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The crisis in physics is not only about physics

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Re: The crisis in physics is not only about physics

#91

Post by dredmorbius »

vo2maxer wrote: post #76
stan_rogers wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking of nitpicking, it's nitpicking - literally speaking, removing the eggs of the lice you've probably already removed from someone's hair. It's a fussy activity (of necessity), takes forever, and would probably seem quite an annoying thing to someone (likely a child) who thinks you've already solved their pressing problem and should maybe leave them alone now.

Speaking of nitpicking or the more practical nit combing, none is needed if a 0.9% suspension of Spinosad (1) is applied to a child’s dry hair and washed off after 10 minutes. You may happily and confidently send your kids back to school after this one treatment despite the horrified looks of parents and teachers ;-) (1) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3273925/

From link:

The average cost of an application of permethrin 1% cream is about $20; an application of spinosad costs $270 without insurance.

Ouch!

Re: The crisis in physics is not only about physics

#92

Post by Balgair »

ImaCake wrote: post #40
yummypaint wrote: post #4

There is alot going on in physics besides things directly related to the standard model. Running out of important things to study is of no concern. As a random example check out the microscopy work by recent nobel prize winner Eric Betzig. I think people fail to appreciate the many frontiers that exist in just understanding how matter interracts with itself. The past was exciting because we got to discover new buildi…

I was briefly involved in Single Molecule Biophysics, where microscopes push the limits of what you can do with visible light in order to understand protein behaviour, where I heard the often repeated warning: "the microscope is an experiment itself". This was born out of the incredibly fancy and poorly understood microscope, which was experimental, and it was no guarantee that you were measuring the protein and not…

> and it was no guarantee that you were measuring the protein and not some weird light physics effect!

My thesis was in fluorescent bio physics at the nano scale (STED). We literally had a PI effect. Normally, the 'PI effect' is that when the professor comes in, the experiment stops working, mostly due to Murphy's law. With our case, it was because the extra body heat caused the mirrors to expand and drift out of place, ruining the alignment. This also meant it took a while for the mirrors to come back into alignment after lunch and first thing in the morning. What a mess!

So yes, in microscopy, the apparatus very much is part of the experiment and it takes ages to get things controlled and imaging correctly.

Re: The crisis in physics is not only about physics

#93

Post by garmaine »

Will_Parker wrote: post #26
Robotbeat wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dark matter, dark energy, quantum gravity.

Consciousness :trollface:

Go read some a Daniel Dennett and/or Max Tengmark.

Consciousness is a conceptual problem, not a physical one. It merely goes away once you start asking the right questions.

Re: The crisis in physics is not only about physics

#94

Post by roca »

Anon84 wrote: post #82
aplanas wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For example, detecting gravity waves does move the needle on any of these metrics It will surely do. Those achievements are not possible without staggering advances in technology that can be later applied in different fields. The same technology that we first developed for those expensive colliders is now used in MRI and others diagnosis tools that we have for granted today.

> The same technology that we first developed for those expensive colliders is now used in MRI and others diagnosis tools that we have for granted today. The question is, how much better would "MRI and other diagnosis tools" if that money had been spent actively trying to improve them instead of mostly going to detecting gravity waves? That's the question you need to answer to justify spending billions chasing physic…

Exactly.

Arguments for "spinoff benefits" from research always seem really weak to me. If you want lighter, imperishable food, invest in food preservation, not a space program that might happen to produce freeze-dried food.

Re: The crisis in physics is not only about physics

#95

Post by garmaine »

Ma8ee wrote: post #42
jonbronson wrote: post #30

"In the foundations of physics, we have not seen progress since the mid 1970s when the standard model of particle physics was completed." This seems to discount the explosion of work in the foundations of theoretical physics. Most notably the many variations of String Theory. Just because the work has not yet produced experiments that can validate them do not mean they are not progress. It's some of the most exciting…

For many people that have followed fundamental physics it has become more and apparent that string theory, with its variations, is a dead end. The problem isn’t that no ones has managed to experimentally validate the theory. The problem is that string theory has failed to even make predictions that even in theory could be experimentally tested. Edit: since I’m getting downvoted, is there anything factually wrong with…

Fellow (former) physicist here. I think you got downvotes because you merely asserted the death of string theory, and didn’t provide any facts. Ironic because string theory doesn’t present any new facts either. Down voters don’t know that what you state about string theory being dead is not just some guys opinion, but a general observation that any unbiased person in the field would infer. String theory was a fad that came and is now out of fashion.

Re: The crisis in physics is not only about physics

#96

Post by roca »

jean23 wrote: post #73
YayamiOmate wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading your 1st sentence made me think "But that's engineering, it's application. Basic science is getting knowledge just for the sake of it." And you basically followed with it. Basic science is the foundation engineering builds on. I believe 1st semiconductors were a science experiment. Em waves were. Gigantomagnetoresistance was. The internet was an academic curiosity. It think it's important to blow some of huma…

My favourite example is number theory, which was either hailed or ridiculed for millennia as being pure mathematics that can and will never be applied to real life problems. Today number theory is the basis for several important fields of application, including computation theory, modern cryptography, and numerical calculation.

Yes, but the question is, did developing number theory hundreds of years in advance of its applications accelerate the development of, say, cryptography? Or would cryptographers have just worked out the number theory when they needed it? If it did accelerate the development of cryptography, how much acceleration did we get for that investment?

Also in modern times, especially, there is a big problem of discoverability. If the mathematical result you need for some application is buried in a thirty-year-old journal using unfamiliar terminology, what are the chances you'll find it and understand it when you need it? I venture to suggest that much of the time it's easier to re-derive the result than to find it.

Re: The crisis in physics is not only about physics

#97

Post by roca »

chr1 wrote: post #89
Barrin92 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As usual with Sabine, this article blatantly misrepresents how science is done and how actual scientists think No offence but she is a trained physicist so she too is an 'actual scientist' by the very definition of the term. And she's completely right about the neglect of economic reasoning. The arguments against blowing 40 billion bucks on an accelerator that will likely not surface anything new is valid. Physicis…

> We see diminishing returns everywhere, and if this is not stopped and we don't manage to drastically increase the efficacy of scientific research we'll effectively flatline at some point. Most likely there is no way to increase efficacy, because the problems we try to solve become harder and harder as we go. This is why the predictions of singularity are unrealistic, the self improving AI, and constantly increasing…

Indeed! It's especially relevant because being smarter doesn't obviate the cost of doing experiments. The superintelligence still has to build hardware and wait around for results.

Re: The crisis in physics is not only about physics

#98

Post by OnlineGladiator »

roca wrote: post #96
jean23 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favourite example is number theory, which was either hailed or ridiculed for millennia as being pure mathematics that can and will never be applied to real life problems. Today number theory is the basis for several important fields of application, including computation theory, modern cryptography, and numerical calculation.

Yes, but the question is, did developing number theory hundreds of years in advance of its applications accelerate the development of, say, cryptography? Or would cryptographers have just worked out the number theory when they needed it? If it did accelerate the development of cryptography, how much acceleration did we get for that investment? Also in modern times, especially, there is a big problem of discoverabilit…

That's a good point, but I think a strong counter-example would be anything we get from satellites. We went to space for political reasons, but let's just say it was for the sake of science because it sure didn't solve any immediate problems for mankind. But it did create the technology for satellites, which allow us to better predict the weather and gives us GPS tracking, and other things as well. But imagine you wanted to develop a global tracking system, would your first thought be to invent satellites if they did not already exist? So it definitely does matter sometimes, although which times is obviously open to interpretation.

Re: The crisis in physics is not only about physics

#99

Post by theossuary »

roca wrote: post #94
Anon84 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The same technology that we first developed for those expensive colliders is now used in MRI and others diagnosis tools that we have for granted today. The question is, how much better would "MRI and other diagnosis tools" if that money had been spent actively trying to improve them instead of mostly going to detecting gravity waves? That's the question you need to answer to justify spending billions chasing physic…

Exactly. Arguments for "spinoff benefits" from research always seem really weak to me. If you want lighter, imperishable food, invest in food preservation , not a space program that might happen to produce freeze-dried food.

I'm not 100% convinced. I think it's hard to get really smart people to work on problems that aren't interesting. Asking a team to make food preservation 10% better won't invite the creativity and determination that asking them to preserve food to Mars would.

I think, when you take humans into account, you're better off setting interesting and challenging goals, with many useful byproducts.

Re: The crisis in physics is not only about physics

#100

Post by roca »

OnlineGladiator wrote: post #98
roca wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but the question is, did developing number theory hundreds of years in advance of its applications accelerate the development of, say, cryptography? Or would cryptographers have just worked out the number theory when they needed it? If it did accelerate the development of cryptography, how much acceleration did we get for that investment? Also in modern times, especially, there is a big problem of discoverabilit…

That's a good point, but I think a strong counter-example would be anything we get from satellites. We went to space for political reasons, but let's just say it was for the sake of science because it sure didn't solve any immediate problems for mankind. But it did create the technology for satellites, which allow us to better predict the weather and gives us GPS tracking, and other things as well. But imagine you wa…

I think that is a weak counter-example. The applications of rocketry and satellites were obvious by the end of WW2. In 1945 Arthur C. Clarke had already published an article explaining how useful it would be to have communication satellites in geostationary orbit, and it didn't take much imagination to suppose that a big enough rocket could put them there.
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