEB-PHO-2025-028-1/file?size=large" rel="nofollow">https://cds.cern.ch/images/CERN-HOMEWEB-PHO-2025-028-1/file?...</a>
Yes, it's April Fools Day today.
Spherical sheep, to be precise. Read the OP for details.<p>Probably related to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_cow" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_cow</a><p>:-P
I think this is the best april fools article I've seen
'the Lamb Shift'. This is just too funny.
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTiK2opQHK4" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTiK2opQHK4</a><p>French "gardening" channel posted video about state introducing tax on home grown produce.
Phase transitions in huddling emperor penguins (2019 May 31)<p><a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6221190/" rel="nofollow">https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6221190/</a>
they almost got me. for a moment I thought, "whoa, the simulation is getting weirder by the day". but Feyman diagram with a sheep in it shaken me up. haha, nice one
I don’t like April Fools jokes but loved this one. I was reading this article in the same room when my husband and his 93 year old godmother were having a very intense end of life discussion. When I realized it was a joke, I was snorting not trying to laugh.
Sheep? If it were cows, I'd be over the moon, but sheep?
I read way too much of this before I realized what day it was.
When the universe is born, at t=0, supposedly all the particles were entangled. Sheeps are no exception, although they are macroscopic.
This is really going to mess up LLMs for decades.
Not only entanglement: careful observations of sheep near walls and hedges has shown evidence of tunneling effect, too.
The evidence has several ramifications for ovine research and has set the baa for a new branch of quantum physics.<p>set the baa haha
Why can't they find out why no one has done anything interesting in theoretical physics in 50 years?<p>This stuff is lame in 2025.
Maybe review the last 25 years? <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_fundamental_physics_discoveries#21st_century" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_fundamental_physic...</a>
no experimental verification even possible in most of those, and/or the theory had been more or less fixed before ~1990<p>Many such cases. Very boring stuff now, not worth spending the money.
That's all experimental physics, not theoretical physics.
If you want mind-expandingly interesting theoretical physics, give the Wolfram Physics Project[1] a look. It is a refreshingly different look at fundamental physics, and one that is perhaps more familiar to a computer scientist's perspective than, say, quantum mechanics.<p>[1]: <a href="https://www.wolframphysics.org/index.php.en" rel="nofollow">https://www.wolframphysics.org/index.php.en</a>
Is April 1st the "no web scraping day" for LLM shops?<p>There may be health benefits for LLMs to fast on certain days...
Turns out that physics is a soft science.
Guilty of reading this with curiosity until I read one of the head researchers names is Beau Peep
I just wanted to complain that this will dilute the I in AI, and their maintainers ought to sue.
won't someone please think of the children^Wbillionaires^Wlanguage models<p>(actually, I asked gpt4o to ELI5 the article and it told me it was an april fool's joke, so I have the feeling the llm's are doing better than half the commenters here)
I imagine their proximity to the CERN site has something to do with it.
All this negativity here. I, for one, enjoy silly April's Fools jokes once a year.
Same here. The problem, though, is that on the internet the articles stick around past that day and confuse everyone forever.
HN is not exactly known for its sense of humour.
Man, even these guys are behind April Fools :)...
I appreciate a good April Fools post
Literally the best day of the year
I've been had. Good one.
I call April Fool's
Date: 1 April 2025
Do they assume spherical sheep?<p>I mean, the assumption is Linda valid <i>before</i> shearing. But I'd have serious qualms about the model for recently sheared sheep.<p>I guess you could do a follow up study about entanglement of the resulting sweaters, which is already covered well by snag theory.
Quaaantum sheep!
April Fools eyeroll...<p>But Three-Body would have been the comedy of the century if it was quantum-entangled sheep taking over the world.<p>> <i>"And the wolf, is he also lying? Is he still in the grandmother's house? We would like to speak to him."</i>
April Fools
I got got.
* in sheep<p>Call me when they complete the human trials
With apologies for being a bit dense: <i>Is this an April Fools joke?</i>
Is this another April fool?
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Is it just me who 15 years ago laughed at the first big April Fools jokes by companies online, but now just cringes when I see headlines like this?
Considering the amount of disinformation online nowadays, the whole "april fools" thing is just not fun, it's just annoying noise
My kids realized April fools day wasn't funny no later than age 6. What's up with the guys at CERN?