Is particle physics dead, dying, or just hard?
quantamagazine.org
Is particle physics dead, dying, or just hard?
1–10 of 408 posts
Re: Is particle physics dead, dying, or just hard?
#2It's kind of legitimate, but it's kind of sad to see some of the smartest people in society just being like "maybe AI will just give me the answer," a phrase that has a lot of potential to be thought terminating.
Re: Is particle physics dead, dying, or just hard?
#3It's kind of legitimate, but it's kind of sad to see some of the smartest people in society just being like "maybe AI will just give me the answer," a phrase that has a lot of potential to be thought terminating.
That's mentioned in the article too:
>Cari Cesarotti, a postdoctoral fellow in the theory group at CERN, is skeptical about that future. She notices chatbots’ mistakes, and how they’ve become too much of a crutch for physics students. “AI is making people worse at physics,” she said.
Re: Is particle physics dead, dying, or just hard?
#4I find the arguments from those who say there is no crisis convincing. Progress doesn’t happen at a constant rate. We made incredible unprecedented progress in the 20th century. The most likely scenario is that to slow down for a while. Perhaps hundreds of years again! Nobody can know. We are still making enormous strides compared to most of scientific history.
Re: Is particle physics dead, dying, or just hard?
#5I find the arguments from those who say there is no crisis convincing. Progress doesn’t happen at a constant rate. We made incredible unprecedented progress in the 20th century. The most likely scenario is that to slow down for a while. Perhaps hundreds of years again! Nobody can know. We are still making enormous strides compared to most of scientific history.
Although we do have many more people now working on these problems than any time in the past. That said, science progresses one dead scientist at the time so might still take generations for a new golden era.
Re: Is particle physics dead, dying, or just hard?
#6Is it more that even the most dedicated and passionate researchers have to frame their interests in a way that will get funding? Particle Physics right now is not the thing those with the cash will fund right now. AI and QC is the focus.
Re: Is particle physics dead, dying, or just hard?
#7It's basically the opposite situation from 150 years ago.
Back then, we thought our theory was more or less complete while having experimental data which disproved it (Michelson-Morley experiment, Mercury perihelion, I am sure there are others).
Right now, we know our theories are incomplete (since GR and QFT are incompatible) while having no experimental data which contradicts them.
Re: Is particle physics dead, dying, or just hard?
#8It's impossible to tell without opening the box the particle physics is in.
Re: Is particle physics dead, dying, or just hard?
#9Is it more that even the most dedicated and passionate researchers have to frame their interests in a way that will get funding? Particle Physics right now is not the thing those with the cash will fund right now. AI and QC is the focus.
Well, it's hard to make an argument for a $100 billion collider when your $10 billion collider didn't find anything revolutionary.
Scaling up particle colliders has arguably hit diminishing returns.
Re: Is particle physics dead, dying, or just hard?
#10Theoretical physics progresses via the anomalies it can't explain.
The problem is that we've mostly explained everything we have easy access to. We simply don't have that many anomalies left. Theoretical physicists were both happy and disappointed that the LHC simply verified everything--theories were correct, but there weren't really any pointers to where to go next.
Quantum gravity seems to be the big one, but that is not something we can penetrate easily. LIGO just came online, and could only really detect enormous events (like black hole mergers).
And while we don't always understand what things do as we scale up or in the aggregate, that doesn't require new physics to explain.