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Is particle physics dead, dying, or just hard?

quantamagazine.org

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Re: Is particle physics dead, dying, or just hard?

#141

Post by benreesman »

It is almost always the case that when progress stops for some meaningful period of time that a parochial taboo would need violating to move forwards.

The best known example is the pre- and post-Copernican conceptions of our relationship to the sun. But long before and ever since: if you show me physics with its wheels slipping in mud I'll show you a culture not yet ready for a new frame.

We are so very attached to the notions of a unique and continuous identity observed by a physically real consciousness observing an unambiguous arrow of time.

Causality. That's what you give up next.

Re: Is particle physics dead, dying, or just hard?

#142

Post by z3phyr »

mikkupikku wrote: post #58
idiotsecant wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely not. Newtonian physics was 'good enough' until we disproved it. Imagine where we would be if all we had was Newtonian physics.

Newtonian physics is good enough for almost everything that humans do. It's not good for predicting the shit we see in telescopes, and apparently it's not good for GPS, although honestly I think without general relativity, GPS would still get made but there'd be a fudge factor that people just shrug about. For just about anything else, Newton has us covered.

Microchips? A lot of quantum physics is applied here from the top of my mind.

Re: Is particle physics dead, dying, or just hard?

#144

Post by narcraft »

nerdsniper wrote: post #104
refulgentis wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it?

Flash memory (quantum tunneling), lasers (stimulated emission), transistors (band theory), MRI machines (nuclear spin), GPS (atomic transition), LED's (band gap), digital cameras (photoelectric effect), ...the list does, in fact, go on, and on, and on.

Did you intentionally list things that are clearly not essential to day-to-day life?

Re: Is particle physics dead, dying, or just hard?

#145

Post by mastermage »

benreesman wrote: post #141

It is almost always the case that when progress stops for some meaningful period of time that a parochial taboo would need violating to move forwards. The best known example is the pre- and post-Copernican conceptions of our relationship to the sun. But long before and ever since: if you show me physics with its wheels slipping in mud I'll show you a culture not yet ready for a new frame. We are so very attached to t…

the fuck you mean giving up causality?

Re: Is particle physics dead, dying, or just hard?

#146

Post by iterance »

threethirtytwo wrote: post #106
iterance wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Specific fields may not advance for decades at a time, but we are hardly in a scientific drought. There have been dramatic advances in countless fields over the last 20 years alone and there is no good reason to expect such advances to abruptly cease. Frankly this is far too pessimistic.

I don't understand what is wrong with pessimism. That's not a valid critique. If someone is pessimistic but his description of the world matches REALITY, then there's nothing wrong with his view point. Either way this is also opinion based. There hasn't been a revolutionary change in technology in the last 20 years. I don't consider smart phones to be revolutionary. I consider going to the moon revolutionary and catc…

My critique is not due to pessimism, it is due to afactuality. Breakthroughs in science are plenty in the modern era and there is no reason to expect them to slow or halt.

However, from your later comments, it sounds as though you feel the only operating definition of a "breakthrough" is a change inducing a rapid rise in labor extraction / conventional productivity. I could not disagree more strongly with this opinion, as I find this definition utterly defies intuition. It rejects many, if not most, changes in scientific understanding that do not directly induce a discontinuty in labor extraction. But admittedly if one restricts the definition of a breakthrough in this way, then, well, you're probably about right. (Though I don't see what Mars has to do with labor extraction.)

Re: Is particle physics dead, dying, or just hard?

#147

Post by fatbird »

benreesman wrote: post #141

It is almost always the case that when progress stops for some meaningful period of time that a parochial taboo would need violating to move forwards. The best known example is the pre- and post-Copernican conceptions of our relationship to the sun. But long before and ever since: if you show me physics with its wheels slipping in mud I'll show you a culture not yet ready for a new frame. We are so very attached to t…

This is a common framing of the Copernican revolution, and it's wrong.

Copernicus was proposing circular orbits with the sun at the center instead of the earth. The Copernican model required more epicycles for accurate predictions than the considerably well-proven Ptolemaic model did, with the earth at the centre.

It wasn't until Kepler came along and proposed elliptical orbits that a heliocentric solar system was obviously a genuine advance on the model, both simpler and more accurate.

There was no taboo being preserved by rejecting Copernicus's model. The thinkers of the day rightfully saw a conceptual shift with no apparent advantage and several additional costs.

Re: Is particle physics dead, dying, or just hard?

#148

Post by potamic »

tariky wrote: post #115

To my uneducated eye it looks like they are stuck in limbo for 120 years. Nothing practical has been create based on those theories. It is just words and calculations spinning in circles. I wish those people focus on practical real world physics. So we all can enjoy new innovations.

You're right. If you were educated, you would have learnt about the numerous applications of particle physics in modern technologies.

Re: Is particle physics dead, dying, or just hard?

#149

Post by mastermage »

drdeca wrote: post #107
epsilonsalts wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah that's the outcome theorized by Gödel. Incompleteness is inherent to our understanding as the universe is too vast and endless for us to ever capture a holistic model of all the variables. Gödel says something specific about human axiomatic systems, akin to a special relativity, but it generalizes to physical reality too. A written system is made physical writing it out, and never complete. Demonstrates that our…

Gödel’s incompleteness says almost nothing about this. I wish people wouldn’t try to apply it in ways that it very clearly is not applicable to. An environment living in Conway’s Game of Life could be quite capable of hypothesizing that it is implemented in Conway’s Game of Life.

Now the question is are we in Conways Game of Life?

Re: Is particle physics dead, dying, or just hard?

#150

Post by andrewflnr »

threethirtytwo wrote: post #106
iterance wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Specific fields may not advance for decades at a time, but we are hardly in a scientific drought. There have been dramatic advances in countless fields over the last 20 years alone and there is no good reason to expect such advances to abruptly cease. Frankly this is far too pessimistic.

I don't understand what is wrong with pessimism. That's not a valid critique. If someone is pessimistic but his description of the world matches REALITY, then there's nothing wrong with his view point. Either way this is also opinion based. There hasn't been a revolutionary change in technology in the last 20 years. I don't consider smart phones to be revolutionary. I consider going to the moon revolutionary and catc…

You imply your view "matches REALITY", then fall back to "Either way this is also opinion based." Nicely played. But the actual reality is that scientific discovery is proceeding at least as fast as it ever has. These things take time. 20 years is a laughably short time in which to declare defeat, even ignoring the fact that genetic and other biological tech has advanced leaps and bounds in that time. There's important work happening in solid state physics and materials science. JWST is overturning old theories and spawning new ones in cosmology. There's every reality-based reason to believe there will be plenty of big changes in science in the next 20 years or so.
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