5 ms·

Short version, without the anger and bitterness: Theoretical physicists' way of working is to put forward baseless mathematical models and build $40bn machines

by d--b 7y ago

Short 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 ago
thanks 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 ago
that'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 ago
  When was the last time an experiment had a result that wasn’t explained by theory (supralumimal neutrinos aside)?
  - leereeves 7y ago
    Observations 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 ago
      The 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)...
      - leereeves 7y ago
        It's not the existence of these phenomena that's unexplained, but specific observations that don't fit our current theories. This article seems like a decent introduction: https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/five-reasons-we-think-dark-matter-exists-a122bd606ba8 https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/five-reasons-we-think-...
    - The_rationalist 7y ago
      MOND is a better explanation than dark energy.
      - phkahler 7y ago
        There was an article linked here just a week or two ago. Its claim was that the distance measurements used in cosmology may be wrong on larger scales. With the correction there is no need for MOND or dark energy. This needs confirmation of course. I have yet to see the "expected" galactic rotation curves that are contradicted by observation a lead to ideas about dark MATTER. I'm mean I've seen the curves but cant find the math behind them. You often see weak references to Keplers law which doesnt even apply, so that leaves me very skeptical.
        Iwan-Zotow 7y ago
        > I'm mean I've seen the curves but cant find the math behind them. You often see weak references to Keplers law which doesnt even apply, so that leaves me very skeptical. Huh? This is directly derived from 3rd law
        7y ago
  - yomly 7y ago
    maybe a bit facetious, but wave-particle duality at a time when we only had classical mechanics...?
  - adrianN 7y ago
    Superconduction is still poorly understood. We don't have a good model that predicts what materials are superconductors.
    - PopePompus 7y ago
      It's likely though that in the case of superconductivity the problem is the complexity of the calculations, rather than a fundamental theoretical problem. It's like protein folding - we're no where near being able to do an ab initio calculation of the shape of a protein, but that doesn't mean that there is a fundamental problem with quantum mechanics.
  - ChrisLomont 7y ago
    Some examples: Matter/anti-matter asymmetry, arrow of time direction, why CP violations, neutrino mass questions, why masses are what they are, dark matter and energy nature, what cancels out zero point energy, many structures on universe scale don't fit models, firewall paradox, why is gravity so weak, are there gravitons (other particles..), do magnetic monopoles exist (widely conjectured to work from models, none yet seen), why 3 generations of particles, proton radius discrepancies, exotic and pentaquark (and higher) particles, Navier-Stokes open problems, lots of superconductor and metamaterial questions results not explained theoretically, and so on...
    - nonbel 7y ago
      Matter/anti-matter asymmetry is expected to be present. It is a basic feature of individual random walk instances using symmetrical laws that about half will be dominated by matter and the other half dominated by antimatter for long periods of time (although the "universe" may pass through pure energy states as it switches between the two). While there is a balance on average and in the long run, there is not for individual instances or points in time. We called the dominating one for our current instance/state of the universe "matter": https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/505662/why-is-matter-antimatter-asymmetry-surprising-if-asymmetry-can-be-generated-by https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/505662/why-is-ma...
      - ChrisLomont 7y ago
        >Matter/anti-matter asymmetry is expected to be present. It is a basic feature of individual random walk It may be the cause, but it is not known to be the cause. And it's not a random walk; black holes accumulate charge from pairs, making future radiation not symmetric. My understanding is that people have probed this for some time and it's still inconclusive if it can generate the observed imbalance. Here's [1] a 1979 paper on the idea, with hundreds of citations, in case you want to poke at the literature. If I remember, Cosmology by Weinberg has a chapter on various theories of how the imbalance may happen, none of them known to be all of or even part of the answer. [1] https://journals.aps.org/prd/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevD.19.1036 https://journals.aps.org/prd/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevD.19.10...
gus_massa 7y ago
The problem is that the theoretical inconsistencies are too small to be useful. For example, we know that there is probably a problem with the anomalous magnetic dipole moment of the muon (it's not sure, because it's only a 3.5 sigma, it may me a fluke). Without more experiments, it's difficult to know how to modify the "Standard Model" to get the correct result. There are many alternatives, but without more precise experiments it's difficult to select the correct one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomalous_magnetic_dipole_moment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomalous_magnetic_dipole_mome... So the alternative is to build a $40bn machine, look at the data and then try to imagine then how to fix the theoretical model. [There is a risk of overfitting the model, and finding patterns in the noise.] Another alternative is to build a $40000bn (or more) machine and have enough precision to make the model obvious from the data. [I'm not sure this is possible, I guess with enough money, perhaps m000000re money.]

by d--b 7y ago

jagged-chisel 7y ago

thanks 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 ago

that'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 ago
When was the last time an experiment had a result that wasn’t explained by theory (supralumimal neutrinos aside)?
- leereeves 7y ago
  Observations 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 ago
    The 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)...
    - leereeves 7y ago
      It's not the existence of these phenomena that's unexplained, but specific observations that don't fit our current theories. This article seems like a decent introduction: https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/five-reasons-we-think-dark-matter-exists-a122bd606ba8 https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/five-reasons-we-think-...
  - The_rationalist 7y ago
    MOND is a better explanation than dark energy.
    - phkahler 7y ago
      There was an article linked here just a week or two ago. Its claim was that the distance measurements used in cosmology may be wrong on larger scales. With the correction there is no need for MOND or dark energy. This needs confirmation of course. I have yet to see the "expected" galactic rotation curves that are contradicted by observation a lead to ideas about dark MATTER. I'm mean I've seen the curves but cant find the math behind them. You often see weak references to Keplers law which doesnt even apply, so that leaves me very skeptical.
      - Iwan-Zotow 7y ago
        > I'm mean I've seen the curves but cant find the math behind them. You often see weak references to Keplers law which doesnt even apply, so that leaves me very skeptical. Huh? This is directly derived from 3rd law
        7y ago
- yomly 7y ago
  maybe a bit facetious, but wave-particle duality at a time when we only had classical mechanics...?
- adrianN 7y ago
  Superconduction is still poorly understood. We don't have a good model that predicts what materials are superconductors.
  - PopePompus 7y ago
    It's likely though that in the case of superconductivity the problem is the complexity of the calculations, rather than a fundamental theoretical problem. It's like protein folding - we're no where near being able to do an ab initio calculation of the shape of a protein, but that doesn't mean that there is a fundamental problem with quantum mechanics.
- ChrisLomont 7y ago
  Some examples: Matter/anti-matter asymmetry, arrow of time direction, why CP violations, neutrino mass questions, why masses are what they are, dark matter and energy nature, what cancels out zero point energy, many structures on universe scale don't fit models, firewall paradox, why is gravity so weak, are there gravitons (other particles..), do magnetic monopoles exist (widely conjectured to work from models, none yet seen), why 3 generations of particles, proton radius discrepancies, exotic and pentaquark (and higher) particles, Navier-Stokes open problems, lots of superconductor and metamaterial questions results not explained theoretically, and so on...
  - nonbel 7y ago
    Matter/anti-matter asymmetry is expected to be present. It is a basic feature of individual random walk instances using symmetrical laws that about half will be dominated by matter and the other half dominated by antimatter for long periods of time (although the "universe" may pass through pure energy states as it switches between the two). While there is a balance on average and in the long run, there is not for individual instances or points in time. We called the dominating one for our current instance/state of the universe "matter": https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/505662/why-is-matter-antimatter-asymmetry-surprising-if-asymmetry-can-be-generated-by https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/505662/why-is-ma...
    - ChrisLomont 7y ago
      >Matter/anti-matter asymmetry is expected to be present. It is a basic feature of individual random walk It may be the cause, but it is not known to be the cause. And it's not a random walk; black holes accumulate charge from pairs, making future radiation not symmetric. My understanding is that people have probed this for some time and it's still inconclusive if it can generate the observed imbalance. Here's [1] a 1979 paper on the idea, with hundreds of citations, in case you want to poke at the literature. If I remember, Cosmology by Weinberg has a chapter on various theories of how the imbalance may happen, none of them known to be all of or even part of the answer. [1] https://journals.aps.org/prd/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevD.19.1036 https://journals.aps.org/prd/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevD.19.10...

gus_massa 7y ago

The problem is that the theoretical inconsistencies are too small to be useful. For example, we know that there is probably a problem with the anomalous magnetic dipole moment of the muon (it's not sure, because it's only a 3.5 sigma, it may me a fluke). Without more experiments, it's difficult to know how to modify the "Standard Model" to get the correct result. There are many alternatives, but without more precise experiments it's difficult to select the correct one. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomalous_magnetic_dipole_moment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anomalous_magnetic_dipole_mome... So the alternative is to build a $40bn machine, look at the data and then try to imagine then how to fix the theoretical model. [There is a risk of overfitting the model, and finding patterns in the noise.] Another alternative is to build a $40000bn (or more) machine and have enough precision to make the model obvious from the data. [I'm not sure this is possible, I guess with enough money, perhaps m000000re money.]