From: jos.bergervoet@xs4all.nl   
      
   On 21/01/04 10:49 AM, Phillip Helbig (undress to reply) wrote:   
   > Not much effort is put into confirming or refuting undisputed results or   
   > expectations, but occasionally it does happen.  For example, according   
   > to theory muons are supposed to be essentially just like electrons but   
   > heavier, but there seems to be experimental evidence that that is not   
   > the case, presumably because someone decided to look for it.   
      
   Are you referring to the muon g-2 experiment? Or what other results   
   are there to indicate this?   
      
   > What about even more-basic stuff?  For example, over what range (say,   
   > multiple or fraction of the peak wavelength) has the Planck black-body   
   > radiation law been experimentally verified?  Or that radioactive decay   
   > really follows an exponential law?  Or that the various forms (weak,   
   > strong, Einstein) of the equivalence principle hold?   
      
   Einstein's GR predictions have had attention, but mainly at large scale.   
   Testing the short-range part of gravity at the lab-experiment scale   
   would basically be testing Newton's theory, and departures from 1/r^2   
   have been looked for. Also Eötvös' experiment has often been checked.   
   I think we need even more basic examples to find something new!   
      
   > I realize that it is difficult to get funding for things like those, but   
   > at least in some cases the corresponding experiment shouldn't be too   
   > expensive.   
      
   But what can we still do?   
   Ohm's law? Has been done.. (Hall effect, SQUIDs, tunneling, "break   
   junctions" etc..)   
   Maybe Maxwell?! Non-linearity at high field-strength is predicted by   
   QED but has it been tested? And coupling to the axion might also give   
   low-energy departures (but ADMX is in fact looking for that..)   
      
   Conservation of energy, then? Departure from unitarity in QM?   
   Flatness/isotropy of space at the lab scale? That's all really basic   
   but I think it is already addressed by some existing experiments. The   
   real problem here seems to be finding something that is overlooked!   
      
   --   
   Jos   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
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