Fundamental physics is dying? [video] • Hacker News Board

Re: Fundamental physics is dying? [video]

#161

Post by pfdietz » Sat, Oct 12, 2024, 10:34 AM UTC

zarzavat wrote: post #141

hggigg wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

30 years ago I spoke to a fairly well known and regarded physicist who said something rather interesting along the same lines. Quoting as accurately as I can "physics looks sexy from the outside due to some celebrities but inside it's mostly worse than anyone wants to admit." . He also suggested I go and study mathematics instead because at least there will likely be some applications for it. I did and I am glad I di…

IANAP but it seems that fundamental physics suffers from a lack of monotonicity of knowledge. Although physics does its best to explain things, those explanations are more like guesses than known facts. A theoretical physicist can have their life's work undone simply because someone else comes up with a better guess, or experiment says no. You spend your life working on SUSY and then... nope. Even very established kn…

SUSY was never "established knowledge". It was a stack of increasingly baroque theories that had little or no experimental justification.

Re: Fundamental physics is dying? [video]

#162

Post by pfdietz » Sat, Oct 12, 2024, 10:56 AM UTC

rapjr9 wrote: post #86

I have a pet conspiracy theory for why there has been so little progress in physics for so long. The invention of the nuclear bomb scared a lot of people, it made them scared of physics. What else might physicists turn up that could change the world in dramatic ways? Anti-gravity? Ray guns? Other dimensions? Travel to other worlds? All bad for business, no one is going to buy your airplanes or air craft carriers if t…

An easier theory is that the Standard Model is so good that it's very difficult to find anywhere it fails. So there's no experimental fuel to propel physics forward.

Re: Fundamental physics is dying? [video]

#163

Post by teekert » Sat, Oct 12, 2024, 11:10 AM UTC

You know how some people seem knowledgeable until they talk about your field? Well for me (molecular biology and genomics) this never happens with Sabine.

So, even though much of this is over my head, I grant her much credence.

FWIW.

Re: Fundamental physics is dying? [video]

#164

Post by cb321 » Sat, Oct 12, 2024, 11:26 AM UTC

zburatorul wrote: post #137

throwawaymaths wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Name a single physics phenomenon that was discovered purely with way 2. I can only think of one, the positron. Newtonian physics was not kicked off by math "advances". Approximately speaking it was the other way, Newton created the math to explain p^2 ~ r^3, which was a surprising observation. Even theory of relativity wasn't really a math advance, the math was already mostly worked out by mach, lorenz, and minkowski…

The Higgs.

Also, the W's and the Z.. neutrino oscillations. There is actually a long list. Physics is the poster child science of theory-experiment interplay and this shows up constantly in the philosophy of science and other things resulting in expressions like "physics envy" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physics_envy ).

Re: Fundamental physics is dying? [video]

#165

Post by matusp » Sat, Oct 12, 2024, 11:51 AM UTC

zarzavat wrote: post #141

hggigg wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

30 years ago I spoke to a fairly well known and regarded physicist who said something rather interesting along the same lines. Quoting as accurately as I can "physics looks sexy from the outside due to some celebrities but inside it's mostly worse than anyone wants to admit." . He also suggested I go and study mathematics instead because at least there will likely be some applications for it. I did and I am glad I di…

IANAP but it seems that fundamental physics suffers from a lack of monotonicity of knowledge. Although physics does its best to explain things, those explanations are more like guesses than known facts. A theoretical physicist can have their life's work undone simply because someone else comes up with a better guess, or experiment says no. You spend your life working on SUSY and then... nope. Even very established kn…

ELI5 what is the G2 situation?

Re: Fundamental physics is dying? [video]

#166

Post by matusp » Sat, Oct 12, 2024, 11:56 AM UTC

herodotus wrote: post #120

This might be too weird to be true, but when I heard that Geoff Hinton got the Nobel prize for Physics, I wondered if the prize committee was having trouble finding "real" physicists who had made fundamental advances.... This is not meant to knock Prof Hinton. These are his own words: “I’m not a physicist, I have very high respect for physics,” Hinton said. “I dropped out of physics after my first year at university…

I agree with you. What is also telling is that there is no particularly strong reaction from the physics community that someone obvious was wrongfully omitted.

Re: Fundamental physics is dying? [video]

#167

Post by wizzwizz4 » Sat, Oct 12, 2024, 12:25 PM UTC

zepolen wrote: post #147

lamontcg wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's particle physics that seems to be stuck in a rut. You could look at the discovery of tetraquarks and pentaquarks, and high precision tests of the standard model though as a lot of progress. What it hasn't done though is create some sexy upending of our current models of physics, we keep asking questions and mostly the responses coming back are in line with theories that we knew 40 years ago. But that's still a…

I think this guy has hit the nail on the head: https://energywavetheory.com/subatomic-particles/ Take a look at how stupidly complex the standard model is compared to the other: https://energywavetheory.com/equations/theory-comparison/ Everything in the universe on that site is eloquently and simply explained, including gravity as a shading effect (think an eclipse/water waves acting on an obstacle: https://www.thest…

Anyone claiming that string theory is part of "the standard model", when proposing their alternative theory, is probably a crank.

Anyone deriving "E=mc²", and claiming that as evidence of their theory, is almost certainly a crank.

Re: Fundamental physics is dying? [video]

#168

Post by These335 » Sat, Oct 12, 2024, 12:31 PM UTC

kragen wrote: post #101

rapjr9 wrote: post #86

I have a pet conspiracy theory for why there has been so little progress in physics for so long. The invention of the nuclear bomb scared a lot of people, it made them scared of physics. What else might physicists turn up that could change the world in dramatic ways? Anti-gravity? Ray guns? Other dimensions? Travel to other worlds? All bad for business, no one is going to buy your airplanes or air craft carriers if t…

What time frame are you talking about here? Starting in 01950, 01995, 02010? If we're talking about 01995, it's conceivable that, say, the US and CERN could coordinate to suppress research into hafnium bombs, AVLIS, antigravity, or whatever. If we're talking about research much prior to that point, though, you'd have to include the Russians in the conspiracy. Probably not just any Russians, either; probably Khrushche…

I have never seen someone prefix dates with a zero like this. Why are you doing that?

Re: Fundamental physics is dying? [video]

#169

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Oct 12, 2024, 12:40 PM UTC

XorNot wrote: post #143

throwawaymaths wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> CERN would like to build a bigger particle accelerator Sabine has a point though. There isn't any specific thing thing that a larger accelerator is likely to yield a positive answer on. Unlike the current biggest, which was at least explicitly constructed to find the higgs. And before you say dark matter, there's zero evidence that dark matter particles will be in any given mass range nor is there a solud model tha…

The topic of this video is that people are struggling to find new paths forward due to a lack of experimental data and a lack of results from theoretical approaches - which ultimately is contingent on finding some new experimental data they can predict. So one way or another, it's quite likely you will need a larger accelerator. Moreover, logistically, not building that accelerator means you quite likely never have i…

[deleted]

Re: Fundamental physics is dying? [video]

#170

Post by verzali » Sat, Oct 12, 2024, 12:43 PM UTC

nyokodo wrote: post #108

WillAdams wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding as a layman: 1. Copernicus figured out that if you put the sun at the center, then epicycles weren't necessary, and the math got easier --- because epicycles were based on a mis-understanding of the actual state of the universe --- I don't believe that anyone has identified such a non-alignment of fact and reasoning and observation for contemporary physics. 2. The problem is, modern physics is arguab…

> Copernicus figured out that if you put the sun at the center, then epicycles weren't necessary Actually, his model assuming circular orbits still required epicycles to explain retrograde motion etc. A major reason it never caught on was that it was less accurate than the Ptolemaic model but was more of a mathematical curiosity rather than a serious contender.

Yep, it didn't really seem convincing until Kepler replaced the circles with ellipses, and even that step took a lot to move past established ideas about the perfection of nature.