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Might be wishful thinking. The energy levels where a unifying theory might pop out seem to be out of reach right now. Doesn't seem that we're just missing somet
by devalgo 6y ago
Might be wishful thinking. The energy levels where a unifying theory might pop out seem to be out of reach right now. Doesn't seem that we're just missing something that's already in our data.
- api 6y agoOur current data is incomplete. It's possible then that there's more than one model that fits it, and that our current model is wrong but still manages to fit the data that we have. If we train a naive learning system on the same data, it might find another model that also fits the data but is closer to the right model. As a historical precedent consider Newtonian vs. Einsteinian mechanics. Newtonian mechanics works fine at familiar scales of time, space, force, power, mass, etc. Einsteinian mechanics also works fine at those scales. If that's all the data you have, they are equivalent theories. Yet Einsteinian mechanics also predicts things far beyond that scale correctly while Newtonian mechanics does not.
- devalgo 6y agoYes that's what I said, the data you need for a unifying theory is unavailable because we don't have colliders that can reach the right energies. Giant Neural Networks don't fix that.
- api 6y agoAhh... so our learning system may find multiple models but without access to those higher energies we may have no way to know which is correct. I still think it's an interesting thing to attempt and may suggest new experimental predictions. What if an alternative model makes a novel prediction that is testable?
- phreeza 6y agoCould new physics be lurking at obtainable energies with dark matter and dark energy?