4 ms·

> We still haven't figured out how to relate quantum mechanics and relativity Huh? Paul Dirac did it quite some time ago. > haven't fully uncovered the deep s

> We still haven't figured out how to relate quantum mechanics and relativity Huh? Paul Dirac did it quite some time ago. > haven't fully uncovered the deep structure of matter VERY deep, highly irrelevant to our lives.

DavidSJ 7y ago
Huh? Paul Dirac did it quite some time ago. I guess he meant general, not special, relativity.
SkyMarshal 7y ago
>Huh? Paul Dirac did it quite some time ago. General, not special. >VERY deep, highly irrelevant to our lives. 1. What a foolish comment. The ability to understand, and one day control, the strong force of matter, is extremely relevant to our lives. Indestructible building materials, space elevators, economic boom from harvesting the asteroid belt, etc. Use your imagination. 2. For the purposes of this comment thread, it's irrelevant whether it's relevant to our lives our not. The assertion was physics is still far from figuring everything out. Nothing to do with our everyday lives.
- pfdietz 7y ago
  We understand the strong force well enough to dismiss such possibilities. It has a range of about 1 femtometer. You're not going to be building anything using that except nuclei, and that's not going to give anything like that. I wonder sometimes if this suspension of critical thinking about what physics will be able to give us is due to science fiction. SF from the beginning has been promising far more than science could ever deliver. We're now at the point in history all those fantasies have to be put down.
  - SkyMarshal 7y ago
    It took roughly a century from the discovery of quantum mechanics to when we started using aspects of it in real-world technology, even during a relatively primitive period of human history where we were also still figuring out mere electricity. But I bet during the time quantum theory was first being developed it was hard to see how or whether it might be used in actual technology. I'm sure some even dismissed such possibilities. But here we are now using it to inform radio telecommunications tech, and experimenting with quantum entanglement communications and quantum computers. A hundred of years of having the correct theoretical foundations + hacking and tinkering on them may make possible things that seem exotic or impossible now.
    - pfdietz 7y ago
      What? Quantum mechanics was used almost immediately to understand chemical bonds and to understand the nature of semiconductors. The frickin LASER is a quantum mechanical device! I could go on and on. The notion that QM wasn't used for roughly a century is totally false.
      - SkyMarshal 7y ago
        The laser was invented in 1960, 55yrs after Einstein published his Nobel-winning paper on the photoelectric effect. So great, in some cases it takes even less time to get from correct fundamental theory to useful technology. The is point is - finding the correct theory sets off a process of hacking and tinkering that results in useful new technologies at some future time, some of which may not have been foreseeable at the time the theory was discovered. But we have to invest in finding the correct theory, anticipating eventually useful things will come of it, some we can foresee and some we can't.

DavidSJ 7y ago

Huh? Paul Dirac did it quite some time ago. I guess he meant general, not special, relativity.

SkyMarshal 7y ago

>Huh? Paul Dirac did it quite some time ago. General, not special. >VERY deep, highly irrelevant to our lives. 1. What a foolish comment. The ability to understand, and one day control, the strong force of matter, is extremely relevant to our lives. Indestructible building materials, space elevators, economic boom from harvesting the asteroid belt, etc. Use your imagination. 2. For the purposes of this comment thread, it's irrelevant whether it's relevant to our lives our not. The assertion was physics is still far from figuring everything out. Nothing to do with our everyday lives.

pfdietz 7y ago
We understand the strong force well enough to dismiss such possibilities. It has a range of about 1 femtometer. You're not going to be building anything using that except nuclei, and that's not going to give anything like that. I wonder sometimes if this suspension of critical thinking about what physics will be able to give us is due to science fiction. SF from the beginning has been promising far more than science could ever deliver. We're now at the point in history all those fantasies have to be put down.
- SkyMarshal 7y ago
  It took roughly a century from the discovery of quantum mechanics to when we started using aspects of it in real-world technology, even during a relatively primitive period of human history where we were also still figuring out mere electricity. But I bet during the time quantum theory was first being developed it was hard to see how or whether it might be used in actual technology. I'm sure some even dismissed such possibilities. But here we are now using it to inform radio telecommunications tech, and experimenting with quantum entanglement communications and quantum computers. A hundred of years of having the correct theoretical foundations + hacking and tinkering on them may make possible things that seem exotic or impossible now.
  - pfdietz 7y ago
    What? Quantum mechanics was used almost immediately to understand chemical bonds and to understand the nature of semiconductors. The frickin LASER is a quantum mechanical device! I could go on and on. The notion that QM wasn't used for roughly a century is totally false.
    - SkyMarshal 7y ago
      The laser was invented in 1960, 55yrs after Einstein published his Nobel-winning paper on the photoelectric effect. So great, in some cases it takes even less time to get from correct fundamental theory to useful technology. The is point is - finding the correct theory sets off a process of hacking and tinkering that results in useful new technologies at some future time, some of which may not have been foreseeable at the time the theory was discovered. But we have to invest in finding the correct theory, anticipating eventually useful things will come of it, some we can foresee and some we can't.