51–60 of 326 posts
Actually, string theory arose as a way of doing exactly what this person requests. It was noticed that quantum field theory and gravity do not go together, so it was attempted to do something about this. So, it did not really work out? Well, you know the thing with this kind science is that it is unknowable beforehand what you are or are not going to find.
Point was, math is one thing, reality is another.
This derisive comment betrays the authors own hypocritical stance, claiming physicists are too close-minded, while simultaneously ridiculing the role of advanced mathematics in formulating new physics hypotheses, arbitrarily declaring them mindless fiction.
"But for all I can tell at this moment in history I am the only physicist who has at least come up with an idea for what to do. "
This is one heavy claim (two actually), is there some place where she elaborates what that idea is in terms more specific than "resolving inconsistencies" and "more theorists" ?
Would solving these shortcomings make life better for anyone?
Other than the now famous physicist that came up with the solution, wouldn't the others working on these problems become unemployed?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
She says: "And please spare me the complaints that I supposedly do not have anything better to suggest, because that is a false accusation. I have said many times that looking at the history of physics teaches us that resolving inconsistencies has been a reliable path to breakthroughs, so that’s what we should focus on . I may be on the wrong track with this, of course. But for all I can tell at this moment in histor…
But isn't that exactly what was done, e.g. in supersymmetry? The Standard Model could not explain dark matter etc., so physicists tried to come up with a new theory potentially explaining it. Yes it's based on math, on beautiful math, but isn't it always the case in physics? How did Newton create his laws? By using math. How did Einstein create his theories? By using math. It's math, math, math. So create your math t…
One of the things that Sabine has pointed out with respect to supersymmetry is that, for the last two particle accelerators, physicists have been arguing that they'll be able to find the supersymmetric particles to expand the model. And when they've failed to find any evidence for such particles, they've twice said "okay, it's not fatal to our theory, but we'll find them in the next one for sure." Every potentially predictive phenomenon arising from supersymmetry has failed to be found, and the response has been to merely twist the knobs so that these phenomena will happen just out of reach of current technology.
The real risk here is that we are so wedded to particular ideas that we refuse to give up on them, even when they have given us absolutely nothing in terms of extra (validated) predictive value, no matter how much we try to squeeze it out of them.
We believe, as an assumption (or nearly as a matter of orthodoxy) that there are simple universal laws that govern consistent natural phenomena. One could argue that that is the foundation of our science of physics in that if that wrong, the whole thing falls down. But that has not “progressed” and really should not change... which seems consistent with the concept of a building foundation. Building foundations don’t move and shouldn’t move.
What about theories, which seem to be the focus of her blog post? Well we should be careful to distinguish between our theories and the fundamental laws we think they describe—the map vs the territory and all that. I would really hesitate to call our theories a foundation of physics. For one thing they are known to be provisional; intended to be changeable. That’s not how foundations usually work.
When observations contradict theories, the theories must move. From that perspective one could say that observations are more foundational than theories. Once a piece of evidence is properly observed, it doesn’t change.
And the thing is, we have collected major (I would argue foundational) observations in the last 40 years. We observed the Higgs boson and gravitational waves, and I would call both of those foundational.
That they agreed with existing theory is somehow being taken for a crisis? I guess it’s a crisis if your job is to come up with new theories and you’re lacking reasons to do so.
But there are plenty of mysterious observations yet to be explained. Many of the observations related to dark matter and dark energy fit within a retrospective 40-year time horizon. Call them astronomy if you like, but going back up to my second paragraph, we believe they should be explainable by our physical theories.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But isn't that exactly what was done, e.g. in supersymmetry? The Standard Model could not explain dark matter etc., so physicists tried to come up with a new theory potentially explaining it. Yes it's based on math, on beautiful math, but isn't it always the case in physics? How did Newton create his laws? By using math. How did Einstein create his theories? By using math. It's math, math, math. So create your math t…
Quantum mechanics is an example. We know how to use QM. It is an amazing theory. But physicists aren't probing QM anymore. Well most aren't. It does such a good job spitting out answers, we don't ask why. There is a lot to be explored there but academia tells people to avoid it. They say don't look at the man behind the curtain. QM is equations that gives good answers but we don't really know why. Something Deeply Hi…
Physicists are probing the heck out of every theory. However, QM has proven to be _extremely_ reliable, even some 'Gedankenexperimente' by Einstein trying to make it look wrong turned out to be true ('geisterhafte Spukwirkung').
>> There is a lot to be explored there but academia tells people to avoid it.
I don't think so. I mean just look at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) which probes fundamental forces which are... guess what... based on quantum field theory which itself is based on quantum mechanics.
I don’t get it. What does she want people to do?
Stop working on string theory, multiverse, or some of the other mainstream theories she mentioned. Start fresh about how to approach theoretical physics instead of taking the above mentioned theories almost as a given and trying to do science within that framework.
They’re simple speculation; what philosophers right back to the ancient Greeks were only too happy to rest on for 2000 years, until Persian protoscientists, during their own all-too-brief golden age, annoyingly said “but wait, don’t you think we should at least test our beliefs before we take them as granted?”; a practice that fully went mainstream a half-millennium later as the European Renaissance kicked off; and so modern-day Natural Philosophy was born.
If the first rule of science is, “you must not fool yourself (and you are the easiest person to fool)”, then rule zero must surely be “stuff’s hard, folks”. And some things are just invariant, no matter how much you might wish that they not be†.
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(† So no Warp Drive either, kids… sorry!;)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But isn't that exactly what was done, e.g. in supersymmetry? The Standard Model could not explain dark matter etc., so physicists tried to come up with a new theory potentially explaining it. Yes it's based on math, on beautiful math, but isn't it always the case in physics? How did Newton create his laws? By using math. How did Einstein create his theories? By using math. It's math, math, math. So create your math t…
Not really. Supersymmetry doesn't provide a theoretical explanation for any physical observations we can't explain with current models. Instead, it arises from a desire to... "beautify" the math of the Standard Model. (My first instinct is to write "simplify", but I'm not sure it's an actual simplification. One of the things that Sabine has pointed out with respect to supersymmetry is that, for the last two particle…
Yes it does. It has dark matter candidates. The Standard Model does not have any.