I wonder: does this theory explain any currently unexplained phenomenon? It may be testable, but that doesn't guarantee it to be correct. There could be another undescovered theory that also passes these tests. It feels weird to make up a theory, and then make up some tests to validate it, without mentioning the actual problem the theory is trying to resolve. It seems physicists just don't like there being two separate models, one for large things and one for small things, but it could be the universe is just like that, right?
New theory claims to unite Einstein's gravity with quantum mechanics
101–110 of 203 posts
Re: New theory claims to unite Einstein's gravity with quantum mechanics
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've heard of an appeal to authority, but an appeal to ignorance is new. OPs question is not ridiculous, nor does he suggest it to counter the "mysterious" claims
Not new, Efficient Markets Hypothesis is like this. "I haven't heard of a way to make money from trading so there isn't one" is my caricature of it.
Isn't it more like: "exploitation of a market inefficiency renders the market efficient over time", or something to that effect? Or rather, (others) making money from trading is what makes it hard (for you) to make money from trading.
Re: New theory claims to unite Einstein's gravity with quantum mechanics
#103I wonder: does this theory explain any currently unexplained phenomenon? It may be testable, but that doesn't guarantee it to be correct. There could be another undescovered theory that also passes these tests. It feels weird to make up a theory, and then make up some tests to validate it, without mentioning the actual problem the theory is trying to resolve. It seems physicists just don't like there being two separa…
Theories like that are never “correct”. They just explain things and fit data better than other/previous theories. Correct is not what I would go for. “Best we currently have” sounds more like it
Re: New theory claims to unite Einstein's gravity with quantum mechanics
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
As has even been discussed on HN over the years (!), the cause is unknown.* This is one of the motivations to replace the official kilogram with a definition based on measurable natural quantities, as had been done with the second and the meter. It took until 2018 to do so: https://www.nist.gov/si-redefinition/kilogram-introduction * it’s not like there aren’t good theories but you can’t experiment directly on “the”…
I'm neither seeing the cause being mentioned as unknown in that link, nor would the cause being unknown imply anything being mysterious? Like if you find that your car has broken down after 200k miles, you might not be able to determine the cause, but it wouldn't exactly be some kind of mysterious physical phenomenon that would puzzle scientists. Obviously, something wore out. Why/how is this any different?
Did you click on the other kilogram links (or other metric links which are also interesting?)
A useful paragraph is the following: "The trend during the past century had been for most of BIPM's official copies to gain mass relative to the IPK, although by somewhat different amounts, averaging around 50 micrograms (millionths of a gram) over 100 years. But an alternative explanation is that the IPK was losing mass relative to its copies. Even more likely, it was a combination of both."
Those pages are for the lay audience but you can do your own web search (probably even an algolia search of HN) to know more.
In general, it's often easy to come up with an explanation of some new phenomenon, but to answer the question you still have to do science...which often simply confirms intuition but not always. My comment was less on the reason and more on the difficulty of doing experiments on what was literally the kg, no matter how it fluctuated.
Re: New theory claims to unite Einstein's gravity with quantum mechanics
#105I wonder: does this theory explain any currently unexplained phenomenon? It may be testable, but that doesn't guarantee it to be correct. There could be another undescovered theory that also passes these tests. It feels weird to make up a theory, and then make up some tests to validate it, without mentioning the actual problem the theory is trying to resolve. It seems physicists just don't like there being two separa…
Disclaimer: not a physicist.
It seems to me that one issue with falsification is that: if you're exactly right on how the universe works, then it's hard to know that you are exactly right. So I imagine that we'd be infinitely putting resources in it (to some extent) to see if anything is unexplained. So if the universe is just like that, then we'd have a long way to go to find out.
I do think that physicists are bothered by the idea that current theories can't explain everything they're observing. So whether the universe is or isn't like that, more research is definitely needed.
Re: New theory claims to unite Einstein's gravity with quantum mechanics
#106The article mentions the 5000:1 odds bet, but reading the text of the bet itself is hilarious: >>> Whereas Carlo Rovelli and Geoff Penington firmly believe that gravity is better described by a quantum theory. >>> And whereas Jonathan Oppenheim is more sympathetic to other possibilities (i.e. doesn’t have a clue) ... [1] - https://www.ucl.ac.uk/oppenheim/pub/quantum_vs_classical_bet...
> a small amount of olive oil, balsamic vinegar, or wine I think we can guess who write up the contract!
The contract doesn't specify what kind of balsamic vinegar. Supermarket balsamic is just a mixture of colourings and flavourings. Proper solera balsamic is sipped as an aperitif, and is much too expensive for me to have ever tasted.
Re: New theory claims to unite Einstein's gravity with quantum mechanics
#107What awful AI-generated illustrations. Anyway, is there any justification for treating spacetime as a smooth manifold, except for mathematical tractability?
They're not AI generated, there's literally artist credits in the picture captions.
Doesn't the image caption contain a prompt?
When i use it in DALL-E 3, I get similar images.
"The image depicts an experiment in which heavy particles(illustrated as the moon), cause an interference pattern (a quantum effect), while also bendingspacetime. The hanging pendulums depict the measurement of spacetime. The actual experiment istypically performed using Carbon-60, one of the largest known molecules. The UCL calculationindicates that the experiment should also be performed using higher density atoms such as gold. The other two images represent the two experiments proposed by the UCL group, both of whichconstrain any theory where spacetime is treated classically. One is the weighing of a mass, the otheris an interference experiment."
Re: New theory claims to unite Einstein's gravity with quantum mechanics
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
Perhaps they're post-edited somewhat but there isn't a way you're convincing me those are fully handmade. Look at the nonsensically warped tiles. Look at the rods suspending some of the globes but not others in a random fashion, look at the illegible "writing".
Yeah and the style has the default DALLE-3 style written all over them. Isaac Young may be credited but I think Isaac is using DALLE-3 and I hope they are aware they have hired a "prompt wizard". :)
I think they even put the prompt as the image caption?
Re: New theory claims to unite Einstein's gravity with quantum mechanics
#109What awful AI-generated illustrations. Anyway, is there any justification for treating spacetime as a smooth manifold, except for mathematical tractability?
The illustrations looked like some sort of steampunk drawings from a fantasy book.
Re: New theory claims to unite Einstein's gravity with quantum mechanics
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
I find that it saves time to just start by assuming the experts haven't thought of X because of how many times I've seen assuming that they _have_ thought of X turn out to be a poor assumption, across many domains.
Can you give any examples of times you’ve easily anticipated X when a whole field of subject matter experts have demonstrably overlooked it?
Can't speak for OP, but I've had more than a few similar experiences (from both sides of the fence FWIW).
I can think of one example in software deployment frequency. The observation (many years ago), was that it's painful and risky (therefore, expensive) to deploy software, so we should do it as infrequently as the market will allow.
Many companies used to be on annual release schedules, some even longer. Many organizations still resist deploying software more than every couple/few weeks.
~15 years ago, I was working alongside the other (obviously ignorant) people who believed that when something is painful, slow and repetitive, it should be automated. We believed that software deployment should happen continuously as a total non-event.
I've had to debate this subject with "experts" over and over and over again, and I've never met a single person who, once migrated, wanted to go back to the nightmare of slow, periodic software deployments.