18 ms·

In the foundations of physics we haven't seen progress for the past four decades

237 points by apsec112 8y ago

kiba 8y ago
How many particle physicists are we throwing at this problem?
- johnchristopher 8y ago
  I heard that to get interesting data we are actually supposed to throw them very fast against each other.
- 7373737373 8y ago
  In general, it would be quite interesting to see how many scientists, technologists and mathematicians are working on which problems. For the latter group, I've seen estimates that there are less than 350,000 researchers worldwide.
breatheoften 8y ago
I don't have any sense for how much the author is contributing to any discussions of worth -- but I do struggle with the phrase 'foundations of physics'. To me 'foundation of' invites comparison to similar uses in other domains -- in math where it tends to concern the nature of argument, or to computer science where it concerns mechanisms for accomplishing defined goals efficiently or reasoning about program performance/semantics, or to engineering where it concerns such things as stacking rocks and balancing forces so as to ensure that a given way of stacking is probably capable of lasting for a certain amount of time. But why exactly should 'high energy physics' be considered more 'foundational' than other domains of physical observation? Particle physics pursues description of effects that can occur at very small sizes - but are there _really_ such tight linkages from the observational domain of particle physics to observable 'larger scale' physics such that one truly deserves to be labeled 'foundational' for the other? Just to pick a domain out of a hat, when modeling things like electromagnetic potentials in material science, actively investigated theoretical models are coarse grained so far beyond the scale of the probing done in particle physics that I have wonder how much are the 'foundational' theories and the larger scale ones ever really expected/required to be consistent with each other ...? If 'foundational' isn't a statement about the direction of the consistency requirements the components of argument - then what exactly is it a statement about?
- jakeinspace 8y ago
  As long as you hold onto the assumption that all physical phenomena on the macro scale can in a (perhaps not useful) sense be explained reductively by particle/field physics of some sort, it's clear that poking at the particle/field/whatever substrate is more foundational than studying high level emergent phenomena. That isn't to say that high-energy particle physics is the best or only avenue of fundamental exploration; obviously, much of the last century's advancements came from cosmology. There's nothing wrong with studying condensed matter physics, and there is a huge amount to learn. But I don't see a conceivable way in which discoveries made by studying complex behavior closer to our scale will help solve quantum gravity or dark matter. Then again, if humanity were one big game of Civilization, I'd be directing my tech tree towards engineering and applied physics research at the moment: we probably don't need any more fundamental physics to build sustainable fusion reactors.
  - roenxi 8y ago
    > But I don't see a conceivable way in which discoveries made by studying complex behavior closer to our scale will help solve quantum gravity or dark matter. In the main I only see reason and balanced in this post, but this particular statement is a bit risky. Historically, big breakthroughs in the sciences happen when new measurement techniques become available or existing measurement techniques are refined to produce a "significantly" greater level of accuracy. A breakthrough in our understanding of reality could come from anywhere that anyone pushes the bounds of what we can measure; which admittedly is probably the folk with the budget for a big particle accelerator, but one could imagine a path for almost anybody to make a contribution. One of the take-aways of the whole quantum vs classical business is that just because the evidence seems to be converging on a well respected model doesn't mean that the evidence is actually going to converge.
    - jakeinspace 8y ago
      I definitely agree with you and mathgenius that mathematical techniques and technological progress created while investigating macroscopic behavior may be useful for making breakthroughs in "fundamental" physics. There is certainly precedent for that sort of thing. Perhaps complexity theory will have some significant impact on physics this century, who knows. But it's unclear whether there's anything that pure mathematics or mathematical analogies to the macro world can tell us about how gravity and quantum mechanics are unified, or any of the other big open questions at the bottom.
XorNot 8y ago
Well one solution would be to start aggressively funding the LHC's successor, since in lieu of some better places to go looking for new behaviors we're going to need a higher energy particle accelerator if nothing comes up.
giorgioz 8y ago
The article is far from constructive criticism. In the end is blaming the general current approach but it does not offer any alternative solution. It's easy to say 'you are not doing it right' unless you can do it right.
mycall 8y ago
"When the whole world is running towards a cliff, he who is running in the opposite direction appears to have lost his mind." - C. S. Lewis $20 billion spent is a lot of high tech jobs being made. I'm for it. Think how much we spend on wars.
- reasonablemann 8y ago
  Sure, but is this the best way to spend that money?
  - peteradio 8y ago
    Does it have to be the best?
    - Barrin92 8y ago
      Obviously not, but even many physicists are suggesting that the 20 billion could be spend better.
  - Aeolun 8y ago
    Given the alternatives it is likely to go to, pretty likely. There’s definitely better things it could be spent on. It’s just that that will never happen. So we pick the best of the worse things.
  - danarmak 8y ago
    As Scott Aaronson put it[0]: > I’m not making the much stronger claim that this is the best possible use of $20 billion for science. Plausibly a thousand $20-million projects could be found that would advance our understanding of reality by more than a new collider would. But it’s also important to realize that that’s not the question at stake here. When, for example, the US Congress cancelled the Superconducting Supercollider midway through construction—partly, it’s believed, on the basis of opposition from eminent physicists in other subfields, who argued that they could do equally important science for much cheaper—none of the SSC budget, as in 0% of it, ever did end up redirected to those other subfields. In practice, then, the question of “whether a new collider is worth it” is probably best considered in absolute terms, rather than relative to other science projects. [0] https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=4122 https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=4122
tim333 8y ago
If you look at the history of science over the last 2000 years or so, new insights have popped up from time to time in a rather random way. There isn't really a reason to expect them regularly thought that doesn't mean we shouldn't stop looking.
- j45 8y ago
  Agreed. In the meantime, because we don't have understanding about something yet, it doesn't mean understanding does not exist because we don't understand it. Many of the brightest phds in today's society are working on platforms to gather and retain people's attention to get clicks on ads. Maybe this is part of the reason. Reaching children with education who don't have access to it will bring more of this random forward progress. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan
  - noir_lord 8y ago
    With all the technology we have now and the web and where it's gotten to it amazes me that education hasn't been revolutionised. Example, I was interested in doing a BSc/B.Eng in software engineering online only (in the UK) and it was silly how difficult it was to find out basic details and pricing.
    - tim333 8y ago
      A lot of the issues would seem to be human behavioural and social stuff rather than the actual information. I mean even before web tech you could in principle learn the vast majority by reading books but most people lack the motivation. And then you think you might just be able to do the exams but a lot of university qualification is just certifying you've been in the vicinity of lecture halls for 3 years or so rather than the actual tests. I'm sure there must be some way to do better.
      - noir_lord 8y ago
        Oh I agree its cultural. Just seems strange that an online degree/masters costs the same as in-person one. I'd have been quite happy to teach myself the entire syllabus, what I really want is them to certify via the exams that I've learnt the stuff. Of course if they ever actually do go that route they damage themselves economically. Universities have had the exclusive market for higher education cornered for what a millennia or so.
reasonablemann 8y ago
Would throwing 1000 particle scientists and 20B at fusion speed up it's progress?
- est31 8y ago
  I think the issue with fusion is similar to the arguments made by the lady in OP. Yes, fusion is under-funded but partly because people doubt that it's possible at all. OTOH, there are definitely people who have seriously good proposals for further fusion projects e.g. [1]. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkpqA8yG9T4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkpqA8yG9T4
  - maxxxxx 8y ago
    I have never heard that people think fusion is impossible. It looks more like a flight to the moon appeared around 1960. You know it’s possible but there is a lot of engineering needed to make it happen.
    - mhh__ 8y ago
      The problem is it's not even known whether the engineering problems can be attacked at all, unlike the Apollo program where even though a large amount of work (Breadth rather than depth this time) it was an iterative evolution of past programs.
      - maxxxxx 8y ago
        In 1960 they had no idea how rendezvous in space or a lot of other things would work but they knew they would figure it out with enough time and money . From whatever I have heard about fusion I have never heard about doubts about feasibility. It’s about trying out different things and getting experience since the knowledge in plasma physics is so thin.
- Stevvo 8y ago
  We are doing it. Expected cost of cost of building ITER is now well in excess of 20B and keeps rising. It's not speeding anything up; first plasma not expected until 2025.
davrosthedalek 8y ago
Maybe it's me, but I would give more thought to her arguments if she wouldn't mention her book in /every/ post. She is really trying to sell it hard.
- _Microft 8y ago
  She wrote that book because the problem really bothers her. It doesn't surprise that she's referring to it when discussing it, in my opinion.
  - Aeolun 8y ago
    Does it need a whole book to explain? It seems the current post does a fairly good job of getting the point across.
    - madhadron 8y ago
      The book is lays out the full argument as opposed to a quick summary of the argument. It's moderately technical. I don't think it would make sense without a background in physics.
- high_derivative 8y ago
  I think her tone is quite antagonising and I am not sure if it is intentional: " No one wants to live in a world where the little German lady with her oh-so rational arguments ends up being right. Not even the German lady wants that. Wait, what did I say? I must be crazy." This is meant to sound self-deprecating (I think) but in the context of the articles comes across as arrogant to me because clearly she thinks she is not the little lady, and others are irrationally ignoring her superior insights. Could be a cultural artefact but it makes her articles uncomfortable to read for me.
  - sesutton 8y ago
    The section on Lisa Randall seemed unnecessarily personal as well.
ThePhysicist 8y ago
Well, maybe it isn’t worth spending another 20B on a new particle accelerator, but if so how should we continue? Smashing particles together at high energies is at least a proven strategy that has yielded results in the past and I personally don’t know how we would do high energy physics without them? Maybe we could think of finding ways to investigate naturally occurring particles at those high energies (e.g. via cosmic radiation) but that seems more sci-fi than reality and also won’t cost less than 20B I would argue. Also, not making progress for 40 years is not really long, we just tend to view everything relative to our own lifespan and we were also pretty spoiled with the marvelous discoveries we made in the last 100 years, but it’s entirely possible that we have now worked out all the “easy” stuff and that making further progress will take 1000s of years (though I think that’s unlikely).
- sandworm101 8y ago
  Let the universe provide the high energy particles. Biuld big detectors, not accelerators. And telescopes to study objects like quazars that too are just sitting there demoing high energy physics 24/7.
  - ThePhysicist 8y ago
    Sure I think we’re already doing that, but I also think this makes it very difficult to observe results let alone make controlled experiments. I can’t recall any particle or fundamental force that was validated / found in this way, the only thing I can think of are tests of the theory of general relativity that use astronomical observations, but I don’t recall anything in the field of particle physics (it’s not my field though so I might just have missed it).
    - sandworm101 8y ago
      The hunt for dark matter, for whatever particle/string/widget is involved, is a particle physics problem. String theory may find support, or not, through the observation of black holes (ie fuzzball). Neutrino detectors made big contributions in thier day.
    - 8y ago
yk 8y ago
The current paradigm of particle physics will likely fail after the next accelerator -- everybody abandon ship RIGHT NOW!!Elf! So since the early seventies there was an interplay between discovery machines, accelerators that prioritize high energy over high precision, and precision experiments. In practice these are proton accelerators, which accelerate to very high energies since protons are heavy, but have the downside that protons are itself very complicated objects, and electron accelerators, that have the opposite trade off, electrons are light and therefore lower energy but are very simple and analyzing the results is therefore very easy. The way the interplay worked is, that the precision experiments would constrain the parameter space for the next generation of discovery machines, and then the discovery machines would give the next generation of precision experiments a target. This is to a large extend just research by timetable, and funding agencies love it. Physicists can write a proposal including a list of expected discoveries and funding agencies can then just check that list quarterly. This paradigm will most likely come to an end after the next accelerator. The next accelerator will be a Higgs factory to measure with very high precision the properties of the Higgs boson. Now theory did progress a lot in the last four decades, but it closely mirrored this path of experiments and therefore did work within a quite well defined paradigm. That is what she means with "no progress," there was a lot of progress, new calculation techniques, new techniques for model building, the entire effective field theory ideas and so on, but that is all in service of a narrowly defined paradigm. So it is probably a good idea to start looking for more risky research, because we a pretty sure the boring predictable stuff is coming to an end, but I think that the characterization of "no progress" is a quite unfair characterization of a very fruitful endeavor.
- qwomp 8y ago
  This is the first comment I’ve read on HN in probably four years that was actually informative. It’s become this ocean of smarmy opinions about syntax bugaboos (noooo, your parenthesis, braces and brackets are ugly, mine are pretty), JavaScript (which browser button factory is the one true browser button factory???), and workplace anti-drama (let’s all have a civilized discussion about the political aspects of coffee mugs and get banned for mentioning the elephant in the room).
- TheOtherHobbes 8y ago
truthfromexile 8y ago
I worked with Lisa Randall. She, along with Eva Silverstein, and now unknown Becker sisters are all diversity hires, with no real contribution to physics.
- truthfromexile 8y ago
  Hey PC drones voting this down: your anonymous downvotes do not help to advance your stupid corporate careers, unlike your workspace virtue signaling. Are you the true believers, or just trained like dogs?
fallingfrog 8y ago
I feel like there is probably some new physics out there, maybe entropic gravity or something, since there are still some big mysteries out there. (Dark energy etc) That said, I would be very surprised if we discovered anything with as much practical use as say, quantum physics or electricity or thermodynamics.
- wsgeorge 8y ago
  > That said, I would be very surprised if we discovered anything with as much practical use as say, quantum physics or electricity or thermodynamics. History keeps proving that we will.
  - fallingfrog 8y ago
    I mean hey, maybe I’m wrong but I have a bachelors in physics and this is what I’m seeing ahead. Verifying the speed of light is easy; you just need a rotating mirror and a laser or bright light. Showing that electrons have a charge can be done with oil drops. But the Higgs boson took, let’s just say a bit more effort, and while I think it’s good that we are looking for new particles there is no practical application of the Higgs. Just saying. The low hanging fruit is gone and what’s left may or may not be useful.
nyc111 8y ago
But who will be making the decision to build the next accelerator?
plutonorm 8y ago
Imho we need to be facing up to the implications of quantum mechanics. All of this brain power going into particle physics should be going into the most baffling and fundamental discovery ever made. We need to experiment the f* out of the phenomena and take seriously the implications.
- kakarot 8y ago
  > the most baffling and fundamental discovery ever made ...Which is?
  - klyrs 8y ago
    A baguette
- madhadron 8y ago
  You might like Greenstein and Zajonc's book 'The Quantum Challenge' is talks about a lot of the research in the foundations of quantum mechanics, which is a thriving field in its own right. It's also incredibly subtle and basically impossible to sell popular books with. The book I mentioned is most emphatically not a popular science book.
dfilppi 8y ago
The only scientific pursuit worth pursuing is the transfer of the human mind to a machine host. Once that is done, we'll have forever to do everything else, including interstellar travel.
hannob 8y ago
Just a thought: The fact that there is physics beyond current knowledge doesn't necessarily mean that it's achievable to find out about it. Think about it: Finding confirmation for the Higgs Boson required building a particle accelerator of 27 kilometers. For the larger part of humanities existence it was probably unthinkable to design such an experiment. What if the next level of yet unknown physics requires building a machine that's as large as the equator? Or larger than anything that can be built on earth?
- analog31 8y ago
  I think this kind of issue has always been lurking in the shadows for humanity, not only in physics but in other areas as well. While I'm not certain about the historical details, it seems to me that the ancient Greeks were able to dream up mathematical problems, that resisted solution for centuries. Similarly, the math required to put calculus on a decent theoretical foundation was unknown until more than a century after Newton's time. Other areas of science... how do humans think? Can we cure pain without killing people? Physics experienced an incredible series of lucky breaks over the past few centuries, but each breakthrough doesn't come with a schedule for when the next one will arrive, and we never know when the next one will be a real stumper. We don't know if it will take a month, a year, or a century.
- Recurecur 8y ago
  > What if the next level of yet unknown physics requires building a machine that's as large as the equator? Or larger than anything that can be built on earth? Well, one thought is that we already have access to much higher energies - via cosmic radiation. Of course, a lot about that radiation is uncontrolled, which makes things difficult... There's much to be done with lower energy experiments, including understanding the weak nuclear force and possibly LENR.
  - phkahler 8y ago
    I'm beginning to think governments are afraid of LENR for a couple reasons. One, it would disrupt the balance of power in the world on multiple levels. And two, it may turn out that nuclear weapons could be built cheap and easy. That later thought is frightening.
losvedir 8y ago
She says: > But the problems that theoretical particle physicists currently try to solve do not require solutions. The lack of unification, the absence of naturalness, the seeming arbitrariness of the constants of nature: these are aesthetic problems. What are some examples of problems that do "require solutions"?
- mannykannot 8y ago
  The nature of dark matter, for one. Gravity at quantum dimensions...
- mycorrhizal 8y ago
  From physics, it seems like cosmology has a whole bunch. What the heck is dark matter made out of? Why is the the expansion of the universe accelerating? These seem qualitatively different than the "aesthetic problems" she points to.
- magicalhippo 8y ago
  She's painting with a broad brush. Neutrino mass is a problem that does require a solution, but as far as I know, a lot of theoretical particle physicists are trying to find solutions to that problem.
m0llusk 8y ago
Quantized space and Quantized inertia both have interesting potential and both involve reframing existing ideas.
magv 8y ago
So, yes, aside from the discovery of neutrino mass there was no "fundamental" progress since the Standard Model -- as in, all the effects we see in current experiments are accounted for by the theory -- if you know how to calculate them well enough, which is actually not trivial at all, and has been keeping physicist busy for the last few decades. And yes, by scientific standards 20-30B EUR over ~25 years is a large sum, even though 1B/year is about the current CERN budget, about 1/5 of the current ESA budget, 1/20 of NASA budget, and 1/500 of the US military budget, etc -- so not that outrageous by other standards. And yes again, there are multiple cheaper experiments with a more certain outcome. For example the Japanese Hyper-Kamiokande neutrino detector will provide enough data to solve neutrino mass hierarchy problem at the cost of ~2B EUR; or the space-based LIGO successor, LISA, which will improve over LIGO's ability to detect gravity waves by half of a dozen orders of magnitude for about 1B EUR or so. And yet, those experiments can not bring more understanding into the "fundamental" physics -- i.e. to find a breach in the Standard Model. Only two kinds of experiments can: 1) cheap detectors constructed to test special classes of SM extensions (e.g. detectors like ALPS, which consist of a laser pointing at a wall to search for e.g. axions) -- if by some luck the particular extension turns out to be true; 2) a collider with higher energies like FCC, CLIC or ILC. Now, there's no shortage of the cheap experiments, but up till now they've only excluded certain classes of "beyond standard model" theories, while confirming the SM even more. We'll probably continue building these in the forseeable future, but overall it doesn't seem likely that we'll find anything here. So if you want any progress in the "fundamental" physics -- there doesn't seem to be a way without a bigger collider to show deviation from the SM. Without such an experiment, all people are left with is speculation, and that is how you get the string theories, supersymmetries, and the dreaded "naturalness" criteria, which the author of the article dislikes so much.
- cryptonector 8y ago
  Right, there is a reason to build ever-larger colliders. The question is: is it worth the cost? And, really, what's the opportunity cost? If a new collider costs ten times what experiments like Hyper-Kamiokande cost, if building a new collider would crowd out the smaller experiments, then maybe it's not worth it. But before we had better reasons to want to build larger colliders: to observe more of the SM particle zoo. Utimately it was to observe the Higss boson. If the SM has run out of predictions we can only test with bigger colliders, and the only reason left to build bigger colliers is to test SM more finely, or to hope for a break in the SM, well, these reasons aren't quite as compelling. I think this is TFA's author's argument, and I don't think it's wrong. We might still decide to build a bigger collider, but we should admit that the arguments for it are not that compelling.
mylons 8y ago
this is a core part of the plot to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three-Body_Problem_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three-Body_Problem_(novel) -- a fantastic read which introduced me to a lot of Chinese perspective and history i never received elsewhere.
rwallace 8y ago
Wild idea: Either there is a loophole in physics or there is not. By 'loophole' I mean 'some of the physics we don't yet know, has useful applications such as faster than light travel or unbounded computation, that could potentially be tapped by terrestrial civilization'. (As opposed to the alternative state of affairs where the Standard Model suffices to describe everything that will ever happen in our solar system.) The expected value of research in fundamental physics is much greater if there is a loophole than if there is not. Proposal: we should try to figure out what qualities the as yet unknown physics must have, conditional on a loophole existing. Then we should proceed on the assumption that it does indeed have those qualities, in order to maximize expected utility.
- dasil003 8y ago
  Interesting idea, though I would say if it’s measurable then we can’t rule out an application somewhere down the line no matter how esoteric the knowledge might seem now.
  - rwallace 8y ago
    Rule out absolutely, no, but we can say some kinds of physics are much more likely to be applicable than others. And what matters is applicability by terrestrial civilization. 'This could be applicable, but only by a civilization capable of building Dyson spheres' is irrelevant to us, because if we get to that point, we will already have made it past the Great Filter.
stanfordkid 8y ago
Physicists don't have any imagination to break past certain assumptions (e.g wave function collapse is random) I liked Stephen Wolframs ideas around cellular automata and network based structures -- it seems that if we could look at physics as more of an information transfer problem -- paired with network optimization and information storage optimization, on a network: this is where real progress will be made. There have been theories around emergent spacetime from thermodynamic processes that were abandoned and IMO need to be re-investigated. I highly doubt that wave function collapse is just completely random. We just don't see the structure that is creating the "random" distributions we observe.
- obastani 8y ago
  This is far from a new idea, and is called the "hidden-variable theory" [1]. In fact, it has been mathematically proven that locality and hidden variables are fundamentally incompatible in the context of quantum mechanics. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden-variable_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden-variable_theory
  - aaaaaaaaaaab 8y ago
    Maybe it's nonlocal then.
  - chr1 8y ago
    Wolframs idea [1] is that space is a network, and closeness of points is determined by the links in the network. A particle is an extra structure that is connected to some of the nodes in the network, so if two particles are connected to nodes far way in the network, but also have several links between each other, they won't have enough links to change the structure of the space, but will be connected enough to affect each other in the Bell test. I'd say this resolves the hidden variable and locality conflict beautifully, by changing the concept of locality to something much simpler than the infinite continuum. And it is also somewhat similar to ER=EPR [2] hypothesis Susskind talks about. But unfortunately it is only a vague idea so far. [1] https://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2015/12/what-is-spacetime-really/ https://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2015/12/what-is-spacetime-re... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pY5D7ZgWuXc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pY5D7ZgWuXc
tiemand 8y ago
It’s got to be those bloody Sophons blocking progess!
- magnusdeus123 8y ago
  Can you believe it, I opened this up and Ctrl+F'ed 'sophon' to see if I'd be the first one. Glad to see someone else beat me to it.
  - sylens 8y ago
    Ha, same
gpsx 8y ago
I don't think there is a correct answer to the question should we build the next particle accelerator. Its an opinion based on the probability of us finding something (also an opinion) and the relative value of that discovery to $20B. I got a PhD in theoretical particle physics in 1995. My thesis was about the supersymmetric flavor problem, where we tried to infer information about physics we couldn't measure based on the naturalness criteria she criticizes. My thoughts on pursing this: well, I left physics. I thought it was too hard to make any progress. I went into software. I don't have any regrets. I shouldn't admit this but I occasionaly daydream in a Walter Mitty sort of way about doing great things. I have had a few physics ideas related to things like quantum gravity that I think about occasionally. Just a few months ago I was daydreaming about me pursuing one of these back in graduate school and it being very successfull. I intertrupted my daydream with a thought, "I'm glad that didn't happen. Then I might have stayed in Physics." So that is my answer to the question about investing my own time in searching for new physics. None the less, I wouldn't say people are crazy because they think there is some value to pursuing physics as is currently being done.
- ianai 8y ago
  Can you expand on why staying in physics longer would have been detrimental?
  - intrasight 8y ago
    Bump
  - ribs 8y ago
    Opportunity cost!
    - gpsx 8y ago
      Yes, this is it. I became not so motivated in physics. I have enjoyed the work I have done since then more. I missed the golden age of physics but instead have been able to take part in the golden age (to date) of software and the internet.
x3tm 8y ago
We have here someone who doesn't/never work/ed on HEP but on something so remote from it that I would find it hard to even call it physics sometimes. She goes on a sudden crusade against HEP and all its (prominent) practitioners who spent years working on it. She uses some facts we all agree on (uncertainty about the future, etc.) then twists them in a way that makes it look as if the whole HEP community is part of a huge conspiracy to deceive the public. Our truth warrior then courageously exposes them in her ... blog. BS. On the other side how the hell can she justify her salary and grants to taxpayers? Why isn't she doing some biology or something? It's all so incoherent. I used to read her when she was less crazy. But I really can't stand her anymore ... it's just too much. It's all very strange. Two of the most popular and active bloggers in HEP are totally crazy and politically extreme (although in opposite extremes). Blogging seems to be an unhealthy activity for physicists.
- quantum_state 8y ago
  I would second your observations. The blog seems to whining about things without substance or any constructive propseal. It even runs the risk of bashing those who dedicate their life in exploring nature. It is stromgly recommended that the German lady think more maturely ...
- theoh 8y ago
  > Blogging seems to be an unhealthy activity for physicists. This kind of observation is valuable, I think, even if it's only statistically true. Certain disciplines encourage practitioners to work within conventions and with capabilities that closely match the activity of blogging (or being on Twitter). For other disciplines, tweeting/blogging is very far from the core competencies, so practitioners who do pursue it are more likely to be outliers. The other, not-so-neutral aspect of this is the narcissism problem. People who do a lot of personal PR are more likely to be narcissists—and this is a more negative indication in disciplines where self-promotion is an anomaly.
  - x3tm 8y ago
    I agree. I've come to the same realization recently when I started following the work of some CS researchers. I was (and still am) amazed to see how active they are on the internet (here, twitter, medium, youtube, github, blogs, etc.) In the far more conservative physics community, there are (essentially) only two ways of communicating that are acceptable: writing academic papers, or delivering academic talks. Online presence is seen with suspicion. I am not sure if this is a good or a bad thing. >People who do a lot of personal PR are more likely to be narcissists—and this is a more negative indication in disciplines where self-promotion is an anomaly. Spot on.
AnonymousRider 8y ago
Try telling a homeless Veteran that it was worth $20 billion to prove the Higgs mechanism. We could house 400,000 homeless for that price.
- crazygringo 8y ago
  Or why don't we do both. It isn't either/or. Taxes can be raised, especially on the ultra-wealthier.
  - YjSe2GMQ 8y ago
    If you're talking about the income tax idea by AOC it'll only boost taxes by 0.3%, assuming no tax dodging: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.economist.com/leaders/2019/02/02/how-to-tax-the-rich https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.economist.com/leaders/2019/...
- YjSe2GMQ 8y ago
  Well but how about a cutting edge silicon fab that gave the entire world a powerful device that fits in one's pocket to access all of human knowledge, instantaneously? For 20B? Add to this the fact that technology is powered by science and you get a very different picture.
- hatboat 8y ago
  Why is it I generally only ever hear this argument (or some variant of it, e.g. starving children) when discussing a proposed scientific endeavour? Why not trim the US military budget by 10% and generate 3x as much revenue, you could house 1.2 million homeless for that price.
- perl4ever 8y ago
  With $20 billion, you could house 400,000 homeless people for three or four years, not forever. And that's assuming they need only rent and not mental health or other services.
sinuhe69 8y ago
What has dark matter anything to do with the standard model? Dark matter is just a hack for Einstein relativity theory.
- maxander 8y ago
  Dark matter is a stuff that exists, we’re pretty sure, and some explanations for what it is would involve expansions for the standard model; seeing if one of those explanations is right is therefore a (supposedly) promising avenue for post-standard model physics.
  - sinuhe69 8y ago
    Maybe one should read more before downgrading other people’ comment as nonsense. Excerpts from Wikipedia (text in square brackets are my): Dark matter is a hypothetical form of matter that is thought to account for approximately 85% of the matter in the universe...[speaks the existence of dark matter existence is not proven, is not even part of the standard model!] [...] Its presence is implied in a variety of astrophysical observations, including gravitational effects that cannot be explained unless more matter is present than can be seen. […] The primary evidence for dark matter is that calculations show that many galaxies would fly apart instead of rotating, or would not have formed or move as they do, if they did not contain a large amount of unseen matter.[2] Other lines of evidence include observations in gravitational lensing,[3] from the cosmic microwave background, from astronomical observations of the observable universe's current structure, from the formation and evolution of galaxies, from mass location during galactic collisions,[4] and from the motion of galaxies within galaxy clusters. [so mismatch in gravitational effect with Einstein General Relativity is the only reason why people think there “must” be dark matter out there. Imagining dark matter would help to keep Einstein General Relativity correct in its current form, in other words it’s a HACK!] […] Although the existence of dark matter is generally accepted by the scientific community, some astrophysicists, intrigued by certain observations that do not fit the dark matter theory, argue for various modifications of the standard laws of general relativity, such as modified Newtonian dynamics, tensor–vector–scalar gravity, or entropic gravity. These models attempt to account for all observations without invoking supplemental non-baryonic matter. [means without the need for the hypothetical, non-observable dark matter. And because the standard model can not explain gravity, dark matter or modified gravity theory has nothing to do with the standard model as stated in my original comment]
Animats 8y ago
Lee Smolin, who's a well-respected physicist, says similar things. He's especially critical of string theory, which lacks support from experimental evidence. There is experimental progress in physics, but it seems to be at the low energy end. Down near absolute zero, where quantum mechanics dominates. Many of the stranger predictions of quantum mechanics have been confirmed experimentally. Useful applications, such as quantum cryptography, are emerging. That's where the action is.
- sien 8y ago
  Peter Woit is another theoretical physicist who says similar things. Both Smolin's book 'The Trouble with Physics' and Woit's 'Not Even Wrong' are well worth a read.
  - amai 8y ago
    If you like these books, then you might also like Unzicker book "Bankrupting physics". But be aware that there are very good arguments, that all these books are pure crackpottery: https://motls.blogspot.com/2013/07/shmoits-face-german-competitor.html https://motls.blogspot.com/2013/07/shmoits-face-german-compe...
- amai 8y ago
  Lee Smolin is not a well-respected physicist. "I don't believe that there exists a competent physicist who doesn't agree that Lee Smolin is a hardcore crackpot" https://motls.blogspot.com/2013/04/lee-smolin-time-reborn.html https://motls.blogspot.com/2013/04/lee-smolin-time-reborn.ht...
deleted 8y ago
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tzs 8y ago
Is there any chance that we could reach new physics with a linear collider instead of a circular collider? If there is, then I have an idea to get funding. Build it above ground along the US/Mexican border, so that it could also serve as the wall President Trump wants built.
qlogic 8y ago
"...the greatest physicists such as Einstein, Dirac of Schrödinger would have considered the “discovery” of the Higgs particle ridiculous." https://www.amazon.com/Higgs-Fake-Particle-Physicists-Committee/dp/1492176249 https://www.amazon.com/Higgs-Fake-Particle-Physicists-Commit...
SagelyGuru 8y ago
Maybe my (ex) university was right to close down its Physics Department decades ago, after all. They timed it well, soon after all those predictions started going all wrong. The decision was taken by accountants and at that time I never thought that they were that clever but maybe the market forces understand it better than we do?
buboard 8y ago
That blog keeps rambling on about the same old thing over and over. Maybe the author is crazy. What is being proposed here, to abandon all physics research because it has become hard? And in the end constant nagging is not fruitful to anything, unless the author can reasonably argue for a new line of research. As an aside, Physics is not even suffering from true scientific issues such as reproducibility and direction of research.
- Barrin92 8y ago
  >That blog keeps rambling on about the same old thing over and over. Maybe the author is crazy. What is being proposed here, to abandon all physics research because it has become hard? And in the end constant nagging is not fruitful to anything, unless the author can reasonably argue for a new line of research. she did just that in the NYT piece that is also linked to in the blog post. "And there are other avenues to pursue. For example, the astrophysical observations pointing toward dark matter should be explored further; better understanding those observations would help us make more reliable predictions about whether a larger collider can produce the dark matter particle — if it even is a particle. There are also medium-scale experiments that tend to fall off the table because giant projects eat up money. One important medium-scale project is the interface between the quantum realm and gravity, which is now accessible to experimental testing. Another place where discoveries could be waiting is in the foundations of quantum mechanics. These could have major technological impacts." There really is no argument in favour of why building a new, extremely expensive accelerator is reasonable. We don't expect to find anything at those energy levels, it is pure guesswork.
  - buboard 8y ago
    i believe astronomy is not underfunded, with projects like JWT. now she might be right about medium scale projects but one would have to see the budget for it. Research directions is a difficult matter, and as evidenced by recently identified problems with medicine and biology reserach, having a ton of medium-sized projects instead of a few megaprojects is not necessarily more fruitful.
- pfortuny 8y ago
scarejunba 8y ago
This person writes like cranks write: self-aggrandizing for the most part. I don’t know enough about HEP that I’m going to just treat it as a crank text.
zyxzevn 8y ago
Compared to a software product, the scientists have build a product that contains many modules that all link together via complex maths. What is still missing is refactoring: making things simple again and removing unnecessary parts. While many of the modules have been tested separately, certain combinations may not work as proclaimed. I find this problem already with the physics of the sun. So many things are way off normal physics. I have seen models that do not exist anywhere else. Predicted values are 10^6 order off. These things need retesting and the modules likely need to be redesigned. But just stating that something might be off, already triggers many scientists. They see it as an attack on "their" science. This is clearly an attack on the messenger. Usually mixed with logical fallacies. So there is a real problem with the involved scientists as well. They do not want to see errors in their system, as it hurts their status. And there is the real problem with science. The ones involved do not want to admit that there might be something wrong. If I would tell programmers that something might be wrong with one combination of modules, they are (more) often happy to look into it. So scientists, be more like programmers.
Svoka 8y ago
I don't really understand what she's suggesting. It is easy to be sceptic, and just saying that "ya'll just wasting money". And to be honest 20b on a collider is a tiny dent on budgets we spend on, say, military.
madhadron 8y ago
Sabine Hossenfelder has received an incredible amount of shit that she absolutely doesn't deserve, including in this comment thread. What she's talking about is all stuff that's well known in the physics community. She is willing to say it publicly.
ggm 8y ago
I didn't read every comment, I skimmed as many as I could. A question: how much of the hate/distain/put-down/vituperation is because she's a she and not a he? Seriously. I read at least three comments suggesting arcs of her argument are held by physicists with the requirements between the legs. Is it just how she says it, or is it because she has a vulva?

237 points by apsec112 8y ago

kiba 8y ago

How many particle physicists are we throwing at this problem?

johnchristopher 8y ago
I heard that to get interesting data we are actually supposed to throw them very fast against each other.
7373737373 8y ago
In general, it would be quite interesting to see how many scientists, technologists and mathematicians are working on which problems. For the latter group, I've seen estimates that there are less than 350,000 researchers worldwide.

breatheoften 8y ago

I don't have any sense for how much the author is contributing to any discussions of worth -- but I do struggle with the phrase 'foundations of physics'. To me 'foundation of' invites comparison to similar uses in other domains -- in math where it tends to concern the nature of argument, or to computer science where it concerns mechanisms for accomplishing defined goals efficiently or reasoning about program performance/semantics, or to engineering where it concerns such things as stacking rocks and balancing forces so as to ensure that a given way of stacking is probably capable of lasting for a certain amount of time. But why exactly should 'high energy physics' be considered more 'foundational' than other domains of physical observation? Particle physics pursues description of effects that can occur at very small sizes - but are there _really_ such tight linkages from the observational domain of particle physics to observable 'larger scale' physics such that one truly deserves to be labeled 'foundational' for the other? Just to pick a domain out of a hat, when modeling things like electromagnetic potentials in material science, actively investigated theoretical models are coarse grained so far beyond the scale of the probing done in particle physics that I have wonder how much are the 'foundational' theories and the larger scale ones ever really expected/required to be consistent with each other ...? If 'foundational' isn't a statement about the direction of the consistency requirements the components of argument - then what exactly is it a statement about?

jakeinspace 8y ago
As long as you hold onto the assumption that all physical phenomena on the macro scale can in a (perhaps not useful) sense be explained reductively by particle/field physics of some sort, it's clear that poking at the particle/field/whatever substrate is more foundational than studying high level emergent phenomena. That isn't to say that high-energy particle physics is the best or only avenue of fundamental exploration; obviously, much of the last century's advancements came from cosmology. There's nothing wrong with studying condensed matter physics, and there is a huge amount to learn. But I don't see a conceivable way in which discoveries made by studying complex behavior closer to our scale will help solve quantum gravity or dark matter. Then again, if humanity were one big game of Civilization, I'd be directing my tech tree towards engineering and applied physics research at the moment: we probably don't need any more fundamental physics to build sustainable fusion reactors.
- roenxi 8y ago
  > But I don't see a conceivable way in which discoveries made by studying complex behavior closer to our scale will help solve quantum gravity or dark matter. In the main I only see reason and balanced in this post, but this particular statement is a bit risky. Historically, big breakthroughs in the sciences happen when new measurement techniques become available or existing measurement techniques are refined to produce a "significantly" greater level of accuracy. A breakthrough in our understanding of reality could come from anywhere that anyone pushes the bounds of what we can measure; which admittedly is probably the folk with the budget for a big particle accelerator, but one could imagine a path for almost anybody to make a contribution. One of the take-aways of the whole quantum vs classical business is that just because the evidence seems to be converging on a well respected model doesn't mean that the evidence is actually going to converge.
  - jakeinspace 8y ago
    I definitely agree with you and mathgenius that mathematical techniques and technological progress created while investigating macroscopic behavior may be useful for making breakthroughs in "fundamental" physics. There is certainly precedent for that sort of thing. Perhaps complexity theory will have some significant impact on physics this century, who knows. But it's unclear whether there's anything that pure mathematics or mathematical analogies to the macro world can tell us about how gravity and quantum mechanics are unified, or any of the other big open questions at the bottom.

XorNot 8y ago

Well one solution would be to start aggressively funding the LHC's successor, since in lieu of some better places to go looking for new behaviors we're going to need a higher energy particle accelerator if nothing comes up.

giorgioz 8y ago

The article is far from constructive criticism. In the end is blaming the general current approach but it does not offer any alternative solution. It's easy to say 'you are not doing it right' unless you can do it right.

mycall 8y ago

"When the whole world is running towards a cliff, he who is running in the opposite direction appears to have lost his mind." - C. S. Lewis $20 billion spent is a lot of high tech jobs being made. I'm for it. Think how much we spend on wars.

reasonablemann 8y ago
Sure, but is this the best way to spend that money?
- peteradio 8y ago
  Does it have to be the best?
  - Barrin92 8y ago
    Obviously not, but even many physicists are suggesting that the 20 billion could be spend better.
- Aeolun 8y ago
  Given the alternatives it is likely to go to, pretty likely. There’s definitely better things it could be spent on. It’s just that that will never happen. So we pick the best of the worse things.
- danarmak 8y ago
  As Scott Aaronson put it[0]: > I’m not making the much stronger claim that this is the best possible use of $20 billion for science. Plausibly a thousand $20-million projects could be found that would advance our understanding of reality by more than a new collider would. But it’s also important to realize that that’s not the question at stake here. When, for example, the US Congress cancelled the Superconducting Supercollider midway through construction—partly, it’s believed, on the basis of opposition from eminent physicists in other subfields, who argued that they could do equally important science for much cheaper—none of the SSC budget, as in 0% of it, ever did end up redirected to those other subfields. In practice, then, the question of “whether a new collider is worth it” is probably best considered in absolute terms, rather than relative to other science projects. [0] https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=4122 https://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=4122

tim333 8y ago

If you look at the history of science over the last 2000 years or so, new insights have popped up from time to time in a rather random way. There isn't really a reason to expect them regularly thought that doesn't mean we shouldn't stop looking.

j45 8y ago
Agreed. In the meantime, because we don't have understanding about something yet, it doesn't mean understanding does not exist because we don't understand it. Many of the brightest phds in today's society are working on platforms to gather and retain people's attention to get clicks on ads. Maybe this is part of the reason. Reaching children with education who don't have access to it will bring more of this random forward progress. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Srinivasa_Ramanujan
- noir_lord 8y ago
  With all the technology we have now and the web and where it's gotten to it amazes me that education hasn't been revolutionised. Example, I was interested in doing a BSc/B.Eng in software engineering online only (in the UK) and it was silly how difficult it was to find out basic details and pricing.
  - tim333 8y ago
    A lot of the issues would seem to be human behavioural and social stuff rather than the actual information. I mean even before web tech you could in principle learn the vast majority by reading books but most people lack the motivation. And then you think you might just be able to do the exams but a lot of university qualification is just certifying you've been in the vicinity of lecture halls for 3 years or so rather than the actual tests. I'm sure there must be some way to do better.
    - noir_lord 8y ago
      Oh I agree its cultural. Just seems strange that an online degree/masters costs the same as in-person one. I'd have been quite happy to teach myself the entire syllabus, what I really want is them to certify via the exams that I've learnt the stuff. Of course if they ever actually do go that route they damage themselves economically. Universities have had the exclusive market for higher education cornered for what a millennia or so.

reasonablemann 8y ago

Would throwing 1000 particle scientists and 20B at fusion speed up it's progress?

est31 8y ago
I think the issue with fusion is similar to the arguments made by the lady in OP. Yes, fusion is under-funded but partly because people doubt that it's possible at all. OTOH, there are definitely people who have seriously good proposals for further fusion projects e.g. [1]. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkpqA8yG9T4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkpqA8yG9T4
- maxxxxx 8y ago
  I have never heard that people think fusion is impossible. It looks more like a flight to the moon appeared around 1960. You know it’s possible but there is a lot of engineering needed to make it happen.
  - mhh__ 8y ago
    The problem is it's not even known whether the engineering problems can be attacked at all, unlike the Apollo program where even though a large amount of work (Breadth rather than depth this time) it was an iterative evolution of past programs.
    - maxxxxx 8y ago
      In 1960 they had no idea how rendezvous in space or a lot of other things would work but they knew they would figure it out with enough time and money . From whatever I have heard about fusion I have never heard about doubts about feasibility. It’s about trying out different things and getting experience since the knowledge in plasma physics is so thin.
Stevvo 8y ago
We are doing it. Expected cost of cost of building ITER is now well in excess of 20B and keeps rising. It's not speeding anything up; first plasma not expected until 2025.

davrosthedalek 8y ago

Maybe it's me, but I would give more thought to her arguments if she wouldn't mention her book in /every/ post. She is really trying to sell it hard.

_Microft 8y ago
She wrote that book because the problem really bothers her. It doesn't surprise that she's referring to it when discussing it, in my opinion.
- Aeolun 8y ago
  Does it need a whole book to explain? It seems the current post does a fairly good job of getting the point across.
  - madhadron 8y ago
    The book is lays out the full argument as opposed to a quick summary of the argument. It's moderately technical. I don't think it would make sense without a background in physics.
high_derivative 8y ago
I think her tone is quite antagonising and I am not sure if it is intentional: " No one wants to live in a world where the little German lady with her oh-so rational arguments ends up being right. Not even the German lady wants that. Wait, what did I say? I must be crazy." This is meant to sound self-deprecating (I think) but in the context of the articles comes across as arrogant to me because clearly she thinks she is not the little lady, and others are irrationally ignoring her superior insights. Could be a cultural artefact but it makes her articles uncomfortable to read for me.
- sesutton 8y ago
  The section on Lisa Randall seemed unnecessarily personal as well.

ThePhysicist 8y ago

Well, maybe it isn’t worth spending another 20B on a new particle accelerator, but if so how should we continue? Smashing particles together at high energies is at least a proven strategy that has yielded results in the past and I personally don’t know how we would do high energy physics without them? Maybe we could think of finding ways to investigate naturally occurring particles at those high energies (e.g. via cosmic radiation) but that seems more sci-fi than reality and also won’t cost less than 20B I would argue. Also, not making progress for 40 years is not really long, we just tend to view everything relative to our own lifespan and we were also pretty spoiled with the marvelous discoveries we made in the last 100 years, but it’s entirely possible that we have now worked out all the “easy” stuff and that making further progress will take 1000s of years (though I think that’s unlikely).

sandworm101 8y ago
Let the universe provide the high energy particles. Biuld big detectors, not accelerators. And telescopes to study objects like quazars that too are just sitting there demoing high energy physics 24/7.
- ThePhysicist 8y ago
  Sure I think we’re already doing that, but I also think this makes it very difficult to observe results let alone make controlled experiments. I can’t recall any particle or fundamental force that was validated / found in this way, the only thing I can think of are tests of the theory of general relativity that use astronomical observations, but I don’t recall anything in the field of particle physics (it’s not my field though so I might just have missed it).
  - sandworm101 8y ago
    The hunt for dark matter, for whatever particle/string/widget is involved, is a particle physics problem. String theory may find support, or not, through the observation of black holes (ie fuzzball). Neutrino detectors made big contributions in thier day.
  - 8y ago

yk 8y ago

The current paradigm of particle physics will likely fail after the next accelerator -- everybody abandon ship RIGHT NOW!!Elf! So since the early seventies there was an interplay between discovery machines, accelerators that prioritize high energy over high precision, and precision experiments. In practice these are proton accelerators, which accelerate to very high energies since protons are heavy, but have the downside that protons are itself very complicated objects, and electron accelerators, that have the opposite trade off, electrons are light and therefore lower energy but are very simple and analyzing the results is therefore very easy. The way the interplay worked is, that the precision experiments would constrain the parameter space for the next generation of discovery machines, and then the discovery machines would give the next generation of precision experiments a target. This is to a large extend just research by timetable, and funding agencies love it. Physicists can write a proposal including a list of expected discoveries and funding agencies can then just check that list quarterly. This paradigm will most likely come to an end after the next accelerator. The next accelerator will be a Higgs factory to measure with very high precision the properties of the Higgs boson. Now theory did progress a lot in the last four decades, but it closely mirrored this path of experiments and therefore did work within a quite well defined paradigm. That is what she means with "no progress," there was a lot of progress, new calculation techniques, new techniques for model building, the entire effective field theory ideas and so on, but that is all in service of a narrowly defined paradigm. So it is probably a good idea to start looking for more risky research, because we a pretty sure the boring predictable stuff is coming to an end, but I think that the characterization of "no progress" is a quite unfair characterization of a very fruitful endeavor.

qwomp 8y ago
This is the first comment I’ve read on HN in probably four years that was actually informative. It’s become this ocean of smarmy opinions about syntax bugaboos (noooo, your parenthesis, braces and brackets are ugly, mine are pretty), JavaScript (which browser button factory is the one true browser button factory???), and workplace anti-drama (let’s all have a civilized discussion about the political aspects of coffee mugs and get banned for mentioning the elephant in the room).
TheOtherHobbes 8y ago

truthfromexile 8y ago

I worked with Lisa Randall. She, along with Eva Silverstein, and now unknown Becker sisters are all diversity hires, with no real contribution to physics.

truthfromexile 8y ago
Hey PC drones voting this down: your anonymous downvotes do not help to advance your stupid corporate careers, unlike your workspace virtue signaling. Are you the true believers, or just trained like dogs?

fallingfrog 8y ago

I feel like there is probably some new physics out there, maybe entropic gravity or something, since there are still some big mysteries out there. (Dark energy etc) That said, I would be very surprised if we discovered anything with as much practical use as say, quantum physics or electricity or thermodynamics.

wsgeorge 8y ago
> That said, I would be very surprised if we discovered anything with as much practical use as say, quantum physics or electricity or thermodynamics. History keeps proving that we will.
- fallingfrog 8y ago
  I mean hey, maybe I’m wrong but I have a bachelors in physics and this is what I’m seeing ahead. Verifying the speed of light is easy; you just need a rotating mirror and a laser or bright light. Showing that electrons have a charge can be done with oil drops. But the Higgs boson took, let’s just say a bit more effort, and while I think it’s good that we are looking for new particles there is no practical application of the Higgs. Just saying. The low hanging fruit is gone and what’s left may or may not be useful.

nyc111 8y ago

But who will be making the decision to build the next accelerator?

plutonorm 8y ago

Imho we need to be facing up to the implications of quantum mechanics. All of this brain power going into particle physics should be going into the most baffling and fundamental discovery ever made. We need to experiment the f* out of the phenomena and take seriously the implications.

kakarot 8y ago
> the most baffling and fundamental discovery ever made ...Which is?
- klyrs 8y ago
  A baguette
madhadron 8y ago
You might like Greenstein and Zajonc's book 'The Quantum Challenge' is talks about a lot of the research in the foundations of quantum mechanics, which is a thriving field in its own right. It's also incredibly subtle and basically impossible to sell popular books with. The book I mentioned is most emphatically not a popular science book.

dfilppi 8y ago

The only scientific pursuit worth pursuing is the transfer of the human mind to a machine host. Once that is done, we'll have forever to do everything else, including interstellar travel.

hannob 8y ago

Just a thought: The fact that there is physics beyond current knowledge doesn't necessarily mean that it's achievable to find out about it. Think about it: Finding confirmation for the Higgs Boson required building a particle accelerator of 27 kilometers. For the larger part of humanities existence it was probably unthinkable to design such an experiment. What if the next level of yet unknown physics requires building a machine that's as large as the equator? Or larger than anything that can be built on earth?

analog31 8y ago
I think this kind of issue has always been lurking in the shadows for humanity, not only in physics but in other areas as well. While I'm not certain about the historical details, it seems to me that the ancient Greeks were able to dream up mathematical problems, that resisted solution for centuries. Similarly, the math required to put calculus on a decent theoretical foundation was unknown until more than a century after Newton's time. Other areas of science... how do humans think? Can we cure pain without killing people? Physics experienced an incredible series of lucky breaks over the past few centuries, but each breakthrough doesn't come with a schedule for when the next one will arrive, and we never know when the next one will be a real stumper. We don't know if it will take a month, a year, or a century.
Recurecur 8y ago
> What if the next level of yet unknown physics requires building a machine that's as large as the equator? Or larger than anything that can be built on earth? Well, one thought is that we already have access to much higher energies - via cosmic radiation. Of course, a lot about that radiation is uncontrolled, which makes things difficult... There's much to be done with lower energy experiments, including understanding the weak nuclear force and possibly LENR.
- phkahler 8y ago
  I'm beginning to think governments are afraid of LENR for a couple reasons. One, it would disrupt the balance of power in the world on multiple levels. And two, it may turn out that nuclear weapons could be built cheap and easy. That later thought is frightening.

losvedir 8y ago

She says: > But the problems that theoretical particle physicists currently try to solve do not require solutions. The lack of unification, the absence of naturalness, the seeming arbitrariness of the constants of nature: these are aesthetic problems. What are some examples of problems that do "require solutions"?

mannykannot 8y ago
The nature of dark matter, for one. Gravity at quantum dimensions...
mycorrhizal 8y ago
From physics, it seems like cosmology has a whole bunch. What the heck is dark matter made out of? Why is the the expansion of the universe accelerating? These seem qualitatively different than the "aesthetic problems" she points to.
magicalhippo 8y ago
She's painting with a broad brush. Neutrino mass is a problem that does require a solution, but as far as I know, a lot of theoretical particle physicists are trying to find solutions to that problem.

m0llusk 8y ago

Quantized space and Quantized inertia both have interesting potential and both involve reframing existing ideas.

magv 8y ago

So, yes, aside from the discovery of neutrino mass there was no "fundamental" progress since the Standard Model -- as in, all the effects we see in current experiments are accounted for by the theory -- if you know how to calculate them well enough, which is actually not trivial at all, and has been keeping physicist busy for the last few decades. And yes, by scientific standards 20-30B EUR over ~25 years is a large sum, even though 1B/year is about the current CERN budget, about 1/5 of the current ESA budget, 1/20 of NASA budget, and 1/500 of the US military budget, etc -- so not that outrageous by other standards. And yes again, there are multiple cheaper experiments with a more certain outcome. For example the Japanese Hyper-Kamiokande neutrino detector will provide enough data to solve neutrino mass hierarchy problem at the cost of ~2B EUR; or the space-based LIGO successor, LISA, which will improve over LIGO's ability to detect gravity waves by half of a dozen orders of magnitude for about 1B EUR or so. And yet, those experiments can not bring more understanding into the "fundamental" physics -- i.e. to find a breach in the Standard Model. Only two kinds of experiments can: 1) cheap detectors constructed to test special classes of SM extensions (e.g. detectors like ALPS, which consist of a laser pointing at a wall to search for e.g. axions) -- if by some luck the particular extension turns out to be true; 2) a collider with higher energies like FCC, CLIC or ILC. Now, there's no shortage of the cheap experiments, but up till now they've only excluded certain classes of "beyond standard model" theories, while confirming the SM even more. We'll probably continue building these in the forseeable future, but overall it doesn't seem likely that we'll find anything here. So if you want any progress in the "fundamental" physics -- there doesn't seem to be a way without a bigger collider to show deviation from the SM. Without such an experiment, all people are left with is speculation, and that is how you get the string theories, supersymmetries, and the dreaded "naturalness" criteria, which the author of the article dislikes so much.

cryptonector 8y ago
Right, there is a reason to build ever-larger colliders. The question is: is it worth the cost? And, really, what's the opportunity cost? If a new collider costs ten times what experiments like Hyper-Kamiokande cost, if building a new collider would crowd out the smaller experiments, then maybe it's not worth it. But before we had better reasons to want to build larger colliders: to observe more of the SM particle zoo. Utimately it was to observe the Higss boson. If the SM has run out of predictions we can only test with bigger colliders, and the only reason left to build bigger colliers is to test SM more finely, or to hope for a break in the SM, well, these reasons aren't quite as compelling. I think this is TFA's author's argument, and I don't think it's wrong. We might still decide to build a bigger collider, but we should admit that the arguments for it are not that compelling.

mylons 8y ago

this is a core part of the plot to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three-Body_Problem_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three-Body_Problem_(novel) -- a fantastic read which introduced me to a lot of Chinese perspective and history i never received elsewhere.

rwallace 8y ago

Wild idea: Either there is a loophole in physics or there is not. By 'loophole' I mean 'some of the physics we don't yet know, has useful applications such as faster than light travel or unbounded computation, that could potentially be tapped by terrestrial civilization'. (As opposed to the alternative state of affairs where the Standard Model suffices to describe everything that will ever happen in our solar system.) The expected value of research in fundamental physics is much greater if there is a loophole than if there is not. Proposal: we should try to figure out what qualities the as yet unknown physics must have, conditional on a loophole existing. Then we should proceed on the assumption that it does indeed have those qualities, in order to maximize expected utility.

dasil003 8y ago
Interesting idea, though I would say if it’s measurable then we can’t rule out an application somewhere down the line no matter how esoteric the knowledge might seem now.
- rwallace 8y ago
  Rule out absolutely, no, but we can say some kinds of physics are much more likely to be applicable than others. And what matters is applicability by terrestrial civilization. 'This could be applicable, but only by a civilization capable of building Dyson spheres' is irrelevant to us, because if we get to that point, we will already have made it past the Great Filter.

stanfordkid 8y ago

Physicists don't have any imagination to break past certain assumptions (e.g wave function collapse is random) I liked Stephen Wolframs ideas around cellular automata and network based structures -- it seems that if we could look at physics as more of an information transfer problem -- paired with network optimization and information storage optimization, on a network: this is where real progress will be made. There have been theories around emergent spacetime from thermodynamic processes that were abandoned and IMO need to be re-investigated. I highly doubt that wave function collapse is just completely random. We just don't see the structure that is creating the "random" distributions we observe.

obastani 8y ago
This is far from a new idea, and is called the "hidden-variable theory" [1]. In fact, it has been mathematically proven that locality and hidden variables are fundamentally incompatible in the context of quantum mechanics. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden-variable_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hidden-variable_theory
- aaaaaaaaaaab 8y ago
  Maybe it's nonlocal then.
- chr1 8y ago
  Wolframs idea [1] is that space is a network, and closeness of points is determined by the links in the network. A particle is an extra structure that is connected to some of the nodes in the network, so if two particles are connected to nodes far way in the network, but also have several links between each other, they won't have enough links to change the structure of the space, but will be connected enough to affect each other in the Bell test. I'd say this resolves the hidden variable and locality conflict beautifully, by changing the concept of locality to something much simpler than the infinite continuum. And it is also somewhat similar to ER=EPR [2] hypothesis Susskind talks about. But unfortunately it is only a vague idea so far. [1] https://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2015/12/what-is-spacetime-really/ https://blog.stephenwolfram.com/2015/12/what-is-spacetime-re... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pY5D7ZgWuXc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pY5D7ZgWuXc

tiemand 8y ago

It’s got to be those bloody Sophons blocking progess!

magnusdeus123 8y ago
Can you believe it, I opened this up and Ctrl+F'ed 'sophon' to see if I'd be the first one. Glad to see someone else beat me to it.
- sylens 8y ago
  Ha, same

gpsx 8y ago

I don't think there is a correct answer to the question should we build the next particle accelerator. Its an opinion based on the probability of us finding something (also an opinion) and the relative value of that discovery to $20B. I got a PhD in theoretical particle physics in 1995. My thesis was about the supersymmetric flavor problem, where we tried to infer information about physics we couldn't measure based on the naturalness criteria she criticizes. My thoughts on pursing this: well, I left physics. I thought it was too hard to make any progress. I went into software. I don't have any regrets. I shouldn't admit this but I occasionaly daydream in a Walter Mitty sort of way about doing great things. I have had a few physics ideas related to things like quantum gravity that I think about occasionally. Just a few months ago I was daydreaming about me pursuing one of these back in graduate school and it being very successfull. I intertrupted my daydream with a thought, "I'm glad that didn't happen. Then I might have stayed in Physics." So that is my answer to the question about investing my own time in searching for new physics. None the less, I wouldn't say people are crazy because they think there is some value to pursuing physics as is currently being done.

ianai 8y ago
Can you expand on why staying in physics longer would have been detrimental?
- intrasight 8y ago
  Bump
- ribs 8y ago
  Opportunity cost!
  - gpsx 8y ago
    Yes, this is it. I became not so motivated in physics. I have enjoyed the work I have done since then more. I missed the golden age of physics but instead have been able to take part in the golden age (to date) of software and the internet.

x3tm 8y ago

We have here someone who doesn't/never work/ed on HEP but on something so remote from it that I would find it hard to even call it physics sometimes. She goes on a sudden crusade against HEP and all its (prominent) practitioners who spent years working on it. She uses some facts we all agree on (uncertainty about the future, etc.) then twists them in a way that makes it look as if the whole HEP community is part of a huge conspiracy to deceive the public. Our truth warrior then courageously exposes them in her ... blog. BS. On the other side how the hell can she justify her salary and grants to taxpayers? Why isn't she doing some biology or something? It's all so incoherent. I used to read her when she was less crazy. But I really can't stand her anymore ... it's just too much. It's all very strange. Two of the most popular and active bloggers in HEP are totally crazy and politically extreme (although in opposite extremes). Blogging seems to be an unhealthy activity for physicists.

quantum_state 8y ago
I would second your observations. The blog seems to whining about things without substance or any constructive propseal. It even runs the risk of bashing those who dedicate their life in exploring nature. It is stromgly recommended that the German lady think more maturely ...
theoh 8y ago
> Blogging seems to be an unhealthy activity for physicists. This kind of observation is valuable, I think, even if it's only statistically true. Certain disciplines encourage practitioners to work within conventions and with capabilities that closely match the activity of blogging (or being on Twitter). For other disciplines, tweeting/blogging is very far from the core competencies, so practitioners who do pursue it are more likely to be outliers. The other, not-so-neutral aspect of this is the narcissism problem. People who do a lot of personal PR are more likely to be narcissists—and this is a more negative indication in disciplines where self-promotion is an anomaly.
- x3tm 8y ago
  I agree. I've come to the same realization recently when I started following the work of some CS researchers. I was (and still am) amazed to see how active they are on the internet (here, twitter, medium, youtube, github, blogs, etc.) In the far more conservative physics community, there are (essentially) only two ways of communicating that are acceptable: writing academic papers, or delivering academic talks. Online presence is seen with suspicion. I am not sure if this is a good or a bad thing. >People who do a lot of personal PR are more likely to be narcissists—and this is a more negative indication in disciplines where self-promotion is an anomaly. Spot on.

AnonymousRider 8y ago

Try telling a homeless Veteran that it was worth $20 billion to prove the Higgs mechanism. We could house 400,000 homeless for that price.

crazygringo 8y ago
Or why don't we do both. It isn't either/or. Taxes can be raised, especially on the ultra-wealthier.
- YjSe2GMQ 8y ago
  If you're talking about the income tax idea by AOC it'll only boost taxes by 0.3%, assuming no tax dodging: https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.economist.com/leaders/2019/02/02/how-to-tax-the-rich https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.economist.com/leaders/2019/...
YjSe2GMQ 8y ago
Well but how about a cutting edge silicon fab that gave the entire world a powerful device that fits in one's pocket to access all of human knowledge, instantaneously? For 20B? Add to this the fact that technology is powered by science and you get a very different picture.
hatboat 8y ago
Why is it I generally only ever hear this argument (or some variant of it, e.g. starving children) when discussing a proposed scientific endeavour? Why not trim the US military budget by 10% and generate 3x as much revenue, you could house 1.2 million homeless for that price.
perl4ever 8y ago
With $20 billion, you could house 400,000 homeless people for three or four years, not forever. And that's assuming they need only rent and not mental health or other services.

sinuhe69 8y ago

What has dark matter anything to do with the standard model? Dark matter is just a hack for Einstein relativity theory.

maxander 8y ago
Dark matter is a stuff that exists, we’re pretty sure, and some explanations for what it is would involve expansions for the standard model; seeing if one of those explanations is right is therefore a (supposedly) promising avenue for post-standard model physics.
- sinuhe69 8y ago
  Maybe one should read more before downgrading other people’ comment as nonsense. Excerpts from Wikipedia (text in square brackets are my): Dark matter is a hypothetical form of matter that is thought to account for approximately 85% of the matter in the universe...[speaks the existence of dark matter existence is not proven, is not even part of the standard model!] [...] Its presence is implied in a variety of astrophysical observations, including gravitational effects that cannot be explained unless more matter is present than can be seen. […] The primary evidence for dark matter is that calculations show that many galaxies would fly apart instead of rotating, or would not have formed or move as they do, if they did not contain a large amount of unseen matter.[2] Other lines of evidence include observations in gravitational lensing,[3] from the cosmic microwave background, from astronomical observations of the observable universe's current structure, from the formation and evolution of galaxies, from mass location during galactic collisions,[4] and from the motion of galaxies within galaxy clusters. [so mismatch in gravitational effect with Einstein General Relativity is the only reason why people think there “must” be dark matter out there. Imagining dark matter would help to keep Einstein General Relativity correct in its current form, in other words it’s a HACK!] […] Although the existence of dark matter is generally accepted by the scientific community, some astrophysicists, intrigued by certain observations that do not fit the dark matter theory, argue for various modifications of the standard laws of general relativity, such as modified Newtonian dynamics, tensor–vector–scalar gravity, or entropic gravity. These models attempt to account for all observations without invoking supplemental non-baryonic matter. [means without the need for the hypothetical, non-observable dark matter. And because the standard model can not explain gravity, dark matter or modified gravity theory has nothing to do with the standard model as stated in my original comment]

Animats 8y ago

Lee Smolin, who's a well-respected physicist, says similar things. He's especially critical of string theory, which lacks support from experimental evidence. There is experimental progress in physics, but it seems to be at the low energy end. Down near absolute zero, where quantum mechanics dominates. Many of the stranger predictions of quantum mechanics have been confirmed experimentally. Useful applications, such as quantum cryptography, are emerging. That's where the action is.

sien 8y ago
Peter Woit is another theoretical physicist who says similar things. Both Smolin's book 'The Trouble with Physics' and Woit's 'Not Even Wrong' are well worth a read.
- amai 8y ago
  If you like these books, then you might also like Unzicker book "Bankrupting physics". But be aware that there are very good arguments, that all these books are pure crackpottery: https://motls.blogspot.com/2013/07/shmoits-face-german-competitor.html https://motls.blogspot.com/2013/07/shmoits-face-german-compe...
amai 8y ago
Lee Smolin is not a well-respected physicist. "I don't believe that there exists a competent physicist who doesn't agree that Lee Smolin is a hardcore crackpot" https://motls.blogspot.com/2013/04/lee-smolin-time-reborn.html https://motls.blogspot.com/2013/04/lee-smolin-time-reborn.ht...

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

tzs 8y ago

Is there any chance that we could reach new physics with a linear collider instead of a circular collider? If there is, then I have an idea to get funding. Build it above ground along the US/Mexican border, so that it could also serve as the wall President Trump wants built.

qlogic 8y ago

"...the greatest physicists such as Einstein, Dirac of Schrödinger would have considered the “discovery” of the Higgs particle ridiculous." https://www.amazon.com/Higgs-Fake-Particle-Physicists-Committee/dp/1492176249 https://www.amazon.com/Higgs-Fake-Particle-Physicists-Commit...

SagelyGuru 8y ago

Maybe my (ex) university was right to close down its Physics Department decades ago, after all. They timed it well, soon after all those predictions started going all wrong. The decision was taken by accountants and at that time I never thought that they were that clever but maybe the market forces understand it better than we do?

buboard 8y ago

That blog keeps rambling on about the same old thing over and over. Maybe the author is crazy. What is being proposed here, to abandon all physics research because it has become hard? And in the end constant nagging is not fruitful to anything, unless the author can reasonably argue for a new line of research. As an aside, Physics is not even suffering from true scientific issues such as reproducibility and direction of research.

Barrin92 8y ago
>That blog keeps rambling on about the same old thing over and over. Maybe the author is crazy. What is being proposed here, to abandon all physics research because it has become hard? And in the end constant nagging is not fruitful to anything, unless the author can reasonably argue for a new line of research. she did just that in the NYT piece that is also linked to in the blog post. "And there are other avenues to pursue. For example, the astrophysical observations pointing toward dark matter should be explored further; better understanding those observations would help us make more reliable predictions about whether a larger collider can produce the dark matter particle — if it even is a particle. There are also medium-scale experiments that tend to fall off the table because giant projects eat up money. One important medium-scale project is the interface between the quantum realm and gravity, which is now accessible to experimental testing. Another place where discoveries could be waiting is in the foundations of quantum mechanics. These could have major technological impacts." There really is no argument in favour of why building a new, extremely expensive accelerator is reasonable. We don't expect to find anything at those energy levels, it is pure guesswork.
- buboard 8y ago
  i believe astronomy is not underfunded, with projects like JWT. now she might be right about medium scale projects but one would have to see the budget for it. Research directions is a difficult matter, and as evidenced by recently identified problems with medicine and biology reserach, having a ton of medium-sized projects instead of a few megaprojects is not necessarily more fruitful.
pfortuny 8y ago

scarejunba 8y ago

This person writes like cranks write: self-aggrandizing for the most part. I don’t know enough about HEP that I’m going to just treat it as a crank text.

zyxzevn 8y ago

Compared to a software product, the scientists have build a product that contains many modules that all link together via complex maths. What is still missing is refactoring: making things simple again and removing unnecessary parts. While many of the modules have been tested separately, certain combinations may not work as proclaimed. I find this problem already with the physics of the sun. So many things are way off normal physics. I have seen models that do not exist anywhere else. Predicted values are 10^6 order off. These things need retesting and the modules likely need to be redesigned. But just stating that something might be off, already triggers many scientists. They see it as an attack on "their" science. This is clearly an attack on the messenger. Usually mixed with logical fallacies. So there is a real problem with the involved scientists as well. They do not want to see errors in their system, as it hurts their status. And there is the real problem with science. The ones involved do not want to admit that there might be something wrong. If I would tell programmers that something might be wrong with one combination of modules, they are (more) often happy to look into it. So scientists, be more like programmers.

Svoka 8y ago

I don't really understand what she's suggesting. It is easy to be sceptic, and just saying that "ya'll just wasting money". And to be honest 20b on a collider is a tiny dent on budgets we spend on, say, military.

madhadron 8y ago

Sabine Hossenfelder has received an incredible amount of shit that she absolutely doesn't deserve, including in this comment thread. What she's talking about is all stuff that's well known in the physics community. She is willing to say it publicly.

ggm 8y ago

I didn't read every comment, I skimmed as many as I could. A question: how much of the hate/distain/put-down/vituperation is because she's a she and not a he? Seriously. I read at least three comments suggesting arcs of her argument are held by physicists with the requirements between the legs. Is it just how she says it, or is it because she has a vulva?