338 pointsby mackopes9 months ago52 comments
  • perihelions9 months ago
    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
    • stochastician9 months ago
      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?
      • HPsquared9 months ago
        I can try, but I'll need a pen.
        • 9 months ago
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      • ALLTaken9 months ago
        Wish I had neighbors as hilarious as you or op =)
      • 9 months ago
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    • lnauta9 months ago
      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.
    • qwertox9 months ago
      It's interesting that they noticed it right in the vicinity of the LHC, maybe this hints at some kind of leak?

      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.

      • MisterTea9 months ago
        > It's an old 3500 Watts one

        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)

        • TheDauthi9 months ago
          At 3500 watts, I assume it has the Acme logo on the side.
      • quickthrowman9 months ago
        You have a 5 horsepower vacuum? That’s impressive.
    • fguerraz9 months ago
      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)
      • perihelions9 months ago
        - "So sheep are fermions?"

        Have you ever seen two sheep spinning in the same direction while superimposed in the same physical volume? Outside of Minecraft.

        • nicerob20109 months ago
          Yes, but only after a few shrooms and a lot of tequila
      • TheOtherHobbes9 months ago
        By nature, sheep are baazons. They act like fermions in an applied field.
      • shadowgovt9 months ago
        No matter how hard you try.
    • mythrwy9 months ago
      Tickle entanglement in sheep cannot be used for signaling however because of Bell's theorem.

      Bell's theorem basically states that the state of a sheep's neck bell cannot be influenced by tickling.

    • ketedrum9 months ago
      +1 for lack of surprise, but that's very interesting about the tickle - must be a lot of fun
    • 9 months ago
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  • scottmcf9 months ago
    Ah, I see it's useless internet day, catch you all tomorrow.
    • Lerc9 months ago
      I'm kinda ok with the science ones, They are whimsical and I don't think they actively interfere with real research.

      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.

      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.

      • wasabi9910119 months ago
        > 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.

        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.

        • Lerc9 months ago
          I am implying when are living in times where you can't tell if something is a joke or not based upon how much sense it makes.

          I guess I just generated another example. Although it was kind of intended as irony.

      • ebiester9 months ago
        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.
        • wavemode9 months ago
          Parent commenter was making a joke.
    • unsupp0rted9 months ago
      My VPN Provider decided it's a good opportunity to prank me in the middle of the night, my time.

      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.

      Useless internet day indeed.

      • johnisgood9 months ago
        How did they prank you, what did they do?
        • unsupp0rted9 months ago
          I'd rather not go into detail, but in short they sent an official email from their real noreply address, "signed" by their CEO, saying my data has been compromised.

          "What Data?"... Click the link...

          Just kidding, April Fools you stupid moron.

          I replied that they've lost a customer.

          They replied with a link to talk to their AI bot.

          • Mistletoe9 months ago
            Yeah I have to agree with your reaction to this one.
          • kachapopopow9 months ago
            I'm doing this next year, thanks for sharing. Especially the AI bot part, will have it part of the april fools page.
          • esnard9 months ago
            • unsupp0rted9 months ago
              I wouldn't want to specify which VPN Provider it was, but I will say the fake in my case was not obvious, by layman standards nor by HN standards.
            • bee_rider9 months ago
              That seems like obvious enough of a fake.
          • 9 months ago
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        • halfjoking9 months ago
          Haha, we routed all your traffic through a server in Iran.

          No more Google account for you. Gotcha!

    • deadbabe9 months ago
      LLMs will eat this stuff up and spread it to every day!
      • tempodox9 months ago
        At least the idea of a spherical model for sheep is quite useful. Spherical cows have been alone for so long.
        • pk-protect-ai9 months ago
          No way. I still remember "spherical horses in a vacuum".
        • uxjw9 months ago
          They have had spherical chickens in a vacuum
    • johnisgood9 months ago
      It is not going to stop. :P It feels like every day is April 1.
      • lenerdenator9 months ago
        Nah, April 1st is supposed to be filled with shenanigans that are cheeky and fun.

        Every day is now filled with shenanigans that are cruel and tragic.

        Which makes them not really shenanigans at all, really.

        Evil shenanigans.

        • 9 months ago
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    • pests9 months ago
      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.
  • blamarvt9 months ago
    > set the baa for a new branch of quantum physics

    I'll admit I got a few paragraphs in before that made it click.

    • RajT889 months ago
      For me it was:

      > Lamb Shift

      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.

    • VladVladikoff9 months ago
      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.
    • derbOac9 months ago
      Modern physics gets into some weird territory, as does some sensory biology, so I don't blame anyone on this one.
    • fracus9 months ago
      Sadly, I got all the way to the photo at the end.
    • csmattryder9 months ago
      I got to "Mary Little" before I realised my virtual leg was being pulled.

      Deary me. Hope Mary Little's lamb is doing well.

  • tempodox9 months ago
    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.
  • pierrec9 months ago
    I'm no expert on textiles, but is that a... knit Lagrangian of the standard model?

    https://cds.cern.ch/images/CERN-HOMEWEB-PHO-2025-028-1/file?...

  • The-Old-Hacker9 months ago
    Yes, it's April Fools Day today.
  • cs7029 months ago
    Spherical sheep, to be precise. Read the OP for details.

    Probably related to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_cow

    :-P

    • caseyy9 months ago
      If you want to simulate the behavior of a large crowd of people, 2D fluid simulation is accurate enough for most purposes. I’ve used it to simulate a crowd in a video game. One could say it’s spherical people.
  • ripvanwinkle9 months ago
    I think this is the best april fools article I've seen
  • cjfd9 months ago
    'the Lamb Shift'. This is just too funny.
  • Calwestjobs9 months ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTiK2opQHK4

    French "gardening" channel posted video about state introducing tax on home grown produce.

  • oever9 months ago
    Phase transitions in huddling emperor penguins (2019 May 31)

    https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6221190/

  • nikolayasdf1239 months ago
    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
  • 9 months ago
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  • tonympls9 months ago
    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.
  • mcswell9 months ago
    Sheep? If it were cows, I'd be over the moon, but sheep?
  • mbreese9 months ago
    I read way too much of this before I realized what day it was.
  • nnurmanov9 months ago
    When the universe is born, at t=0, supposedly all the particles were entangled. Sheeps are no exception, although they are macroscopic.
  • OutOfHere9 months ago
    This is really going to mess up LLMs for decades.
  • 9 months ago
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  • mytailorisrich9 months ago
    Not only entanglement: careful observations of sheep near walls and hedges has shown evidence of tunneling effect, too.
  • mlacks9 months ago
    The evidence has several ramifications for ovine research and has set the baa for a new branch of quantum physics.

    set the baa haha

  • nimish9 months ago
    Why can't they find out why no one has done anything interesting in theoretical physics in 50 years?

    This stuff is lame in 2025.

    • robin_reala9 months ago
      • nimish9 months ago
        no experimental verification even possible in most of those, and/or the theory had been more or less fixed before ~1990

        Many such cases. Very boring stuff now, not worth spending the money.

      • jcranmer9 months ago
        That's all experimental physics, not theoretical physics.
        • Calwestjobs9 months ago
          Well topological order sound like april first to me. Emergent gravity looks to me million times more plausible then that mess :)
    • seabass-labrax9 months ago
      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.

      [1]: https://www.wolframphysics.org/index.php.en

      • nimish9 months ago
        I have done enough mathematics and have spoken to wolfram personally, it's interesting but not connected enough to existing theory despite his personal genius at QCD
  • agnosticmantis9 months ago
    Is April 1st the "no web scraping day" for LLM shops?

    There may be health benefits for LLMs to fast on certain days...

    • 6thbit9 months ago
      this may be an interesting tactic vs crawlers.. date everything april 1st
  • amelius9 months ago
    Turns out that physics is a soft science.
  • 9 months ago
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  • blueberrychpstx9 months ago
    Guilty of reading this with curiosity until I read one of the head researchers names is Beau Peep
  • 0xdeadbeefbabe9 months ago
    I just wanted to complain that this will dilute the I in AI, and their maintainers ought to sue.
    • internet_points9 months ago
      won't someone please think of the children^Wbillionaires^Wlanguage models

      (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)

  • neuroelectron9 months ago
    I imagine their proximity to the CERN site has something to do with it.
  • sva_9 months ago
    All this negativity here. I, for one, enjoy silly April's Fools jokes once a year.
    • vikingerik9 months ago
      Same here. The problem, though, is that on the internet the articles stick around past that day and confuse everyone forever.
    • Tainnor9 months ago
      HN is not exactly known for its sense of humour.
      • nartho9 months ago
        I find this hard to believe, can you provide the links to at least 2 reputable publications that corroborate your claims ?
  • dbacar9 months ago
    Man, even these guys are behind April Fools :)...
  • josefritzishere9 months ago
    I appreciate a good April Fools post
  • inSenCite9 months ago
    Literally the best day of the year
  • egberts9 months ago
    I've been had. Good one.
  • diyseguy9 months ago
    I call April Fool's
  • jp579 months ago
    Date: 1 April 2025
  • CoastalCoder9 months ago
    Do they assume spherical sheep?

    I mean, the assumption is Linda valid before shearing. But I'd have serious qualms about the model for recently sheared sheep.

    I guess you could do a follow up study about entanglement of the resulting sweaters, which is already covered well by snag theory.

  • pmags9 months ago
    Quaaantum sheep!
  • ck29 months ago
    April Fools eyeroll...

    But Three-Body would have been the comedy of the century if it was quantum-entangled sheep taking over the world.

    > "And the wolf, is he also lying? Is he still in the grandmother's house? We would like to speak to him."

  • ginkgotree9 months ago
    April Fools
  • fracus9 months ago
    I got got.
  • scanr9 months ago
    * in sheep

    Call me when they complete the human trials

    • TonyTrapp9 months ago
      At least it's not mice for once.
  • Henchman219 months ago
    With apologies for being a bit dense: Is this an April Fools joke?
    • awb9 months ago
      It exists in a superposition of being both a joke and not a joke until you observe the article.
      • Henchman219 months ago
        This “holiday” has gotten beyond stupid.
  • quantum_state9 months ago
    Is this another April fool?
  • aaron6959 months ago
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  • tonetheman9 months ago
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  • heavymetalpoizn9 months ago
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  • chuckles2019 months ago
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  • acegopher9 months ago
    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?
    • acuozzo9 months ago
      You've gotten fifteen years older.
  • evandrofisico9 months ago
    Considering the amount of disinformation online nowadays, the whole "april fools" thing is just not fun, it's just annoying noise
    • 9 months ago
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  • meepmorp9 months ago
    My kids realized April fools day wasn't funny no later than age 6. What's up with the guys at CERN?
    • acuozzo9 months ago
      Awareness and appreciation of the utility of humor increases with age and/or maturity.

      Ms. Super-serious "I'm in university now and no longer find fart jokes funny" is liable to enjoy them again in her golden years.

      There's no surer way to project a lack of self-assuredness than to be the stiff incapable of chuckling at a harmless prank.

      • meepmorp9 months ago
        > Awareness and appreciation of the utility of humor increases with age and/or maturity.

        Exactly, and what I'm saying is that an understanding that April fools day isn't funny is a sign of maturity.