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In the spirit of pointing out inconsistencies...I am not a physicist, but something I've been confused about lately is why the action constant has a unit of seconds baked into it. Feels like E = hf is an experiment with a hard coded 1 second measure time. Why not express the relationship in terms of power? P=uf where u is the action constant without the seconds unit hard coded. And E=utf has a variable time parameter
I don’t get it. What does she want people to do?
Look for minor inconsistencies and start from there.
That's exactly what (a lot of) people is doing! Is there a second suggestions?
There are some "interesting" experiments. One is the anomalous magnetic dipole moment of the muon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomalous_magnetic_dipole_mome...
Theoretical: 0.000116591804(51)
Experimental: 0.00011659209(6)
People is trying to solve it. The idea is that the theoretical model is missing a particle or an interaction between the known particles. So, it's a guess game. You must guess how the particle must behave. Some properties like charge are fixed, some properties like mass are a parameter. So you must guess the main properties of the particle and tweak the parameters until you get a theoretical result that is closer to the experimental result.
The problem is that the new proposed particle may change the theoretical expected result of other experiments. So you must fix the theoretical result of this experiment without breaking allllllllllllllll the other experiments.
And the properties are very constrained.
The easier to explain is the charge that must be an integer number. Or in some cases n/3, but you must explain very well why the fractional charges are no found in the wild. Other charges are posible, but people will think you are nuts unless there is a lot of supporting evidence.
Other properties are more difficult to explain, like the symmetry of the W+, W- and Z0 particles. If you propose a new particle that interacts with the W+ particle, there are a lot of restrictions because the particle you propose must interact with the W- particle, or you have to propose another particle that interacts with the W- particle in a very similar way. And at the same time, you must also fix a similar problem with the Z0 particle.
More details in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physics_beyond_the_Standard_Mo...
The main problem is that most of this extensions to the standard model are very technical and boring, and they are not covered by the popularization press.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
From an outsider's point of view (i.e. mine) it looks like physics has become too enamored with mathematics, "thinking" that reality can be totally described by mathematics. Which brings us to one of the author's point of views, the fact that physicists (and I guess most scientists) nowadays dismiss things like philosophy of science or epistemology, they just continue head-on on their "quest for knowledge" not realiz…
There's nothing wrong with the way math is used in physics. Consistency is a good thing; whether calculations possess explanatory power is another question.
> Consistency is a good thing
Lots of close but in the end ineffectual "epistemic" systems were internally consistent but in the long run they proved "deficient" (as in other, more efficient systems took their place). I confess I've never read Thomas Aquinas's work (to give just one example) but I'm pretty sure his "view of the world/reality system" is pretty consistent, don't think there are any internal contradictions in his writings. Problem is his internally consistent system wouldn't have been able to allow us to build combustion engines or modern electronics, so that we have had to come up with other internally-consistent "epistemic systems" that proved to be more efficient (because they allowed us to build and reason about combustion engines and modern electronics).
In the end and in the great scheme of things I don't think this theoretical physics road-block will be of any great importance for the general public, it looks like people are content with what they already can purchase based on past physics-related discoveries. Yeah, traveling through galaxy wormholes or getting to 100% know if the Universe is finite or not would be nice things to have, but people just don't care and there's nothing wrong with that.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That statement would read as arrogance from anyone.
It isn't a throwaway comment, it is reference to writing and work she has been doing for quite a while. It does come across as fairly arrogant without the context of all her other writing and work. With that context it comes across to me as more of an expression of frustration.
This is likely the first time I've seen any claim that she has a good idea of what to do instead (she's had the idea before, but not claimed it to be a good one as I recall), the past year it's been mostly about how all other physicists are stupid... and it's not like this supposedly "superior" strategy has yielded any great advanced for in her work.
"...mindless production of mathematical fiction..." 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.
Perhaps we need some new mathematics, not new physics
I think setting AI on it may be the way forward.
As science historian John Horgan noted in The End of Science the parallel in physics is with academic humanities departments becoming mired in "irony" The End of (one type of) Physics, and the Rise of the Machines https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=10680 Seems there are two possible outcomes. The deluge of data leads to better correlation which smooths over the flaws in current models. And corrects erro…
I've read several of Sabine's blogs over several months. I think she has very good ends in mind, has courage to push back on corporate/academic inertia ... such inertia comes with any human organization ... On the negative side she's big on complaining but small on alternatives. She's also a bit too blunt/dismissive of people -- this from a person who also dislikes corporate happy talk. As such it's not clear if she'…
In particular the posts where she keep highlighting the misguided fools that claim gravitational waves aren't real; she wrote a forbes contribution that made a big deal the LIGO people didn't respond to questions over facebook and saw it as suspicious, and awarded points to the GW denialists as a consequence.
But maybe it's just that I know have a better understanding of what Hossenfelder is writing about, and can see for myself how thin the cases can be.
It stagnated when they started doing NHST, ie checking for a difference from "background" vs collecting and comparing data to the predictions of various theories to distinguish between them. Same thing that has destroyed every field of research that adopted this approach.