Is particle physics dead, dying, or just hard?

Asking what it “is made of” seems like a somewhat ambiguous question to me. Still, the answer would not be “mathematical abstractions that fit the data”, but “these mathematical abstractions”. (And, there is a lot of meaning behind these “abstractions”. For example, there is a close correspondence between the Higgs mechanism for mass and superconductivity.)

Really, what possible answer could you ask for that wouldn’t be of this form?

When you describe an idea sufficiently precisely, you do mathematics; that’s almost what mathematics is.

It feels to me like complaints like yours tend to derive from an unwillingness to believe that things aren’t at their core made of solid objects or fluids or other stuff which behaves like macroscopic objects we have everyday experience with.

Can you describe an explanation that wouldn’t be like that but which (if it were true) you would find satisfying?

If you can’t describe how an explanation could (if it were true) satisfy you without being like that, then, if the universe isn’t like that, you have to be disappointed. And, in that case, again, I have to say, take it up with God.

On the other hand, if you can describe how an explanation (if it were true) could possibly satisfy you without saying “at its core, the universe works based on [behavior that you have plenty of physical intuition for based on your everyday interactions with macroscopic stuff]”, I would very much like to hear it.

> What is unknown is our knowledge of the state, and what collapses is that uncertainty.

Unless you believe in a hidden-variables theory, this is provably false, though, see Bertlmann's Socks etc.

So, I'm not actually a particle physicist. My understanding had been (based on something I'd read somewhere -- should try to find it again) that there is some problem caused by just declaring "neutrinos just have innate masses, they're not from the Higgs mechanism", but I could be mistaken. Obviously, if that is mistaken, then as you say it merely a question rather than a contradiction. Should try to dig that up though.

Edit: Doing some quick searching seems to indicate that giving neutrinos a bare mass term would violate electroweak gauge invariance? I don't know enough to evaluate that claim, or TBH really even to understand it. But I believe that's what I was thinking of, so maybe you can say how true and/or pertinent that is.

Poor Lord Kelvin gets maligned a lot:

https://arxiv.org/abs/2106.16033

That aside, a distinction should be made between

1) claiming that physics is pretty much done (what he's often accused of) and

2) pointing out factual errors in claims about the current state of knowledge (what I am doing).

If you absolutely must make flattering comparisons, may I suggest Feynman instead, especially on lying to laymen?

https://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm

I should add that I am not in complete agreement with what he said in that speech: calling it "not essential to the science" strikes me as naive. Once you start juggling two standards of communication, you are on a slippery slope. If it's OK to lie to the funding public at large, what about politicians, funding bodies, colleagues in other disciplines competing for the same funding, journal editors asking you to review a rival's work in your own field? Where do you draw the line? Do you draw a line, or do you descend into a state of generalized charlatanry?

That makes little sense to me. “Can’t be further probed”?

A thing behaves in some way. If you do things, things happen.

One can do certain measurements about how things behave, and then record these measurements.

What would it even mean for a material everything is based in to be magical? If there was some exceptional material that is unlike other things, following different rules, I can understand calling that “magical”. But, the only meaning I can think of for a material underlying everything to be “magical” is that either everyone just, declines to study it, or its behaviors like, depend on the intent of those studying it or something like that.

I also don’t get your statement that “brings a wonder back into it”. Like, do you not experience wonder when contemplating the nature of fundamental fields?

Like, if we set aside the “magical” part, it kinda sounds like your objection is that fields aren’t a substance/material. But, if you just generalize your notion of “material” a bit, why don’t quantum fields satisfy all your requirements? And, if they do, don’t you want to understand how this “magical material” behaves??

You decry these things as “abstractions”, and say that they “make no sense to anyone”. They can certainly be confusing, but they aren’t beyond comprehension, and I don’t see them as any less “material reality”? Macroscopic things just behave differently.

I don’t think I agree with “particles aren’t real” either. Electrons being excitations in the electron field, doesn’t make them “not real” any more than an apple being made of atoms makes it not real, or sound being vibrations in a medium makes sound not real.

Like, buckyballs are clearly “real” (they can act like little cages with something else contained inside), but they also clearly are “particles” like protons are (you can do a double slit experiment with them and get an interference pattern).

Also, I don’t think I’d say the enterprise was ever “What is the universe made of?” so much as “How does the universe work?” ? It is a drive to understand! It is asking “How do initial conditions relate to final conditions?”. The tech is ancillary to this!