Daniel Whiteson

It means that, you know, the way Newton's theory worked for all the experiments they could do in their day, but, you know, it wasn't the true story of the universe.

In a broader context, Einstein's description is better, though who knows if Einstein is right.

We may one day replace our theory of Higgs with something else, right?

And that doesn't mean that Higgs was wrong.

It just means that it works under these circumstances.

But when you replace it with something else, you also sometimes get to replace the backdrop, the story about what's happening.

Think about what happens when you replace Newton with Einstein.

You don't just get better predictions for Mercury and details about high-speed stuff.

You tell a different story about gravity.

That's true.

What happens when somebody jumps off a building?

Newton says there's an acceleration.

Gravity is a force.

There's an acceleration of the person who's coming down to Earth.

Einstein says, no, no, no.

A person who jumps off a building experiences no acceleration.

And he's kind of right because if you took a scale with you, you jumped off a building and you put that scale under your feet, what would you measure?

Nothing.

Zero.

That scale is an accelerometer.