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Why the foundations of physics have not progressed for 40 years
- kingkawn 7y agoBecause the sophons have been sabotaging our experimental results
- MiroF 7y agoGreat series to all who haven't read it!
- nkrisc 7y agoHow would those who haven't read it understand the reference? If you're one of those people, I believe it's a reference to the "Three-Body Problem" series.
- philbarr 7y agoIt is a really good series, even if it is a bit like reading a sci-fi story whilst being beaten over the head with a physics textbook.
- RealStickman 7y agoI actually quite liked that. Adds something more to the text imo.
- guerrilla 7y agoThat's the best part!
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- Phelinofist 7y agoCame here looking for this comment
- arethuza 7y agoBut perhaps it is actually because we are located in the Slow Zone.
- 7532yahoogmail 7y agoI've read several of Sabine's blogs over several months. I think she has very good ends in mind, has courage to push back on corporate/academic inertia ... such inertia comes with any human organization ... On the negative side she's big on complaining but small on alternatives. She's also a bit too blunt/dismissive of people -- this from a person who also dislikes corporate happy talk. As such it's not clear if she'd confer distinction if she had a large budget, an institution, and group of experimentalists. An Oppenheimer? No.
- hhas01 7y agoAye, it’s easy to make criticisms (and Zeus knows the price of good science is eternal vigilance), but the easiest and most satisfyingly Ockhamite explanation of the slowdown in physics remains: all its low-hanging fruit is long since taken. And while there’s no harm in pondering the philosophical origins of the scientific method while debating where to go next, we should take care not to go backwards either, as that way lies fractal navel fluff and bloody string theory.
- 7532yahoogmail 7y agoAgree!
- achillesheels 7y agoIt’s amusing you jocularly employ Zeus in this conversation. Galileo, Descartes, Newton, Maxwell, etc. did not have Zeus on their minds, maybe it would be wise for you not to either?
- hhas01 7y agohttps://comb.io/dqaqWp https://comb.io/dqaqWp
- mikhailfranco 7y agoYou should open a diner: TZIF When I lived in the Middle East, I imagined a chain of dry bars called: TAIT (Up until about 6 years ago, the Omani and Saudi outlets would have been called TAIW)
- empath75 7y agoI don’t get it. What does she want people to do?
- funklute 7y agoIt does seem a bit whiny... if there are truly other options, then yea sure. But it seems the fundamental issue is that where the current theories break down, is exactly where you need high-cost accelerators to probe further. And if that's truly the case, I don't see how any amount of philosophy will solve that problem.
- sillyquiet 7y agoYeah - I am probably misunderstanding the article, but it seems to boil down to 'we haven't absolutely verified things in an experimental fashion, let's do that again instead of building theoretical mathematic constructs'. When 1) (From my perspective as a physics lay-person) that's demonstrably false, and 2.) As I didn't even see a concrete example of the _cause_ of the perceived stagnation, much less a solution.
- typon 7y agoStop working on string theory, multiverse, or some of the other mainstream theories she mentioned. Start fresh about how to approach theoretical physics instead of taking the above mentioned theories almost as a given and trying to do science within that framework.
- hhas01 7y agoExcept, string theory and multiverse aren’t theories. Heck, they’re not even hypotheses (since they offer no means to test them). They’re simple speculation; what philosophers right back to the ancient Greeks were only too happy to rest on for 2000 years, until Persian protoscientists, during their own all-too-brief golden age, annoyingly said “but wait, don’t you think we should at least test our beliefs before we take them as granted?”; a practice that fully went mainstream a half-millennium later as the European Renaissance kicked off; and so modern-day Natural Philosophy was born. If the first rule of science is, “you must not fool yourself (and you are the easiest person to fool)”, then rule zero must surely be “stuff’s hard, folks”. And some things are just invariant, no matter how much you might wish that they not be†. -- († So no Warp Drive either, kids… sorry!;)
- cjfd 7y agoActually, string theory arose as a way of doing exactly what this person requests. It was noticed that quantum field theory and gravity do not go together, so it was attempted to do something about this. So, it did not really work out? Well, you know the thing with this kind science is that it is unknowable beforehand what you are or are not going to find.
- Koshkin 7y agoPoint was, math is one thing, reality is another.
- paganel 7y agoFrom an outsider's point of view (i.e. mine) it looks like physics has become too enamored with mathematics, "thinking" that reality can be totally described by mathematics. Which brings us to one of the author's point of views, the fact that physicists (and I guess most scientists) nowadays dismiss things like philosophy of science or epistemology, they just continue head-on on their "quest for knowledge" not realizing that for almost half a century now nothing big has been "found out".
- Koshkin 7y agoThere's nothing wrong with the way math is used in physics. Consistency is a good thing; whether calculations possess explanatory power is another question.
- paganel 7y agoI didn't say the maths is wrong, I just said it has reached its limits. And "no big discovery" for the last 40 years kind of shows that some limits have been reached. > Consistency is a good thing Lots of close but in the end ineffectual "epistemic" systems were internally consistent but in the long run they proved "deficient" (as in other, more efficient systems took their place). I confess I've never read Thomas Aquinas's work (to give just one example) but I'm pretty sure his "view of the world/reality system" is pretty consistent, don't think there are any internal contradictions in his writings. Problem is his internally consistent system wouldn't have been able to allow us to build combustion engines or modern electronics, so that we have had to come up with other internally-consistent "epistemic systems" that proved to be more efficient (because they allowed us to build and reason about combustion engines and modern electronics). In the end and in the great scheme of things I don't think this theoretical physics road-block will be of any great importance for the general public, it looks like people are content with what they already can purchase based on past physics-related discoveries. Yeah, traveling through galaxy wormholes or getting to 100% know if the Universe is finite or not would be nice things to have, but people just don't care and there's nothing wrong with that.
- ocfnash 7y agoI dare say the author is right on many points but statements like: "But for all I can tell at this moment in history I am the only physicist who has at least come up with an idea for what to do." make it hard for me to share her point of view, especially as these ideas are not mentioned.
- celticmusic 7y agoI'm not sure how you missed it, but she did give a recommendation. Attempt to resolve inconsistencies as a means of discovery.
- ocfnash 7y agoI did not miss this statement; for me this does not constitute a recommendation. Indeed I think many of the researchers of whom she is critical could claim that this is what they're doing.
- celticmusic 7y agomore than a tad unfair to accuse her of not offering suggestions by claiming her suggestion isn't a suggestion.
- drdeca 7y agoI think whether it is unfair would hinge on whether it is true that the thing isn’t a “recommendation”. I have no firmly held answer to the question of whether it is.
- chopin 7y agoBut that's like telling me "run faster" if I am complaining that I can't run 100m in 10sec. I would think that almost all theoretical work revolves around resolving inconsistencies (such as between quantum field theory and general relativity). This advice is too generic.
- cambalache 7y ago
- Koshkin 7y agoIndeed, theoretical physics has long ago stopped providing foundational explanations. It became strictly what essentially it had always been - a calculational tool. Whether calculations possess explanatory power is a question of psychology and sociology.
- moralsupply 7y agoPerhaps we need some new mathematics, not new physics
- tim333 7y agoI think setting AI on it may be the way forward.
- hhas01 7y agoAI is not some magical pixie dust or golden retriever chasing a stick. It may have its applications in pattern matching, particularly in chewing the exabyte datasets we increasingly have now, but it isn’t going to fetch the answers for us. Heck, it won’t even tell us the questions.
- tim333 7y agoWe shall see. Not today but give it 20 years and you may be surprised.
- davrosthedalek 7y agoIndeed, that is a big impediment in many disciplines. Non-perturbative QCD (i.e. what describes the mass around you) can not be calculated analytically with a controlled level of precision. The best we can do is lattice QCD, i.e. the brute force approach. That's a big difference to QED, where we know how to find better and better approximations in a systematic way. In other words, QCD, like many complex systems, shows emergent behavior not easy to predict from the theory input (couplings, masses). A better mathematical framework to attack these kind of problems would be a substantial jump forward.
- peignoir 7y agoAnd academia is failing too, I can’t remember what Nobel prize mentioned that he could not get one today as most researchers are stuck in having to produce papers for the sake of keeping their grants. What would be needed is a lot of free time and freedom to think ...
- peebz 7y agoIt was Peter Higgs who said that (https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/06/peter-higgs-boson-academic-system https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/06/peter-higgs-...).
- TheOtherHobbes 7y agoThis is a much bigger issue. Research has been distorted by irrelevant bureaucratic productivity metrics. So the illusion of regular activity is rewarded, while anyone who takes ten years to explore a truly original ground-breaking idea is punished and excluded.
- PopeDotNinja 7y agoSabine has a great YouTube channel, too => https://www.youtube.com/user/peppermint78/videos https://www.youtube.com/user/peppermint78/videos. On the topic of the LHC, particle physics, and future colliders, I like this video => https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Go2TaEUQpF4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Go2TaEUQpF4.
- ArtWomb 7y agoAs science historian John Horgan noted in The End of Science the parallel in physics is with academic humanities departments becoming mired in "irony" The End of (one type of) Physics, and the Rise of the Machines https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=10680 https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/?p=10680 Seems there are two possible outcomes. The deluge of data leads to better correlation which smooths over the flaws in current models. And corrects errors with some minor fudge factor that contains no further significance. From Dark Matter to Galaxies with Convolutional Networks https://arxiv.org/abs/1902.05965 https://arxiv.org/abs/1902.05965 Or something deeply profound is discovered. The thing which cannot be ignored. And instead leads to an explosion of new physics. Recognizing patterns of the latter class will perhaps always be the domain of the human operator.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- wallace_f 7y agoPhysics has made a lot of progress in social justice and representation and these kinds of comments putting down "her point of view" is the type of toxic masculinity that will send us back 100 years.
- frostburg 7y agoThat statement would read as arrogance from anyone.
- shkkmo 7y agoIt isn't a throwaway comment, it is reference to writing and work she has been doing for quite a while. It does come across as fairly arrogant without the context of all her other writing and work. With that context it comes across to me as more of an expression of frustration.
- SiempreViernes 7y agoYeah, but if you've followed Hossenfelders writhing you know that it's been wobbling along the line between relevant critique and pure clickbait for over a year now. This is likely the first time I've seen any claim that she has a good idea of what to do instead (she's had the idea before, but not claimed it to be a good one as I recall), the past year it's been mostly about how all other physicists are stupid... and it's not like this supposedly "superior" strategy has yielded any great advanced for in her work.
- armatav 7y agoI don’t think physics operates on anything resembling a social-justice system - nothing like the parent comment is going to send us backwards any amount of time in the field, but an attitude that bars commentary might stagnate us for a long time.
- wallace_f 7y ago>I don’t think physics operates on anything resembling a social-justice system Physicists are chosen within the Academic-Governmental Complex, and as such physicists are chosen according to its preferences. Maybe this is a big problem? It's not just with respect to selection based on gender, race or socioeconomics. Have you read Paul Graham's Lesson to Unlearn, about the adverse incentives and maligned merits which academia chooses for: http://www.paulgraham.com/lesson.html http://www.paulgraham.com/lesson.html Personally, I just hate it when people praise Academia (I see it often with Wall Steeet, too) as being a shining example of social justice like its some gift-wrapped paper around a rotten core. >an attitude that bars commentary might stagnate us for a long time. I agree. Now watch comments such as these incite downvotes and inflammatory responses because they question assumptions and make people feel uncomfortable.
- DanielBMarkham 7y agoGood essay. Yes, the sociology and politics of the way we do science is overtaking the reproducible learning aspect. Foundations for many things, like physics, are as solid as necessary for doing a lot of work, but by the time you get to the point where you should be testing, rearranging, and ferreting out flaws in the foundations, you're so indoctrinated into a culture that you don't have the mental tools necessary to do the required work. So instead you just chug along the way the last generation did, adding a decimal point here or there. It's not wrong. It's just not changing over time. It is stagnant. The nice thing about physics is that with new advances in astronomy and the lack of a unified theory, it keeps getting poked with reminders that there may be missing pieces. That's not true in many other fields.
- hhas01 7y agoStagnant? Or just mature, like a fine cheese and wine?
- DanielBMarkham 7y agoAs an outsider, I don't know. There is a presumption that since things have changed over time, they will continue to change. This very well might not be true. I didn't want to get too Kuhnian, so I just used the word "stagnant" for effect. Once again, as an outsider it doesn't seem to me that they are anywhere near "done", but they sure as heck look like a mature science. Physics and its children have given us amazing things. Spending a lot of time playing with math wasn't one of them. All sciences have one aspect in common: until you get to reproducibility, the conversation in the community tends towards groupthink over time. That's a human characteristic not related to any one field of study.
- shkkmo 7y agoMature implies that no further major improvement is required. That does not seem to be the case with the foundations of physics given some of the fundementally unresolved inconsistencies.
- wolfgke 7y ago> but by the time you get to the point where you should be testing, rearranging, and ferreting out flaws in the foundations, you're so indoctrinated into a culture that you don't have the mental tools necessary to do the required work. Don't you rather believe that a much simpler explanation is that the incentives and terms for grants are at fault?
- rpz 7y agoIn the spirit of pointing out inconsistencies...I am not a physicist, but something I've been confused about lately is why the action constant has a unit of seconds baked into it. Feels like E = hf is an experiment with a hard coded 1 second measure time. Why not express the relationship in terms of power? P=uf where u is the action constant without the seconds unit hard coded. And E=utf has a variable time parameter
- rpz 7y agoDown votes? Care to explain? I'm just trying to learn here :)
- plmu 7y agoAgree, I'm wondering too.
- akubera 7y agoDidn't downvote, but they probably came because you asked a very tangential question to the subject. I'll try to answer it: I think you just want to move units around so h (Planck's constant) has units of Joules instead of Joule-seconds. While this works mathematically, it doesn't really make sense physically, where we care about the energy of a photon because that's the value that is conserved (along with momentum, also relating to h) during any interaction (e.g. the quantity gained by an electron if the photon is absorbed). It really doesn't make sense to want to quantify the "power" of a photon, which doesn't have any physical meaning, in favor of a simpler constant. You are right about the constant 'h' having a "hard-coded" 1-second built in, but so do ALL derived physical constants . If we, say, changed it to two seconds, the number would be cut in half to reflect the scale change and preserve the energy of the photon (or any action) because that does not depend on scale. As to "why is it Joule-seconds?": that's the discovered law of nature. If the energy was proportional to frequency squared, h would be in units of J*s².
- rpz 7y agoConsider it this way. Suppose we all agreed to never use numerical values in the units section of an equation... then in this case we'd need a symbol for cycles in cycles per second aka Hz. If we leaves Planck's constant as is in E=h(cycle/second), then the units would end up as Joulecycle... odd right? That's what brought me to writing the formula as E=utf I guess it should really be Delta E=u(delta t)f where u is in joules t is (seconds per cycle) and f is (cycles per second)
- pxhb 7y agoI think that the article raises some interesting points, with some that I agree with and some that I do not. I think it would have been helpful for the article to put the 40 years of no progress in perspective. Are we looking for progress on the scale of the theories of relativity and quantum mechanics, and so should we be comparing to the timescales between Newton and Einstein/Schrodinger? How should we think about the rate of progression in a ‘mature’ field such as physics? Should it be linear (big discovery every 40 years), faster (new discoveries are faster due to bootstrapping from other discoveries), or slower (diminishing returns)?
- strangescript 7y agoI have become a bit more pessimistic about it the state of discovery. Things have slowed despite the current generation having abundant access to overwhelming compute power and the internet, things that did not exist even 30 years ago. There has never been a better time to collaborate or prove out theoretical models, yet there has been a decrease in needle moving discoveries.
- scottlocklin 7y agoMaybe the internet is an impediment to doing science. It certainly seems to shorten people's attention spans.
- devcpp 7y agoMore importantly, the most brilliant minds (and there are still a LOT of them) are working for large companies on unimportant problems instead of doing research. Academia has lost all of its prestige, and companies pay ridiculously more.
- kilroy123 7y agoI too worry this might be a big issue holding us all back. As well as poor diet and lack of proper exercise.
- jonbronson 7y ago"...mindless production of mathematical fiction..." This derisive comment betrays the authors own hypocritical stance, claiming physicists are too close-minded, while simultaneously ridiculing the role of advanced mathematics in formulating new physics hypotheses, arbitrarily declaring them mindless fiction.
- CuriouslyC 7y agoNope. The criticism is of searching for new physics by chasing mathematical elegance, instead of trying to explain observations.
- PeterisP 7y agoI find it hard to put together her criticism of "chasing mathematical elegance, instead of trying to explain observations" with her criticism of the large and expensive colliders. The way I see it, the whole reason why the expensive experiments are needed is that the current theories do explain all the 'local' and (comparatively) low energy observations that we can do here on earth in ordinary conditions; we know that there are discrepancies between our theories and large scale / high power processes that we can observe in astrophysics, but if we actually want to probe and explore these discrepancies between theory and observations, then we need to make some discrepanct events to look at.... which we can't do without the very expensive experiments that she shuns; e.g. the Higgs boson is not going to show up on a low-power particle accelerator, no matter how smart physics you do.
- SiempreViernes 7y agoActually, Hossenfelders great fight has been with the concept of "naturalness", a fight that has now been won by the LHC killing off all the theories based on that concept. And it wasn't ever so simple as "chasing mathematical elegance instead of trying to explain observations", the problem has been that there was a theory that could explain almost perfectly everything within a certain region of physics, but can't easily be extended. Thus you work on crazy schemes to extend the existing theory (all the sensible ones already having failed), or you are forced to make an entirely new framework, and that takes a lot of work before it's finished enough to even reproduce the results of the limited theory. If you take the second route, you are very vulnerable to the "chasing mathematical elegance" slander, but it's not like the other guys are doing any better: there aren't actually any unexpected observations that need explaining within the reach of the existing theory.
- seemslegit 7y agoI really really want a reason to not dismiss this as vapid demagoguery running on the "Woman scientist challenges predominantly male establishment on stagnant paradigms" ticket because this is absolutely what it reads like. "But for all I can tell at this moment in history I am the only physicist who has at least come up with an idea for what to do. " This is one heavy claim (two actually), is there some place where she elaborates what that idea is in terms more specific than "resolving inconsistencies" and "more theorists" ?
- micmil 7y agoIf your primary takeaway from this is "woman write thing" then you may need to read it again.
- seemslegit 7y agoIf that's your primary takeaway from my comment you may need to read it again.
- senderista 7y agoI think she’s bitter and aggrieved but I’ve never seen evidence of her playing the gender card.
- seemslegit 7y agoI don't think she does per se, but I can't imagine even a blog post publication with this ratio of materiality to self-promotion being received well for a white-cishet phycisist in her position, maybe its more about the times than the gender.
- seemslegit 7y agoNot sure why the original response got flagged but: I think that her being a woman in this context provides this kind of output with more amplification than if she hasn't been while at the same time diminishing her opportunities for honest collegiate feedback. That's not her fault or an advantage that she's deliberately taking, or an advantage all for a researcher, maybe for an author/pundit.
- Merrill 7y ago>But all shortcomings of these theories – the lacking quantization of gravity, dark matter, the quantum measurement problem, and more – have been known for more than 80 years. And they are as unsolved today as they were then. Would solving these shortcomings make life better for anyone? Other than the now famous physicist that came up with the solution, wouldn't the others working on these problems become unemployed?
- snowwrestler 7y agoWhat actually is the foundation of physics? The observations or the theories? We believe, as an assumption (or nearly as a matter of orthodoxy) that there are simple universal laws that govern consistent natural phenomena. One could argue that that is the foundation of our science of physics in that if that wrong, the whole thing falls down. But that has not “progressed” and really should not change... which seems consistent with the concept of a building foundation. Building foundations don’t move and shouldn’t move. What about theories, which seem to be the focus of her blog post? Well we should be careful to distinguish between our theories and the fundamental laws we think they describe—the map vs the territory and all that. I would really hesitate to call our theories a foundation of physics. For one thing they are known to be provisional; intended to be changeable. That’s not how foundations usually work. When observations contradict theories, the theories must move. From that perspective one could say that observations are more foundational than theories. Once a piece of evidence is properly observed, it doesn’t change. And the thing is, we have collected major (I would argue foundational) observations in the last 40 years. We observed the Higgs boson and gravitational waves, and I would call both of those foundational. That they agreed with existing theory is somehow being taken for a crisis? I guess it’s a crisis if your job is to come up with new theories and you’re lacking reasons to do so. But there are plenty of mysterious observations yet to be explained. Many of the observations related to dark matter and dark energy fit within a retrospective 40-year time horizon. Call them astronomy if you like, but going back up to my second paragraph, we believe they should be explainable by our physical theories.
- lostmsu 7y agoThe foundations of physics you are talking about sound more like foundations of scientific method, and are not specific to physics. Most people rightly call the theories and corresponding fundamental physical equations to be fundamentals of physics. Also, you really wrote a bit too much.
- throw0101a 7y ago> What actually is the foundation of physics? See Naturalism: > 1. that there is an objective reality shared by all rational observers.[20][21] > 2. that this objective reality is governed by natural laws;[20][21] > 3. that reality can be discovered by means of systematic observation and experimentation.[20][21] > 4. that Nature has uniformity of laws and most if not all things in nature must have at least a natural cause.[21] > 5. that experimental procedures will be done satisfactorily without any deliberate or unintentional mistakes that will influence the results.[21] > 6. that experimenters won't be significantly biased by their presumptions.[21] > 7. that random sampling is representative of the entire population.[21] * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalism_(philosophy) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalism_(philosophy) Some other approaches: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_science#Current_approaches https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_science#Current_... Basically you have to make some metaphysical assumptions before doing science can even get off the ground. If you believe that reality is an illusion (Buddhism? Hinduism?) then you're less likely to be interested in understanding the world's workings. If you think that things occur for capricious reasons (e.g., pagan gods being the cause of things), then there is no reason to ask "why?". If things happen not because of inherit properties but because of God's Will (Occasionalism), then who can understand the mind of God? I've heard it argued that science mostly developed in (Western) Christendom because it brought together all of the above assumptions under its Aristotelian world view. If you look at the invention of the telescope in ~1600: it spread over the world with-in a couple of decades, but most cultures weren't really interested in it.
- nonbel 7y agoIt stagnated when they started doing NHST, ie checking for a difference from "background" vs collecting and comparing data to the predictions of various theories to distinguish between them. Same thing that has destroyed every field of research that adopted this approach.
- nonbel 7y agoImagine if Einstein just predicted that the position of the stars would appear to be different during the eclipse, rather than displaced by an exact amount. The last 40 years has seen physics become more like the former (bad) than the latter (good).
- rafaelvasco 7y agoTwo reasons: Either scientists and academics have stopped exploring (true to a degree..) or they have been looking in the wrong places with the wrong mindsets and incomplete reasoning. (mostly this.); That said science has evolved a lot yes. But it could have evolved a thousand fold more if it wasn't for that second reason;
- SiempreViernes 7y agoPersonally I find it amusing Hossenfelder is now invoking the need for learning philosophy of science, given how hostile she's been to it before. See for instance http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2016/08/the-unbearable-lightness-of-philosophy.html http://backreaction.blogspot.com/2016/08/the-unbearable-ligh... that begins with: "Philosophy isn’t useful for practicing physicists. On that, I am with Steven Weinberg and Lawrence Krauss who have expressed similar opinions." Though to be fair, she clarifies that she wishes philosophy wasn't so useless, and that: "Philosophers in that area are necessarily ahead of scientists. But they also never get the credit for actually answering a question, because for that they’ll first have to hand it over to scientists. Like a psychologist, thus, the philosopher of physics succeeds by eventually making themselves superfluous. It seems a thankless job. There’s a reason I preferred studying physics instead. Many of the “bad philosophers” are those who aren’t quick enough to notice that a question they are thinking about has been taken over by scientists. That this failure to notice can evidently persist, in some cases, for decades is another institutionalized problem that originates in the lack of communication between both fields." This is the sort of reasoning that got me reading Hossenfelder in the first place, not the conspiratorial posts she writes now... :(
- Psyladine 7y ago>Like a psychologist, thus, the philosopher of physics succeeds by eventually making themselves superfluous. Yes, my doctor too has a thankless job of treating disease & injury in me, where once he succeeds, he has no purpose in life.
- bordercases 7y agoHis purpose is the next patient! A better analogy is "once my doctor successfully advocates for better health habits and I achieve them, they are purposeless."
- guerrilla 7y agoI believe that was the point, phrased in sarcasm. Philosophers move on to the next thing after they hand problems to science.
- ISL 7y agoI strongly disagree that the foundations of physics have not progressed for 40 years. We have been looking really hard for answers to persistent questions. While we have not found affirmative answers, physicists have systematically ruled out option after option after option. We have not yet discovered a unified-theory-of-everything, but we know a whole lot more about what that theory is not. Furthermore, the past 40 years have seen the emergence of precision cosmology (and the dark-matter/energy paradigm that it entails), the observation and confirmation of neutrino oscillation, the detection of gravitational waves (and the nuclear physics revolution that has begun with GW170817), SN1987A, and so much more. The coming decades are poised to learn so much more, a lot of it from the stars. GAIA, LISA, updated terrestrial GW detectors, LSST/Rubin, TMT, SKA, and more are all poised to tell us much more about things we don't understand. Particle physics will move forward too, though it is uncertain how quickly. The right breakthrough in wakefield accelerators, though, could be transformative. Thirty spokes share the wheel's hub; It is the center hole that makes it useful. Shape clay into a vessel; It is the space within that makes it useful. Cut doors and windows for a room; It is the holes which make it useful. Therefore profit comes from what is there; Usefulness from what is not there. Tao Te Ching - Lao Tzu - chapter 11
- ssivark 7y agoLove the Tao Te Ching quote! To add to your point, scientists have been chasing inconsistencies exactly like Sabine said. They’re chasing dark matter, dark energy, quantum gravity, early universe cosmology, naturalness (arguable; more of a theoretical inconsistency), and quantum foundations (smaller effort). So I don’t see the point of vague allusions to the philosophy of science. If anyone has a concrete proposal---inspired from philosophy or whatever else, doesn’t matter---the proposal will typically be treated on its merits. Modulo caveats about humans being humans and all that.
- jxy 7y ago「三十輻，共一轂，當其無，有車之用。埏埴以為器，當其無，有器之用。鑿戶牖以為室，當其無，有室之用。故有之以為利，無之以為用。」
- tasogare 7y ago
- d--b 7y agoShort version, without the anger and bitterness: Theoretical physicists' way of working is to put forward baseless mathematical models and build $40bn machines to prove them wrong. They should instead work on theoretical inconsistencies that have been known for a while.
- jagged-chisel 7y agothanks for the tl;dr. I'd argue back to the author that "putting forward 'baseless' mathematical models" is "working on theoretical inconsistencies." When you're testing a black box for the content of the box without the ability to open the box, one may have little basis for an idea that might, maybe, could possibly provide useful results. That testing will definitely provide information, even if it's the basis of ruling out an entire class of tests.
- throwlaplace 7y agothat's because experiment drives physics rather than mathematical consistency (no matter how much people pretend it's about "beauty"). plenty of mathematically consistent physical theories have been falsified by experiment and plenty of mathematically inconsistent physical theories have made precise and accurate predictions.
- Anon84 7y agoWhen was the last time an experiment had a result that wasn’t explained by theory (supralumimal neutrinos aside)?
- leereeves 7y agoObservations of the cosmic microwave background, galactic rotation, gravitational lensing, and redshift led to the concepts of "dark matter" and "dark energy" that aren't yet explained by theory.
- Anon84 7y agoThe cosmic microwave background was first detected in the 1960s, gravitaional lensing was predicted by Einstein in the early 1900s and redshift can be traced back to the later half of the 1800s (as an extension of the Doppler effect)...
- senderista 7y ago“They do not think about which hypotheses are promising because their education has not taught them to do so.” Pretty rich coming from someone who’s written a bunch of papers on doubly-special relativity and similarly unpromising hypotheses.
- plmu 7y agoThinking about dark energy and the renewed controversy about it, e.g. https://www.space.com/dark-energy-not-debunked.html https://www.space.com/dark-energy-not-debunked.html. We have grave inconsistencies in cosmology, yet very bold conclusions are made, assuming that our theoretical understanding of gravity and general relativity is 100% correct at all scales. The claim about accelerated expansion, only 30 years old, is an example of the enormous arrogance of modern science, knowing that such theories have been developed and debunked every few decennia in the past 100-200 years. The historical perspective seems to fail completely, and todays physicists seem to be so confident even though their colleagues of only a few generations ago have been proven wrong many times. Why would anything be different now, because we throw so much money at it, because we have wonderful computers, have we become so much more intelligent as a species?
- bronlund 7y agoThere will be no real progress before everyone agrees to unfuck everything Einstein fucked up.
- Anon84 7y agoSuch as?
- bronlund 7y agoThe Aether. Einstein isn't alone though, there are others. Like how Heaviside ruined Maxwells original 20 equations. And there aren't really that many explanations to how this came about. It could be a result of stupidity of course - or it could be that someone for some reason maybe didn't want everyone to know. Imagine if you could modulate electromagnetic scalar waves to in-phase at a specific point in space. Someone could put a quad of energy confined to your bedroom and no one could tell where it came from. It would make the Hiroshima bomb sound like a firecracker and all you need is a lot of electricity and antennas. Big antennas though.
- jakeogh 7y agoYou might enjoy this Arecibo tour. NP4B (Bob Zimmerman) mentions the subject of your comment at the end: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQJawfbjpxw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQJawfbjpxw
- j1vms 7y agoThe role of this "era" may be in reformulating quantum physics and, separately, general relativity in new ways that make the ideas more accessible to more people, and earlier in their lives. The goal could be to make of modern physics... the new classical physics. That is, we start to let go the crutches we still teach because it is thought that day-to-day life is more readily explained by Newtonian physics. We are now in era where most advances (e.g. smartphones among them) could not exist in their present form without modern physics. Once more people accept the concepts of modern physics as a way of life (perhaps intuitively?), we will be in fertile territory for any potential new revolution in physics.
- gus_massa 7y agoThese theories have a very precise mathematical formulation and very weird unintuitive consequences. If you try to teach them without math, you only keep the weird unintuitive part and it's more unintelligible. For quantum mechanics you have to know eigenvalues and eigenvectors. This is studies in the first years of the university in a technical career. I'm not sure if it can be teach much earlier. For Special Relativity you have to know Minkowsky spaces. It's not so difficult, it can be moved to the first years of the university. For General Relativity you have to know curved spaces. It's not imposible to learn, but you can get a Ph.D. in Math or Physics without studding curved spaces.
- shuspect 7y agoWe can keep math, but switch to better theories, with plausible explanations. A kind of Pilot Wave can explain quantum weirdness to layman people with ease. We can ditch theory relativity and calculate speeds relatively to CMB, which is much easier to understand. We can ditch Big Bang theory and, instead, accept that light is not immortal, because it ages with time. IMHO, Dipole Repeller and Shapley Attractor are much more attractive and easier to explain than Big Bang.
- shuspect 7y agoIt looks like we found answer to question in the original post: Foundations of physics have not progressed in 40 years because all other alternative theories are downvoted to death.
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- boyadjian 7y agoMaybe the actual foundations of physics are sufficient for explaining our everyday life on earth.
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- cletus 7y agoDoes anyone else feel like the abstractions and models in physics have gone passed the point where the casual outsider (even a technically and scientifically minded one) can no longer intuitively understand it? Because that's how I feel. There are so many things I just don't understand now like: 1. I originally thought the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle was a natural consequence of using particles (photos) for measurement. Instead however it seems to be a fundamental property of the universe, which I only learned after finding out most of the mass of hadrons comes from the relativistic motion of quarks and it explains why hadrons don't collapse to a point. 2. What does it even mean to create more space? The universe is expanding. Ok, I can accept that. But what does it mean? 3. I find the models for dark matter and dark energy to be... unsatisfying. I realize there's experimental evidence for unobservable mass but it feels like a fudge. 4. Of course we still have no quantum model for gravity. 5. I don't really understand what a fundamental force really is. Like why does electromagnetism have a repulsive opposite but gravity doesn't? When I tried to look into this I ended up down some rabbit hole of "gauge forces" and got completely lost. Why is the Higgs Field not a force? 6. Why are some predictions of the Standard Model so incredibly accurate (like the magnetic moment of an electron IIRC?) while others are so incredibly inaccurate (eg IIRC the QFT prediction of vacuum energy is off by 120 orders of magnitude). 7. Why are there exactly three generations of particles (ignoring the Higgs)? What does a generation even mean? I could go on. I don't for a second mean to suggest any of these notions are wrong. It's just that the models have gotten so complex (it seems?) that it just feels like something huge is missing, something that will eventually seem obvious in hindsight. Or am I just a lemur trying to figure out how an airplane works?
- vkou 7y agoThe casual observer hasn't been able to understand the forefront of physics for a very long time. Maxwell's equations have been known for 150 years[1], but the average high school physics student hasn't the foggiest idea of what a differential equation is. At best, they have a vague understanding that electricity and magnetism are more-or-less interchangeable. Once you get into invisible forces acting across very small distances, nothing about how the world works is 'intuitive'. The most precise description of it is... A bunch of math, and not the kind of math that people learn in their K-12. [1] As has entropy, and the laws of thermodynamics. Yet even educated people often have no idea of what the laws of thermodynamics actually imply! You'd figure that people would take a little bit of an interest in them, given that they live in a society powered by combustion engines...
- mathgenius 7y agoParticle physics != foundations of physics.
- montjoy 7y agoSometimes when I’m working on a coding or troubleshooting problem I get stuck iterating on an issue when really I need to step back and try to think about solving things a different way. My impression is this is what she’s trying to advocate the physics community to do. I think her overall tone is too negative and is turning a lot of people off but overall I think she is a needed voice just to make sure we’re on the right track.
- eagsalazar2 7y agoDoesn't it seem likely that there are important natural phenomena of complexity that simply exceed human ability to comprehend them no matter how long we work to understand them and no matter what evidence we stumble upon? That that evidence will always remain mysterious until we first develop artificial intelligence (for example) capable of interpreting it?
- konschubert 7y agoThis is my pet topic, but: How can we expect to make progress in our theories if we haven’t even agreed on a consistent interpretation of today’s quantum theory?
- cygx 7y agoBecause explanatory stories aren't strictly necessary: While it certainly helps if we have them available because they allow us to reason intuitively, the hallmark of science is the predictive model. In contrast, a bunch of explanatory stories lacking an underlying predictive model is what we call pseudo-science.
- konschubert 7y agoAn "interpretation of a theory" is not an "explanatory story, it's a way to map the equations ("shut up and calculate") to reality. It's not a contested notion that every theory needs an interpretation.
- cygx 7y agoI would phrase things differently: The way to map a theory to reality is via its predictions. The interpretation is how the theory fits into my mental model of reality. In principle, reality could be strange enough that we are incapable of holding a good model of reality in our brains that evolved to avoid getting eaten by lions instead of doing quantum mechanics. I certainly hope that's not the case, but neither can I rule it out.
- konschubert 7y agoI think you and me mean different things with “interpretation”. > The way to map a theory to reality is via its predictions. Agree, and I call this mapping an “interpretation”. (I thought this was the general usage of the word in the scientific context, but I may be wrong.)
- LinuxBender 7y agoI do not agree that physics has not progressed. I do however believe there may be some dogmatic contamination in some processes that may have stalled some progression. Gravity for example, big G or little g and why?
- 8bitsrule 7y agoSometimes the impossible takes us a little longer. US school teacher, then geologist J. Harlan Bretz spent as much time as he could 'out in the field'. It was as a result of -extensive- observations that he arrived at his 'outrageous' Missoula Floods hypothesis. He spent 40 years defending his interpretation; he remained 'out in the field' most of that time. His critics had spent -very- little time in the field. They knew he was wrong. In 1979, he was awarded Geology's top prize.
- mellosouls 7y agoWoit response: https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/ https://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/
- swayvil 7y agoConsider a Venn diagram. 3 circles : the observable, the understandable, the communicable. Intersecting at a chubby triangle. That's physics. And it's pretty darn small compared to the rest of the diagram. Maybe the triangle is exhausted. All mapped out. The limits of the method have been met. Time to find a new method. Maybe?
- ineedasername 7y agoFirst, I disagree that physics, and its foundations, have not changed. Incrementalism is common in mature areas of study, but the cumulative effect is still felt. Second, I am reminded of Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions [0] This work described exact the state, with historical examples of the cycles, whereby progress exhibits peaks and valleys, periods of time wherein little monumental progress is made followed by brief frantic periods of discoveries, often stemming from the fertile ground laid by those who worked in plodding toil. And so I am more inclines to believe we are in such a trough at the moment and not even a particularly deep one. Various avenues of thought & experiment show amble potential to thrust us forward into one of Khun's Scientific Revolutions. [0] https://www.amazon.com/Structure-Scientific-Revolutions-50th-Anniversary/dp/0226458121/ref=sr_1_1?crid=519N2NFV2IAG&keywords=structure+of+scientific+revolutions+kuhn&qid=1578957587&sprefix=structure+of+sci%2Caps%2C149&sr=8-1 https://www.amazon.com/Structure-Scientific-Revolutions-50th...
- elfexec 7y agoDo we really want something fundamentally important as the foundations of physics to progress or change quickly? History of science and the philosophy of science has shown that the foundations of sciences progress a little here and a little there until these "little progresses" gain enough momentum to create a paradigm shift. And we only recognize these "little progresses" in hindsight after the paradigm shift. Technological advances also tend to progress science. We tend to believe that advances in science lead to advances in technology but historically, it's the other way around. More likely than not, there are man "little progresses" being made toward an eventual paradigm shift, but until it happens, we won't recognize how important those "little progresses" are.
- narrator 7y agoUnpopular opinion: The last time we had progression in the foundation of physics we just got even more powerful world destroying nuclear weapons. Maybe it's just too dangerous to advance physics outside of deeply classified government programs. In order to keep new physics from destroying the earth, funding is diverted to make work projects for physicists working in cosmology and string theory that will never actually have practical significance.
- jakeogh 7y agorecent stuff on dark energy: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21974117 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21974117 (by the blog's author Sabine Hossenfelder) https://youtu.be/oqgKXQM8FpU https://youtu.be/oqgKXQM8FpU (more on the confidence tldr Λ>1 still) https://youtu.be/7UNLgPIiWAg https://youtu.be/7UNLgPIiWAg