Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The crisis in physics is not only about physics

backreaction.blogspot.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–179 of 179 posts

Re: The crisis in physics is not only about physics

#171

Post by mikorym »

mikorym wrote: post #170
mikorym wrote: post #151

> crisis in physics Me: Hmm... interesting. Personally I think they should spend time consolidating the different mathematical techniques. > Maybe all these string theorists have been wasting tax-money for decades, alright, but in the large scheme of things it’s not all that much money. I grant you that much. Theorists are not expensive. > String theory, supersymmetry, multiverses. There’s math for it, alright. Prett…

Wow, forgot about the \asterisk being a reserved character.

> crisis in physics

Me: Hmm... interesting. Personally I think they should spend time consolidating the different mathematical techniques.

> Maybe all these string theorists have been wasting tax-money for decades, alright, but in the large scheme of things it’s not all that much money. I grant you that much. Theorists are not expensive.

> String theory, supersymmetry, multiverses. There’s math for it, alright. Pretty math, even. But that doesn’t mean this math describes reality.

I don't really understand this part. I am not convinced that her post says much [1], because consider this: she is encouraging observation at the expense of speculation and then arguing that observational techniques are more expensive and hence prohibitive in the long run?

Is the real "unhappiness" in academia not just as simple as information overflow and the fact that only a few can be famous, whether there are a few or whether there are many? I don't know if that is what people get at with these kinds of blog posts. In any case, what I have found in mathematics is that the names of people whose work are worth reading are not necessarily the ones that you'll encounter first. OP does actually hint at this as well, but again, is it not just information overflow (and shouldn't be made more complicated than that)?

[1] The one good takeaway that I see is "focus on inconsistencies".

Re: The crisis in physics is not only about physics

#172

Post by pdonis »

pas wrote: post #139
pdonis wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This seems to discount the explosion of work in the foundations of theoretical physics. Most notably the many variations of String Theory. Hossenfelder is well aware of string theory, as she says right in the article: "All these wrong predictions should have taught physicists that just because they can write down equations for something does not mean this math is a scientifically promising hypothesis. String theory…

Most of those theories have some implications about lower energy ranges. And pushing up energies is a great way to rule out a lot of them. (And some of those theories have some large scale cosmological implications too, so better telescopes can rule out more.) But ... there seems to be a lack of (serious) theories that have easily testable predictions. And this is not surprising, because we also lack easily reproduca…

> Most of those theories have some implications about lower energy ranges. And pushing up energies is a great way to rule out a lot of them.

Yes. The problem is that ruling out is all that's happening. Not one has had an implication about lower energy ranges that has turned out to be right.

Re: The crisis in physics is not only about physics

#173

Post by Xcelerate »

ColanR wrote: post #167
Xcelerate wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1. This is my life plan as well — financial independence as soon as possible then start my own research. There really should be a club for this...

If we're nearby to each other, we could get it started. You in the DC area?

No, in the Bay Area :/

Re: The crisis in physics is not only about physics

#176

Post by pas »

pdonis wrote: post #172
pas wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of those theories have some implications about lower energy ranges. And pushing up energies is a great way to rule out a lot of them. (And some of those theories have some large scale cosmological implications too, so better telescopes can rule out more.) But ... there seems to be a lack of (serious) theories that have easily testable predictions. And this is not surprising, because we also lack easily reproduca…

> Most of those theories have some implications about lower energy ranges. And pushing up energies is a great way to rule out a lot of them. Yes. The problem is that ruling out is all that's happening. Not one has had an implication about lower energy ranges that has turned out to be right.

And that's not necessarily a problem. After all, we can measure things with insane accuracy (LIGO, atto/femto-second laser pulses, neutrino detectors, etc), our theories about the accessible energi regimes are quite good (14+ digits for QED - quantum electro dynamics).

At some point it's no wonder we need bigger microscopes to see deeper into reality.

Sure, were someone just come up with an even better theory that can be tested easily, that would be great too, but since we have no recipe for that, but we have quite a few for building bigger experiments, that's what most of the particle physicists advocate.

Re: The crisis in physics is not only about physics

#177

Post by pas »

Ma8ee wrote: post #168
pas wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But.. but... she can't have it both ways. The current unexplained data is not much, and the best explanations involve a lot of hard to test things. Why? Because there's not enough unexplained data. The easy to test theories have been already thrown out. Yes, sure, what she is saying is nice, let's try to explain stuff the simplest way possible. Occam's razor. But theorists already do this.

Of course she can have it both ways. Don’t be stupid. There’s plenty to do in physics without building an even bigger collider which likely won’t teach us more than the current one.

plenty to do, such as?

also, she can't wish away the fact that without data any new theories are worthless, even if someone conveniently comes up with one.

also, saying that the LHC haven't taught us anything ignores the reality of all the data that it has generated.

is it shiny "new" physics? no, but it's a crucial prerequisite for that.

particle physics needs new data for new physics eventually.

Re: The crisis in physics is not only about physics

#179

Post by poelzi »

ben_w wrote: post #169
poelzi wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those mangeled protons are not anti-protons. They are not stable but only a Proton with damaged outer shell (the one that breaks at 5 MeV). Get it stable like the Proton and we talk again. When real antimatter gets destroyed it looks like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Jupiter_impact_event

Sigh. For your benefit more than mine, I’d like to make you aware that you sound like a Markov chain trained on science-sounding words, because those words don’t fit together in the order you have combined them.

If you are so good, please explain me the black spot.

I just follow quite different, more classical model that is not invented by me.

What most people think is is a very bad truth function.

I care about the number of assumptions required for a model and the number of papers falsifying it. I don't care if a paper praises how good prediction X fits, you have a infinite number of models that predicted exactly the same value. But through falsification you can sieve out the wrong ones and guess what, most of the models commonly proposed as "truth" are long falsified. The standard model is not even logically sound and combined with GR/SR highly paradoxical.

Post reply on HN