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List of unsolved problems in physics
- dudeget 10y agoare there any unsolved problems in classical mechanics?
- Avshalom 10y agoif you want to include fluid mechanics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbulence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turbulence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navier%E2%80%93Stokes_existence_and_smoothness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navier%E2%80%93Stokes_existenc...
- ulucs 10y ago3-body problem is still unsolved if collisions are involved
- dnautics 10y agothere's still interesting issues of numerical accuracy in the point-mass case: E.G. is there a "good" way to calculate positions to arbitrary precision given starting conditions given in arbitrary precision, and what the relationship is.
- dnautics 10y agoI think the granular pile problem is still unsolved: Can you predict the cone angle of a pile of granular material given a small set of initial parameters?
- antognini 10y agoAbsolutely. A lot of my thesis could be considered classical mechanics (orbital dynamics, specifically). A very old problem that is still open is the question of whether the solar system is stable. (Newton worked on this question 300 years ago.) The state of the art can only reliably integrate orbits for the next few million years. After that, numerical limitations and chaos make it hard to predict exactly what the dynamics in the far future will be. All we can do is make statistical predictions (which we hope are unbiased). The best predictions are that there is a ~1% chance that two planets will collide before the Sun dies. Here's a nice article: http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Stability_of_the_solar_system http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Stability_of_the_solar_s...
- aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA 10y agoDoes this count as having testable solutions?
- aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA 10y agoI remember being told once that we don't have good simulation techniques for predicting the sounds produced by, for instance, the collision of two solid bodies. Lots of work has been done on modeling the kinematics and the optical appearance, but not on the audio side. I don't know if this is still true.
- pavel_lishin 10y agoWork has been done on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flOevlA9RyQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flOevlA9RyQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaFqvM1IsP8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaFqvM1IsP8
- augustl 10y agoI heard somewhere that when we apply all our knowledge to compute the position of the moon, it is a couple of feet off when we measure it, and we don't know why. I have been trying to find a source for that, but I've failed. Perhaps someone reading this knows? :)
- Havoc 10y agoThe fact that there is an actual (short) list boggles my mind. (And yes I understand this is a case of "questions raise more questions" but still).
- acadien 10y agoThese are general overall topics. Dive into any one of them and you'll find hundreds if not thousands of open questions. My particular field was amorphous solids and the glassy phase transition but yeesh boiling it down to just one questions is big over simplification. Don't worry, plenty of things out there we don't understand :)
- Kortaggio 10y agoWikipedia has some interesting lists, including this one of a more general list of unsolved problems across many fields: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_unsolved_problems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_unsolved_problems
- Numberwang 10y agoThank you, very interesting. I wonder how they were able to agree on a list of "Unsolved problems in philosophy". My best guess is they didn't involve philosophers in the creation of the list.
- sklivvz1971 10y agoMany of those problems are of the "seriously, who cares?" sort! For example: "How many straws can you remove from a bale before it's not longer a bale?", which has the answer "Words are not meant to be numerically precise so stop inventing problems"
- zeroer 10y agoExactly. I forgot which exact essay but Paul Graham has a great point about most controversies in philosophy being an argument over imprecise definitions. Exceptionally intelligent, young would-be philosophers see this and thus choose not to study philosophy, leading to the current situation where we have few incisive professional academic philosophers. If it's worth anything, I feel I learned more about how to live a good life from reading Graham's essays than in three semesters of studying academic philosophy in college. Aside: paraphrasing another answer, you can remove all of the straws from a bale, and you're left with a bale of zero straws.
- veli_joza 10y agoI guess 'all the straws' is as many as you can remove. If you removed any more than that, you would have to put some back to return to bale of zero straws.
- skierscott 10y agoThere are many open ended questions here. There's more flexibility to sci Fi then I thought.
- haddr 10y agoSome things should be probably updated on that page, I think the Sonoluminescence problem has been mostly explained.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- ISL 10y agoI've not yet seen a conclusive resolution of the sonoluminescence problem. Have a reference?
- WhitneyLand 10y agoDoes anyone else feel inspired by reading this list? And fantasize about being able to dedicate multiple lifetimes purely to the pursuit of knowledge?
- peter303 10y agoIt is amusing in the late 1800s some physicists were declaring physics a dead end because most problems had been solved, save for a few rough edges. There are people today making the same claim.
- __Joker 10y agoI have reconciled to the fact that, we will never be able to solve physics. There is recursive why, which we can never stop with, there will be always smaller and bigger things to deal with.
- wallace_f 10y agoBy what reasoning did you come to the conclusion that there will 'always be bigger and smaller things to deal with?' I'm interested in if there is a compelling reason to believe this? I'm not attempting to argue that we are near complete knowledge of the universe (and especially what potentially may lie beyond or outside of it, if there is anything or not).