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It’s time to admit quantum theory has reached a dead end

nautil.us

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Re: It’s time to admit quantum theory has reached a dead end

#121

Post by bee_rider »

mrjangles wrote: post #111

I come to HN to learn new things in fields I know little about, like tech and computers, I always find the comments to be authoritative and interesting. However, whenever I read the comments on any subject I happen to know something about, like physics, they are always completely nonsense from people who clearly have absolutely not even the smallest amount of experience in the area they are talking about. The worst p…

I think the discussion of computer stuff here is much better than the physics discussion. It is a website about startups after all.

I only know a tiny bit of modern physics, and in a sort of backdoor fashion through electrical engineering, and even I can spot the occasional "this guy learned quantum physics via Star Trek" post.

Re: It’s time to admit quantum theory has reached a dead end

#122

Post by spookthesunset »

nwallin wrote: post #93
geijoenr wrote: post #5

For some time already we are in an "epicyclean phase" of physics, trapped by the extraordinary predictive success of Quantum Electrodynamics and still using mathematical methods devised in the 19th century (variational calculus). This has lead us to the current situation, with extremely complicated theories at the limit of human understanding that bear no new results. It will take a modern day Copernicus to come up w…

Copernicus' model had the planets orbiting the same in circles at uniform speed. This does not match reality, so Copernicus just chucked in some epicycles to correct the error. Copernicus's model had all the complexity of epicycles, but he hard coded the first epicycle into the system by having the planets orbit the Sun instead of the Earth. We wouldn't need a Copernicus to solve this problem, we would need a Coperni…

So what is dark matter?

This thing that keeps galaxies bound that we cannot see but can only observe the effects… I think the hunt for it will push us into new territory.

That being said, as you say there has been nothing yet found that violates GR/QFT.

Re: It’s time to admit quantum theory has reached a dead end

#123

Post by spookthesunset »

Iwan-Zotow wrote: post #95
bricemo wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

27% of the universe is totally unknown (dark matter) and another 68% is totally unknown (dark energy), leaving only 5% of our universe that is explained by the standard model. Feels very epicycle-ish and ripe for a major shift.

they are both called dark for a reason not very observable

Their effects are observable by way of their gravity.

Re: It’s time to admit quantum theory has reached a dead end

#124

Post by credit_guy »

meroes wrote: post #116

I think a 100 years of now 17-decimal accuracy is fine. Maybe we do need a Copernican revolution. But how many areas of physics and science can we say that? A lot. I think for sure the idea of measurement as a passive activity revealing pre existing values is gone though. No matter what happens. How long was that a paradigm?

> Copernican revolution

The guy who did the hard work was Kepler. Copernicus's model of the solar system was just idle speculation. Also widely off the mark (it had epicycles, lots of thyem, twice as many as the Ptolemaic model [1]). Kepler sifted through the mountains of astronomical observations made by Tycho Brahe over many decades, and used the latest cutting edge math tools available (logarithms) to come up with his 3 laws.

The true revolution is science was obviously Isaac Newton. But if he had some giants on whose shoulders to stand, they were Kepler and Brahe, not Galileo and Copernicus.

[1] http://tofspot.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-great-ptolemaic-smac...

Re: It’s time to admit quantum theory has reached a dead end

#125

Post by hither_shores »

akomtu wrote: post #110
8bitsrule wrote: post #28

Even on the macro level there are lots of tricky questions. A bar magnet is surrounded by magnetic flux lines. Apparently it takes no energy to maintain that magnetic field. If I heat the bar in boiling water for long enough, it becomes demagnetized. On the macro level there's no visible/measureable change in the bar. We need a lot of magnification to see that the 'particles are no longer aligned'. On the other hand,…

I've been bothering myself with the same question. This rabbit hole in the wikipedia has led me to a dead-end explanation: those iron filings are pulled by virtual photons created by the magnet, those virtual photons are completely virtual and cannot be observed, except for the fact that they somehow pull the filings despite being virtual (this must be a small incursion of the purely mathematical world into reality).…

> This rabbit hole in the wikipedia has led me to a dead-end explanation

Trying to teach yourself physics by reading wikipedia is like trying to learn how to program by reading the C++ standard. It's a fine resource, but not for that. You need an introductory physics textbook, not an encyclopedia. Griffith's Introduction to Electrodynamics is a classic choice.

> those iron filings are pulled by virtual photons created by the magnet

No. Virtual particles are part of a notational scheme for carrying out certain computations in quantum field theory. They're not particles, and they're definitely not involved in classical electromagnetism.

> I've concluded that magnetism is an unexplained phenomenon, just like gravity: we have accurate formulas, but nobody knows what those formulas describe.

The formulas, ultimately, describe the relationship between our observations. This is the only sense in which we ever explain anything, and a sense in which magnetism and gravity are both very well-explained.

> For intuitive understanding, I see a magnet as a well, except that this well can be moved around and has two poles.

You should not try to understand electromagnetism intuitively yet. You haven't built the right intuitions, and to do that you first need to tear down your wrong ones.

Re: It’s time to admit quantum theory has reached a dead end

#126

Post by [deleted] »

exdsq wrote: post #101
mellosouls wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t use your intuition developed from grinding out web crap to try and reason about the forefront of human knowledge. Have you tried front end web frameworks recently? String theory has nothing on them.

100% My friends a pretty decent physicist at Oxford and the hardest part of his research? Makefiles.

[deleted]

Re: It’s time to admit quantum theory has reached a dead end

#127

Post by newsbinator »

jdrc wrote: post #10

Maybe start connecting the structures in our brains with the structures in our math. The limited representational capacity of meat-based brains is probably constraining what can be understood. Even math may be too constrained to go beyond current level of detail. I imagine an AI doing its own experiments with the universe will have unbounded understanding, but i doubt we d be able to understand her when she tries to…

I'm surprised humans have gotten this far in understanding the rules of the universe and making accurate predictions.

There's no evolutionary reason why we would have: our brains only hold like 7 ~ 11 things in working memory, we're almost always thinking about either food, entertainment, sleep, or sex, we can't conceptualize infinities, we're stuck living in linear time at 1 second per second, our long term memory is so full of holes it's practically non-existent, etc.

Either we're unexpectedly capable at making the most of our wetware or the universe is unexpectedly simple to understand.

Re: It’s time to admit quantum theory has reached a dead end

#128

Post by selfhifive »

fennecs wrote: post #64

Amusing to see all the pessimistic comments form programmers who have zero understanding beyond high school maths thinking somehow there is a magic solution to all the problems in physics like you can just refactor everything. Quantum field theory is definitely not stuck in the 1920s. Modern physics has a lot more going on than 19th century mathematics. We understand quite a lot about the mathematical structure under…

While I do get what you're trying to say, it has to be said that many CS people have been exposed to Quantum Physics.

Quantum computing is an elective at every half-decent University.

To think that programmers have zero understanding beyond high school math is just ignorant.

Re: It’s time to admit quantum theory has reached a dead end

#129

Post by xtracto »

mrjangles wrote: post #111

I come to HN to learn new things in fields I know little about, like tech and computers, I always find the comments to be authoritative and interesting. However, whenever I read the comments on any subject I happen to know something about, like physics, they are always completely nonsense from people who clearly have absolutely not even the smallest amount of experience in the area they are talking about. The worst p…

I feel the same when reading comments about medicine. I'm absolutely ignorant of that field, but I cringe at the authoritative sounding comments often found in HN.

Re: It’s time to admit quantum theory has reached a dead end

#130

Post by michaelwilson »

chasil wrote: post #89
fennecs wrote: post #64

Amusing to see all the pessimistic comments form programmers who have zero understanding beyond high school maths thinking somehow there is a magic solution to all the problems in physics like you can just refactor everything. Quantum field theory is definitely not stuck in the 1920s. Modern physics has a lot more going on than 19th century mathematics. We understand quite a lot about the mathematical structure under…

There are many practical applications of quantum mechanics. The one that I remember foremost is tunneling to (dis)charge the floating gates on flash memory transistors, but that just scratches the surface. "Flash memory chips found in USB drives use quantum tunneling to erase their memory cells." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Applications_of_quantum_mech... This I did not know: "It even exists in the simple light s…

But does it flow through wires?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHIhgxav9LY

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