5 ms·

I don’t get it. What does she want people to do?

funklute 7y ago
It 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 ago
Yeah - 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 ago
Stop 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 ago
  Except, 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!;)
  - brutt 7y ago
    > († So no Warp Drive either, kids… sorry!;) Warp drive will be real when we will crack vacuum. Maybe we will be able to condensate vacuum, or make a supercavitating shield, or something else. I have idea of an engine, but a) it must be supertiny, b) the only possibility to feed enough energy into engine is to launch it through Sun.
    - hhas01 7y ago
      Causality’s the pig. Outracing your own light cone presents a problem, to say the least.
      - brutt 7y ago
        Causality is not a problem for physic. For example, electron can move faster than speed of light in a medium without violating of anything. The problem with FTL engine is that Cherenkov radiation alone will convert any FTL object into ball of plasma. The only way for material object to survive FTL speed is to travel in the it own space-time "bubble". The only natural object with properties of such bubble is black hole. So, warp drive is possible to create, in theory, if we will be able to create an artificial black hole like shield. Moreover, the only way to reach FTL speed is to throw something back at FTL speed. It's not possible to create any material fuels with FTL exhaust velocity. The only way to throw something at FTL speed is to throw it in it own space-time bubble.
        hhas01 7y ago
        Faster-than-light in a medium, which slows light down. Not faster than c, which I believe is the point Einstein et al were making when fixing the speed limit of the universe. Although a lighthearted joke about “sciencing hard” being invariant certainly flew off its rails just as fast.:p
  - achillesheels 7y ago
    Hence it is terrifying that a prestigious institute such as Cal Tech offers courses not on knowledge but on speculation (see bottom of list): http://pma.caltech.edu/research-and-academics/physics/physics-course-schedule-and-websites/physics-course-schedule-and-websites-2018-2019 http://pma.caltech.edu/research-and-academics/physics/physic...
andrewl 7y ago
She says: "And please spare me the complaints that I supposedly do not have anything better to suggest, because that is a false accusation. I have said many times that looking at the history of physics teaches us that resolving inconsistencies has been a reliable path to breakthroughs, so that’s what we should focus on. I may be on the wrong track with this, of course. 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." I'm no physicist, so I can't have a (useful) opinion, but she does offer at least a broad suggestion of what to do.
- nablaoperator 7y ago
  But isn't that exactly what was done, e.g. in supersymmetry? The Standard Model could not explain dark matter etc., so physicists tried to come up with a new theory potentially explaining it. Yes it's based on math, on beautiful math, but isn't it always the case in physics? How did Newton create his laws? By using math. How did Einstein create his theories? By using math. It's math, math, math. So create your math theories, explain nature and then use Occam's razor to find the simplest. Maybe I'm just getting this all wrong but I don't get her point.
  - jml78 7y ago
    Quantum mechanics is an example. We know how to use QM. It is an amazing theory. But physicists aren't probing QM anymore. Well most aren't. It does such a good job spitting out answers, we don't ask why. There is a lot to be explored there but academia tells people to avoid it. They say don't look at the man behind the curtain. QM is equations that gives good answers but we don't really know why. Something Deeply Hidden is a good book on the subject(as a non physicist). Of course I am just a layman who likes to read books about these subjects but I honestly don't know shit. Just what I read.
    - nablaoperator 7y ago
      >> But physicists aren't probing QM anymore Physicists are probing the heck out of every theory. However, QM has proven to be _extremely_ reliable, even some 'Gedankenexperimente' by Einstein trying to make it look wrong turned out to be true ('geisterhafte Spukwirkung'). >> There is a lot to be explored there but academia tells people to avoid it. I don't think so. I mean just look at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) which probes fundamental forces which are... guess what... based on quantum field theory which itself is based on quantum mechanics.
eitland 7y ago
Look for minor inconsistencies and start from there.
- rom16384 7y ago
  There's no need to look for minor inconsistencies when we have huge ones such as the Cosmological constant problem.
- gus_massa 7y ago
  > Look for minor inconsistencies and start from there. That's exactly what (a lot of) people is doing! Is there a second suggestions? There are some "interesting" experiments. One is the anomalous magnetic dipole moment of the muon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomalous_magnetic_dipole_moment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomalous_magnetic_dipole_mome... Theoretical: 0.000116591804(51) Experimental: 0.00011659209(6) Can you spot the difference? The experimental result is too big, like 3.5 sigmas too big. For most sciences 3.5 sigmas is a lot. In particle physics 3.5 sigmas is interesting, but it may be a fluke. People is trying to solve it. The idea is that the theoretical model is missing a particle or an interaction between the known particles. So, it's a guess game. You must guess how the particle must behave. Some properties like charge are fixed, some properties like mass are a parameter. So you must guess the main properties of the particle and tweak the parameters until you get a theoretical result that is closer to the experimental result. The problem is that the new proposed particle may change the theoretical expected result of other experiments. So you must fix the theoretical result of this experiment without breaking allllllllllllllll the other experiments. And the properties are very constrained. The easier to explain is the charge that must be an integer number. Or in some cases n/3, but you must explain very well why the fractional charges are no found in the wild. Other charges are posible, but people will think you are nuts unless there is a lot of supporting evidence. Other properties are more difficult to explain, like the symmetry of the W+, W- and Z0 particles. If you propose a new particle that interacts with the W+ particle, there are a lot of restrictions because the particle you propose must interact with the W- particle, or you have to propose another particle that interacts with the W- particle in a very similar way. And at the same time, you must also fix a similar problem with the Z0 particle. More details in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physics_beyond_the_Standard_Model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physics_beyond_the_Standard_Mo... The main problem is that most of this extensions to the standard model are very technical and boring, and they are not covered by the popularization press.
paganel 7y ago
Realizing that they're on bad path could be a first step in the right direction. Nothing big not having been "discovered" for 40 years probably means that the problems are structural.
Symmetry 7y ago
If we've completely chewed over the particle physics data we can currently produce so thoroughly it probably makes sense to stop employing so many theoretical physicists and instead shift resources into areas that are making progress whether that's pure math or biology or what-have-you.
- perl4ever 7y ago
  If theoretical physics is going nowhere in particular, and we're diverting funding to "pure math" maybe the physicists should put on hats that say "pure mathematicians"?

It 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 ago

Yeah - 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 ago

Stop 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 ago
Except, 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!;)
- brutt 7y ago
  > († So no Warp Drive either, kids… sorry!;) Warp drive will be real when we will crack vacuum. Maybe we will be able to condensate vacuum, or make a supercavitating shield, or something else. I have idea of an engine, but a) it must be supertiny, b) the only possibility to feed enough energy into engine is to launch it through Sun.
  - hhas01 7y ago
    Causality’s the pig. Outracing your own light cone presents a problem, to say the least.
    - brutt 7y ago
      Causality is not a problem for physic. For example, electron can move faster than speed of light in a medium without violating of anything. The problem with FTL engine is that Cherenkov radiation alone will convert any FTL object into ball of plasma. The only way for material object to survive FTL speed is to travel in the it own space-time "bubble". The only natural object with properties of such bubble is black hole. So, warp drive is possible to create, in theory, if we will be able to create an artificial black hole like shield. Moreover, the only way to reach FTL speed is to throw something back at FTL speed. It's not possible to create any material fuels with FTL exhaust velocity. The only way to throw something at FTL speed is to throw it in it own space-time bubble.
      - hhas01 7y ago
        Faster-than-light in a medium, which slows light down. Not faster than c, which I believe is the point Einstein et al were making when fixing the speed limit of the universe. Although a lighthearted joke about “sciencing hard” being invariant certainly flew off its rails just as fast.:p
- achillesheels 7y ago
  Hence it is terrifying that a prestigious institute such as Cal Tech offers courses not on knowledge but on speculation (see bottom of list): http://pma.caltech.edu/research-and-academics/physics/physics-course-schedule-and-websites/physics-course-schedule-and-websites-2018-2019 http://pma.caltech.edu/research-and-academics/physics/physic...

andrewl 7y ago

She says: "And please spare me the complaints that I supposedly do not have anything better to suggest, because that is a false accusation. I have said many times that looking at the history of physics teaches us that resolving inconsistencies has been a reliable path to breakthroughs, so that’s what we should focus on. I may be on the wrong track with this, of course. 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." I'm no physicist, so I can't have a (useful) opinion, but she does offer at least a broad suggestion of what to do.

nablaoperator 7y ago
But isn't that exactly what was done, e.g. in supersymmetry? The Standard Model could not explain dark matter etc., so physicists tried to come up with a new theory potentially explaining it. Yes it's based on math, on beautiful math, but isn't it always the case in physics? How did Newton create his laws? By using math. How did Einstein create his theories? By using math. It's math, math, math. So create your math theories, explain nature and then use Occam's razor to find the simplest. Maybe I'm just getting this all wrong but I don't get her point.
- jml78 7y ago
  Quantum mechanics is an example. We know how to use QM. It is an amazing theory. But physicists aren't probing QM anymore. Well most aren't. It does such a good job spitting out answers, we don't ask why. There is a lot to be explored there but academia tells people to avoid it. They say don't look at the man behind the curtain. QM is equations that gives good answers but we don't really know why. Something Deeply Hidden is a good book on the subject(as a non physicist). Of course I am just a layman who likes to read books about these subjects but I honestly don't know shit. Just what I read.
  - nablaoperator 7y ago
    >> But physicists aren't probing QM anymore Physicists are probing the heck out of every theory. However, QM has proven to be _extremely_ reliable, even some 'Gedankenexperimente' by Einstein trying to make it look wrong turned out to be true ('geisterhafte Spukwirkung'). >> There is a lot to be explored there but academia tells people to avoid it. I don't think so. I mean just look at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) which probes fundamental forces which are... guess what... based on quantum field theory which itself is based on quantum mechanics.

eitland 7y ago

Look for minor inconsistencies and start from there.

rom16384 7y ago
There's no need to look for minor inconsistencies when we have huge ones such as the Cosmological constant problem.
gus_massa 7y ago
> Look for minor inconsistencies and start from there. That's exactly what (a lot of) people is doing! Is there a second suggestions? There are some "interesting" experiments. One is the anomalous magnetic dipole moment of the muon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomalous_magnetic_dipole_moment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomalous_magnetic_dipole_mome... Theoretical: 0.000116591804(51) Experimental: 0.00011659209(6) Can you spot the difference? The experimental result is too big, like 3.5 sigmas too big. For most sciences 3.5 sigmas is a lot. In particle physics 3.5 sigmas is interesting, but it may be a fluke. People is trying to solve it. The idea is that the theoretical model is missing a particle or an interaction between the known particles. So, it's a guess game. You must guess how the particle must behave. Some properties like charge are fixed, some properties like mass are a parameter. So you must guess the main properties of the particle and tweak the parameters until you get a theoretical result that is closer to the experimental result. The problem is that the new proposed particle may change the theoretical expected result of other experiments. So you must fix the theoretical result of this experiment without breaking allllllllllllllll the other experiments. And the properties are very constrained. The easier to explain is the charge that must be an integer number. Or in some cases n/3, but you must explain very well why the fractional charges are no found in the wild. Other charges are posible, but people will think you are nuts unless there is a lot of supporting evidence. Other properties are more difficult to explain, like the symmetry of the W+, W- and Z0 particles. If you propose a new particle that interacts with the W+ particle, there are a lot of restrictions because the particle you propose must interact with the W- particle, or you have to propose another particle that interacts with the W- particle in a very similar way. And at the same time, you must also fix a similar problem with the Z0 particle. More details in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physics_beyond_the_Standard_Model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physics_beyond_the_Standard_Mo... The main problem is that most of this extensions to the standard model are very technical and boring, and they are not covered by the popularization press.

paganel 7y ago

Realizing that they're on bad path could be a first step in the right direction. Nothing big not having been "discovered" for 40 years probably means that the problems are structural.

Symmetry 7y ago

If we've completely chewed over the particle physics data we can currently produce so thoroughly it probably makes sense to stop employing so many theoretical physicists and instead shift resources into areas that are making progress whether that's pure math or biology or what-have-you.

perl4ever 7y ago
If theoretical physics is going nowhere in particular, and we're diverting funding to "pure math" maybe the physicists should put on hats that say "pure mathematicians"?