# Scientific accuracy and limitations — v1.5.2

29 October 2026. A separate post-implementation review pass inspected all 28 rendered diagrams, their captions and legends, alongside the model definitions and authoritative references. This was a second review pass by the implementing agent, not an external physicist's certification or a separate reviewer. Static review sheets and live-panel checks are retained in `tests/`.

## Classification and physical checks

- **Detector-style displays:** charged electron deflection, photon ECAL response, ionisation and neutrino event-level imbalance. A displayed curved electron starts to the right with B towards the viewer and bends upwards, consistent with negative charge. Tracks, deposits and inferred guides are explicitly distinguished. No curve is a fitted momentum or actual hit reconstruction. [CMS detector signatures](https://cms.cern/index.php/news/how-cms-detects-particles)
- **Neutrinos:** there is no neutrino trajectory, tracker hit or deposit attributed to a neutrino. The momentum inset is a mathematical vector diagram: visible vectors (80, −45) and (45, 65), in common arbitrary units, sum to (125, 20); the missing vector is (−125, −20). It is not drawn across the detector. MET does not establish flavour, multiplicity or uniquely identify neutrinos; instrumental effects can also produce imbalance. This possible event-level inference is not a measurement of the selected free-transit neutrino. [ATLAS explanation](https://atlas-public.web.cern.ch/updates/feature/dark-matter), [ATLAS MET significance](https://cds.cern.ch/record/2630948/files/ATLAS-CONF-2018-038.pdf)
- **Decay/charge:** μ− → e− + νμ + anti-νe; the selected τ− → π− + ντ; π+ → μ+ + νμ followed by μ+ → e+ + νe + anti-νμ; and free n → p + e− + anti-νe have the correct product charges and neutrino/antineutrino associations. Unseen products are text boxes, not tracks. The tau channel is one allowed example. Distances, lifetimes, branching fractions and momenta are not sampled. [PDG muon decay](https://pdg.lbl.gov/2025/reviews/rpp2025-rev-muon-decay-params.pdf), [Geant4 decay reference](https://geant4.web.cern.ch/documentation/dev/prm_html/PhysicsReferenceManual/decay/decay.html)
- **Weak/scalar cases:** W± selects charge-conjugate leptonic decay examples, rather than pretending to resolve a long W track. The Z view selects one neutral-current scattering contribution with unchanged external charges and explicitly notes other contributions. H → γγ and π0 → γγ share a topology; reference mass/type labels explain that different identities cannot be established by colour or topology alone. No Higgs mass switch is depicted. [PDG electroweak review](https://pdg.lbl.gov/2025/reviews/rpp2025-rev-standard-model.pdf), [PDG particle listings](https://pdg.lbl.gov/2025/listings/particle_properties.html)
- **Confinement/composites:** no isolated gluon or quark escapes. The gluon profile shows connected colour sources and a schematic string-breaking route to colour-neutral hadrons. Jets are described as hadron sprays, not free gluon tracks; a separate hard-scattering jet event is not invented for a confinement-only context. Proton uud labels are valence bookkeeping, not three orbiting classical bodies or the full proton. [PDG QCD review](https://pdg.lbl.gov/2025/reviews/rpp2025-rev-qcd.pdf)
- **Bound systems:** hydrogen has allowed 1s/2p alternatives, not orbital motion. Positronium shows singlet mainly-2γ and triplet mainly-3γ alternatives without assuming a spin state. Muonium identifies μ+ and e−, then separates the spectator electron from decay products; later interactions are omitted. [NIST hydrogen data](https://pml.nist.gov/cgi-bin/Ionization/atom.php?element=H), [PDG positronium](https://pdg.lbl.gov/2025/AtomicNuclearProperties/positronium.html), [ETH muonium description](https://lepp.ethz.ch/research/leming.html)
- **Quantum-process views:** vacuum texture and the barrier-amplitude diagram are explicitly artistic. The virtual pair is an internal loop correction, not a detected pair or an energy loan. Revealing diagram terms is not a movie of internal particles. Tunnelling joins a qualitatively attenuating envelope to transmitted material but does not solve the wavefunction or coefficients. [CERN-hosted Thomson lecture](https://indico.cern.ch/event/1396216/contributions/5868730/attachments/2907901/5101315/ParticleExchange.pdf), [MIT barrier-transmission lecture](https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/10-626-electrochemical-energy-systems-spring-2014/21ab97bf1139670415f5338f163d7360_MIT10_626S14_Lec20.pdf)
- **Medium effects:** alpha contacts illustrate deposition along a stopping track, not a nuclear decay. Cherenkov compares above/below the medium's phase-velocity threshold. Cone boundaries represent a wavefront envelope; they are not arrows indicating backward photon emission. The charged source can continue below threshold without new radiation. [PDG passage through matter, including Cherenkov radiation](https://pdg.web.cern.ch/pdg/2020/reviews/rpp2020-rev-passage-particles-matter.pdf)

## Corrections made during review

The missing-momentum vector was made exactly opposite the visible-vector sum in its stated arbitrary units. Generic inherited neutrino tracks were replaced by no-hit/imbalance views. The old gluon loops outside a confinement explanation, classical orbital implications and generic charged-looking Higgs daughters are absent.

The rendered pass found and corrected detached path/arrowheads caused by normalised SVG dash scaling, duplicate accessibility IDs in multi-view review sheets, a label intersecting the electron curve, and missing arrowheads on multiple vector subpaths. The Cherenkov wake's backward-pointing boundary arrows were removed: wavefront geometry is not the photon flight direction. Its two threshold conditions now have separate source rows. The barrier drawing was joined continuously as an illustrative amplitude/envelope, retaining its explicit non-solution warning.

## Remaining limitations

All diagrams are hand-authored, deterministic illustrations. Reveal order communicates a relation or an example sequence; milliseconds, coordinates, angles, colour and line thickness have no calibrated physical meaning. No detector geometry, efficiency, resolution, field transport, kinematics, oscillation probability, conservation-law fit or event-rate model is run. The toy MET arithmetic is the only displayed numerical balance, not a reconstruction algorithm.

Selected channels do not exhaust decay possibilities. Neutral-parent inferred guides are not detector tracks. The same final-state topology can have several origins; flavour cannot be read from the neutrino inset. Confinement, bound-state clouds and field patches are symbolic. Vacuum/tunnelling artwork must not be treated as experimental evidence. The virtual-pair label “brief borrowing” is preserved from the catalogue, but the view expressly rejects its literal reading.

The review establishes plausibility of the intended simplified representations, not full scientific validation of a simulation. There is no simulation, and no claim of audible improvement.