12 ms·

Physics is stuck

99 points by mellosouls 6y ago

dboreham 6y ago
http://cns.physics.gatech.edu/ChaosBook/extras/CNYang.html http://cns.physics.gatech.edu/ChaosBook/extras/CNYang.html "In the next ten years, the most important discovery in high-energy physics is that 'the party's over'."
- elorant 6y ago
  The party's over because we've done all the easy things and now we need mind boggling machines to test our theories.
- pier25 6y ago
  Can you explain for a layman what that means?
  - mellosouls 6y ago
    Experiments needed to confirm "fundamental" physics predictions (eg. large accelerators a la CERN) too costly to be pragmatic, or at least to continue the tradition of timely theory-experiment interplay. Bear in mind though that the comment was made in the 1980s; people on both sides will debate how prescient he was. Some background and counterpoints in the context of the proposed Chinese super-collider: http://ias.ust.hk/ias/files/pdf/1508403651_b2.pdf http://ias.ust.hk/ias/files/pdf/1508403651_b2.pdf
crb002 6y ago
We need a research satellite around Mars to better understand long range forces. The immediate problem is being bound to Earth distance experiments, including astronomy from two long range reference points. Also need a Venus or Sol orbit solar satellite with a massive capacitor on it for doing obscenely high power experiments.
- rocqua 6y ago
  What would you want studied with that satellite? Which forces? afaik gravity is pretty well studied by predicting the planets
  - dumbfoundded 6y ago
    Gravity is poorly tested at the smallest scales: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1408.3588.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1408.3588.pdf . Perhaps space based experiments could help. I also think astronomy would greatly improve.
- mhh__ 6y ago
  What long range forces? Almost all probes that go a long way away can (and are) used to test general relativity. The energy levels needed to brute force more interesting physics is quite possibly beyond being achievable by humanity. I don't know enough Quantum Field Theory to calculate it on the spot but I have read that to detect any gravitons at all we would need a planet sized detector orbiting closely around a black hole
- sporkologist 6y ago
  > obscenely high power experiments Like the energy released when 2 black holes collide? We're going to need a bigger capacitor.
hitekker 6y ago
Here is a similar article on powerful members of a scientific community seizing control of the mainstream view and inhibiting scientific progress: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21911225 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21911225
zackees 6y ago
Every time a particle physics article is posted, I come in and point out that Einstein was considered a fuzzy haired crackpot at the time and that particle physics is essentially a fraud that has SO MANY contradictions in experimental reality that the entire thing needs to be thrown away. I get downvoted ENDLESSLY. But that's cool. I'm going to keep on pointing this out. The downvotes make it that much sweeter as the foundation of particle physics continues to crumble every single day. Once we embrace the Universe as Nick Tesla discovered it, then things like the "impossible" EM drive and the fact that D-Wave quantum computer is not instantaneous computation will begin to make sense.
kzrdude 6y ago
See also the (now decade old) book The trouble with Physics by Lee Smolin.
- correlator 6y ago
  This one is a fun read
- mikhailfranco 6y ago
  I prefer Woit's Not Even Wrong, which has a lot of interesting historical detail and personal anecdote, in addition to the headline polemic.
unemphysbro 6y ago
Reminds me of Philip Anderson's testimony against the funding of superconducting super collider. (need to register to read the article) https://www.the-scientist.com/opinion-old/the-case-against-the-ssc-63734 https://www.the-scientist.com/opinion-old/the-case-against-t... Incentives in academia seems to be directed towards bringing in grant money. I like Barto and Sutton's discussion of 'nomadic' researchers (8:54, but the entire video is great): https://www.coursera.org/lecture/sample-based-learning-methods/andy-barto-and-rich-sutton-more-on-the-history-of-rl-1riMx https://www.coursera.org/lecture/sample-based-learning-metho... I don't know if this is a positive or negative for scientific progress, but, those are just two links that add perspective to academic research/funding.
Kednicma 6y ago
Let's finish working on our current experiments first, and then declare that we're stuck. We have particle accelerators, gravitational-wave telescopes, solar probes, and planetary probes which we're either still building or still operating, and we haven't finished falsifying-or-verifying all of our predictions. It's certainly wrong to imagine that we need a Great Man in order to come and fix everything. Perhaps we need a Great Insight, but also perhaps the insight has already been published and it simply hasn't been well-adopted yet. After all, people are still today fighting against basic century-old quantum mechanics, hoping that reality is more material and determined than it actually is.
- ganzuul 6y ago
  It is hard to believe how entrenched locality and realism are in physics. A semester of philosophy should bury them for good. A more modern concern is Boltzmann brains, but those too should offer no barrier to a philosophically aware mind. Perhaps a mere PhD or decade of contemplation would enlighten them to mysteries of the anthropic principle.
  - esperent 6y ago
    > It is hard to believe how entrenched locality and realism are in physics Not really, since every valid theory must be testable and falsifiable. The idea that all of reality has been a fleeting random agglomeration of particles that experienced this exact moment, of you reading my sentence here, before dispersing and taking all of suggested reality with it - in other words, a Boltzmann brain - well, it's a cool idea, but where does it get you? It's not falsifiable, ever, so it's not science. It's philosophy, and as such it's not something that a scientist, let alone a whole field of scientists, should be spending their time on. Instead, they should be doing actual science, grounded in realism. If they want to put on a philosopher hat after work and talk about Boltzmann brains, on the other hand, that's great. I, for one, will lap up the crazy philosophies generated by the mind of a physicist, with gusto. But I'd rather they (or so least, most physicists) stick with actual science, aka, their job, most of the time.
  - daxfohl 6y ago
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
djaque 6y ago
Whenever I see headlines like this, I'm reminded that physics has a communication problem where the public thinks that high energy physics is the only type (or the only worthy type) of physics out there. There's a lot more to the field than the next theory of everything, and those other fields aren't stuck For instance, in just this decade human kind turned on the first x-ray free electron laser and increased the state of the art in the brightness of x-ray sources by 10 ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE!!! I'm not sure I can fully explain how transformational that level of improvement was because I work on the accelerator side, not the user side. But, at least understand that there are entire subfields that now exist which didn't before. Not just physics, but in biology, chemistry, materials science, and numerous other fields. It's an instrument so powerful that every other scientifically advanced nation is now building their own. That instrument was developed by physicists and not high energy physicists. I feel that this also gets at a sort of toxic notion that I've noticed some high energy physicists in my own department have (not all, but you probably know the people that I'm talking about). The notion is that if you aren't working on 12 dimensional quantum theories of gravity or the holographic principle and black hole physics, then you aren't a real physicist. Somehow they think that if your work has a real world impact, then it's tainted in some way. I'm not sure how it's gotten this way, but I've actually been told as much by another grad student that my field should be moved to the engineering department because we aren't doing real physics.
- AnimalMuppet 6y ago
  Heh. Tell them that their field should be moved to the theology department.
- ganzuul 6y ago
  It's almost as if they are saying that their 'real physics' isn't science, because in real science observation is first and foremost. I'm really looking forward to what XFEL can do for material science. Perhaps we can finally replace plastics with something like eutectic systems, bulk metallic glass, or the classic transparent aluminum.
  - akvadrako 6y ago
foobar1962 6y ago
The time for another Einstein will only be after there has been another Michelson–Morley experiment.
- Koshkin 6y ago
  To be fair, Einstein did not know about (or even had a need in) the Michelson-Morley experiment when he created SR.
  - jonathanyc 6y ago
    That’s unclear—Einstein himself made contradictory remarks on this. See http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1974Obs....94...81J http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1974Obs....94...81J
Mugwort 6y ago
Physics doesn't need another Einstein. Einstein explained Brownian motion, the Photoelectric effect, created special relativity and general relativity, the cosmological constant, helped found quantum mechanics, served as an invaluable critic of quantum mechanics. Then he foundered. Einstein never accepted particle physics, refused to follow new developments and became a dinosaur. This sadly is what most "physicists" are doing today, the followed in Einstein's footsteps, mostly the dinosaur part. What does physics need? The world doesn't know. Nobody knows but someone will do it, someday in a manner no one else thought possible or could really anticipate. In fact, that's not entirely true but new developments will happen and only a handful of people will be in the loop. Lorenz, Poincare etc. e.g. laid some vital groundwork for relativity. My own two cents on the matter is that we really don't understand our theories well enough and are badly in need of a firmer foundation. The situation is analogous to calculus before Weierstrass, Cauchy, Dedekind and Cantor. Of course, mathematics wasn't completely stuck just because calculus wasn't fully developed. Probability and non-Euclidean geometry were stunning developments which predated a truer understanding of real numbers. So it is with physics right now. Unification, strings, etc. isn't working out so well right now. Quantum computing is now a thing and Quantum mechanics is enjoying a second revolution not unlike the General Relativity Renaissance led by Penrose, et. al. We can't predict the future. We don't know the sequence things we need to take the next step in AI or even if there is one. Will some form of deep learning be all we need? Probably not but possibly yes. Physics is right where it should be. Frustration is part of the process. We're feeling some pain because our approach isn't working. Instead of having answers to everything maybe we should focus on better questions.
- canofbars 6y ago
  I'm not a physicist or even a researcher of anything but I sometimes watch youtube videos of people experimenting with material sciences and chemistry and a trend I have seen is that even things that we consider to be very basic have a huge lack of good quality information available. One youtuber I saw spends time looking at new research papers for ideas and has found that they are just impossible to reproduce. Following the steps exactly as well as every possible variation doesn't produce anything close to the results described in the paper. In another video [0] he attempts to make glass and finds that almost all of the information available on the internet about making glass is not enough to actually make glass since they contain only enough information to register a patent but not enough to make from scratch. I wonder if we will see huge gains by just making complete and unobfiscated information available to the public since it looks like even the foundations of society are secret company internal information. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUcUy7SqdS0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUcUy7SqdS0
spodek 6y ago
I have a PhD in physics but work on sustainability -- what I consider the most important role for someone who understands nature today. I constantly meet people who are surprised to find that turning on a light in their homes causes fossil fuels to be burned. Their ignorance is their business, but the greenhouse gases become everyone's.
- pier25 6y ago
  Yeah common people think emissions come mostly form cars. Globally all transportation represents like 15% while electricity production is like 25% of our emissions.
  - BlueTemplar 6y ago
    Source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas#Greenhouse_gases_emissions_by_sector https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas#Greenhouse_gase...
- defterGoose 6y ago
  Can I ask what you're working on specifically? As a lapsed graduate-level physicist turned entrepreneur, problems related to climate change have been making me frantically search for a place where I can make meaningful contributions.
  - spodek 6y ago
    Nearly everyone says we know what to do, we just lack the will to do it. We lack leadership -- not telling people facts, figures, doom, gloom, and instructions. That's management, which is important, but leadership -- helping people do what they want to but haven't figured out how. No leaders or people with authority understand nature and I think it's easier for scientists to learn leadership than leaders to learn science. I support more science, but it's overwhelmingly clear. We don't need more science to create a vision and strategy. People need to feel meaning and purpose, to have an expectation of success. That comes from what leaders work on -- stories, images, role models, systems, emotions, and culture. So I focus on leadership -- bringing what people like Mandela, Eisenhower, Ali, and Deming brought but I don't see anyone doing today. My TEDx talks https://joshuaspodek.com/tedx https://joshuaspodek.com/tedx and podcast illustrate what I'm working on, though I've advanced a lot since then. Here are podcast episodes describing my strategy: - https://shows.pippa.io/leadership-and-the-environment/episodes/224-clarifying-my-strategy https://shows.pippa.io/leadership-and-the-environment/episod... - https://shows.acast.com/leadership-and-the-environment/episodes/301-does-it-scale-my-modified-tesla-strategy https://shows.acast.com/leadership-and-the-environment/episo... - https://shows.pippa.io/leadership-and-the-environment/episodes/260-creating-the-muhammad-ali-of-the-environment https://shows.pippa.io/leadership-and-the-environment/episod... - https://shows.acast.com/leadership-and-the-environment/episodes/310-the-start-and-end-of-any-serious-conversation-on-the-env https://shows.acast.com/leadership-and-the-environment/episo...
kristianpaul 6y ago
Physics needs more data, this is not a single person effort. Actually i’m those who believe this a golden edge for Physics and the constraint is not having another single brilliant guy but resources that could help us validate even further or break what its already known.
fizixer 6y ago
> Physics is stuck I agree. > needs another Einstein to revolutionize it Nope. The smartest minds today need to work on two topics: AI/AGI, and anti-aging/longevity Once these two problems are cracked, we'd be on a smoother transition path towards Type-1 Kardashev civilization. Then the smartest (long-living) minds can sit down with their favorite AGI collaborators in their ivory towers and have all the fun they want to have.
- arcticfox 6y ago
  Although another 'Einstein' making breakthroughs is totally possible, AGI gives me a lot of solace as a sort of back-up plan. If we have indeed hit some type of human wall, AGI at least gives us some long term option to potentially leap it. I'm not sure how much longevity research would help on that front, given the age distribution of scientists making breakthroughs, but it's nice in its own right.
  - fizixer 6y ago
    The longevity is really healthful and youthful longevity, not longevity for its own sake. I recommend looking into longevity forums, SENS foundation, Aubrey de Grey talks, etc, etc.
  - throwaway316943 6y ago
    I dunno, it might be interesting to have conferences where Einstein, Newton, Hawking, and others were in attendance at the same time.
lebuffon 6y ago
I have read that in the 1800s the upper crust were being told to not allow their children to pursue a career in Physics. The commonly held view was that Newton had uncovered all the good bits and there was really nothing left to discover. Then someone asked "What are those blue sparks I see when I take off my jumper (sweater) in a dark bedroom?" We just need to find the next sparks. :)
- djaque 6y ago
  It reminds me of a story about Max Planck [1] being told by his advisor to not pursue theoretical physics because it was only the small details that were left to work out. Of course, he went on to help start the revolution in quantum physics. > in this field, almost everything is already discovered, and all that remains is to fill a few unimportant holes [1] https://hsm.stackexchange.com/questions/2129/who-said-that-essentially-everything-in-theoretical-physics-had-already-been-dis https://hsm.stackexchange.com/questions/2129/who-said-that-e...
- pvg 6y ago
  This is an anecdote usually told about Max Planck (and may have originally been recounted by Planck!) and his adviser, Philipp von Jolly. Some decent sourcing here: https://hsm.stackexchange.com/questions/2129/who-said-that-essentially-everything-in-theoretical-physics-had-already-been-dis https://hsm.stackexchange.com/questions/2129/who-said-that-e... Electricity was a subject of intense study throughout the 19th century and before (think of the people we've named units and effects after - Galvano, Volta, Ampere, Ohm, etc)
- redis_mlc 6y ago
  Not much changed in 150 years: Post-2000 SV VC: So what kind of work do you do? Me: Software Engineer. Post-2000 SV VC: Oh, sorry to hear that. Software is a dying industry. You need to learn a new career.
vertbhrtn 6y ago
In some sense, the modern institute of science is somewhat like an orthodox church: a few pre-approved lines of thinking with a swift punishment for heretics. This is the biggest strength of science: this rigidness of thought is what protects it from clever charlatans. But this is also its biggest weakness because this risk-averse behavior, when scientists can't risk saying unapproved things without torpedoing their own reputation, is why science makes only tiny steps. Right now physics has reached a rather big obstacle on its way and the usual risk-averse-one-tiny-step-at-a-time tactics won't work.
- mrtksn 6y ago
  Wasn’t it always like that? If someone actually believes in non-orthodox ideas will simply face the backlash, follow the path anyway and later be recognized for the extraordinary accomplishments if these ideas turn out to be worth the salt. It’s much better to give a hard time to dedicated people than to risk giving an easy time to charlatans. Since you can’t really judge novel ideas, you can make the process just hard enough that charlatans drop out to some area where they can get fame and money for cheaper.
  - foobar1962 6y ago
    One of the challenges with unorthodox ideas is that occasionally some of them lead to great new understandings, but it's a very low signal-to-niose ratio. The orthodoxy can perhaps be excused for their reluctance for entertainment.
  - vertbhrtn 6y ago
    Professional scientists can't bet their reputation on a novel idea: a 1% chance it'll work out and 99% chance the scientist will be sent to academia's exile. It's better than what would've happened to them in medieval ages, though. In past, many of the breakthru ideas came from aristocrats: they were rich enough to not give a shit about their reputation in academia.
Fellshard 6y ago
Fluff 'science' from Salon is not exactly a resounding endorsement for the article's content.
LatteLazy 6y ago
Around when Einstein started there were only a few unsolved problems in physics. One gave up quantum mechanics, another relativity. That was basically chance. Maybe dark matter research will just find dark matter and yield neither more questions nor useful applications. Maybe it will yield a whole new area of enquiry with 1001 useful applications. We just don't know. No one should assume that X Hours/Dollars/Papers in physics represents an actual amount of "discovery".
amai 6y ago
It seems to me that the idea of supersymmetry will have the same fate as the idea of an aether. But physics wasn't stuck at the heydays of the aether theory and it is also not stuck now. There is much more to physics than just supersymmetry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsolved_problems_in_physics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsolved_problems_in_p... But maybe some fresh ideas from other fields of physics are necessary for particle physics. The problem it seems to me is that the people working in high energy physics and string theory are often very narrow minded and are ignoring important developments outside of their own field.
sriku 6y ago
I've always been amaZed by the collaboration and synthesis of ideas that happened during Einstein's time. Consider how important and contributive the following were to the famous relativity theories and the other names involved - - Mach's principle - Michelson - Morley experiment - Maxwell's equations of electromagnetism - minkowsky space-time - Lorentz transformations - Riemann's geometry - Ricci curvature tensor - Christoffel's connection symbols - Newton's observation and attempt to account for the perihelion precession of mercury's orbit (not to mention his motion and gravity laws in the first place) - Schwarzschild's solution to the field equations - Kerr metric and solutions - .. and amongst all that we have the Einstein field equations
- Svoka 6y ago
  Yes. It seems that folks forget that Einstein didn't invent all this things.
bronlund 6y ago
Einstein ruined physics for everybody. The only question is if it was on purpose. Everything is just vortices in a higher dimensional fluid. It's just turbulence and harmonies. The problem is that if everyone knew how the universe really worked, it would kind of ruin the day for a lot of people.
bumblebritches5 6y ago
So is materials science and chemistry. they need a paradigm shift.
zwilliamson 6y ago
Shout out to the sophons from Trisolaris interfering with research.
- cbHXBY1D 6y ago
  I always thought it interesting that Liu was tacitly saying that new breakthroughs in physics can only be done in places like CERN with a LHC-like project. Humans couldn't make theoretical breakthroughs anymore.

99 points by mellosouls 6y ago

http://cns.physics.gatech.edu/ChaosBook/extras/CNYang.html http://cns.physics.gatech.edu/ChaosBook/extras/CNYang.html "In the next ten years, the most important discovery in high-energy physics is that 'the party's over'."

elorant 6y ago
The party's over because we've done all the easy things and now we need mind boggling machines to test our theories.
pier25 6y ago
Can you explain for a layman what that means?
- mellosouls 6y ago
  Experiments needed to confirm "fundamental" physics predictions (eg. large accelerators a la CERN) too costly to be pragmatic, or at least to continue the tradition of timely theory-experiment interplay. Bear in mind though that the comment was made in the 1980s; people on both sides will debate how prescient he was. Some background and counterpoints in the context of the proposed Chinese super-collider: http://ias.ust.hk/ias/files/pdf/1508403651_b2.pdf http://ias.ust.hk/ias/files/pdf/1508403651_b2.pdf

crb002 6y ago

We need a research satellite around Mars to better understand long range forces. The immediate problem is being bound to Earth distance experiments, including astronomy from two long range reference points. Also need a Venus or Sol orbit solar satellite with a massive capacitor on it for doing obscenely high power experiments.

rocqua 6y ago
What would you want studied with that satellite? Which forces? afaik gravity is pretty well studied by predicting the planets
- dumbfoundded 6y ago
  Gravity is poorly tested at the smallest scales: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1408.3588.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1408.3588.pdf . Perhaps space based experiments could help. I also think astronomy would greatly improve.
mhh__ 6y ago
What long range forces? Almost all probes that go a long way away can (and are) used to test general relativity. The energy levels needed to brute force more interesting physics is quite possibly beyond being achievable by humanity. I don't know enough Quantum Field Theory to calculate it on the spot but I have read that to detect any gravitons at all we would need a planet sized detector orbiting closely around a black hole
sporkologist 6y ago
> obscenely high power experiments Like the energy released when 2 black holes collide? We're going to need a bigger capacitor.

hitekker 6y ago

Here is a similar article on powerful members of a scientific community seizing control of the mainstream view and inhibiting scientific progress: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21911225 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21911225

zackees 6y ago

Every time a particle physics article is posted, I come in and point out that Einstein was considered a fuzzy haired crackpot at the time and that particle physics is essentially a fraud that has SO MANY contradictions in experimental reality that the entire thing needs to be thrown away. I get downvoted ENDLESSLY. But that's cool. I'm going to keep on pointing this out. The downvotes make it that much sweeter as the foundation of particle physics continues to crumble every single day. Once we embrace the Universe as Nick Tesla discovered it, then things like the "impossible" EM drive and the fact that D-Wave quantum computer is not instantaneous computation will begin to make sense.

kzrdude 6y ago

See also the (now decade old) book The trouble with Physics by Lee Smolin.

correlator 6y ago
This one is a fun read
mikhailfranco 6y ago
I prefer Woit's Not Even Wrong, which has a lot of interesting historical detail and personal anecdote, in addition to the headline polemic.

unemphysbro 6y ago

Reminds me of Philip Anderson's testimony against the funding of superconducting super collider. (need to register to read the article) https://www.the-scientist.com/opinion-old/the-case-against-the-ssc-63734 https://www.the-scientist.com/opinion-old/the-case-against-t... Incentives in academia seems to be directed towards bringing in grant money. I like Barto and Sutton's discussion of 'nomadic' researchers (8:54, but the entire video is great): https://www.coursera.org/lecture/sample-based-learning-methods/andy-barto-and-rich-sutton-more-on-the-history-of-rl-1riMx https://www.coursera.org/lecture/sample-based-learning-metho... I don't know if this is a positive or negative for scientific progress, but, those are just two links that add perspective to academic research/funding.

Kednicma 6y ago

Let's finish working on our current experiments first, and then declare that we're stuck. We have particle accelerators, gravitational-wave telescopes, solar probes, and planetary probes which we're either still building or still operating, and we haven't finished falsifying-or-verifying all of our predictions. It's certainly wrong to imagine that we need a Great Man in order to come and fix everything. Perhaps we need a Great Insight, but also perhaps the insight has already been published and it simply hasn't been well-adopted yet. After all, people are still today fighting against basic century-old quantum mechanics, hoping that reality is more material and determined than it actually is.

ganzuul 6y ago
It is hard to believe how entrenched locality and realism are in physics. A semester of philosophy should bury them for good. A more modern concern is Boltzmann brains, but those too should offer no barrier to a philosophically aware mind. Perhaps a mere PhD or decade of contemplation would enlighten them to mysteries of the anthropic principle.
- esperent 6y ago
  > It is hard to believe how entrenched locality and realism are in physics Not really, since every valid theory must be testable and falsifiable. The idea that all of reality has been a fleeting random agglomeration of particles that experienced this exact moment, of you reading my sentence here, before dispersing and taking all of suggested reality with it - in other words, a Boltzmann brain - well, it's a cool idea, but where does it get you? It's not falsifiable, ever, so it's not science. It's philosophy, and as such it's not something that a scientist, let alone a whole field of scientists, should be spending their time on. Instead, they should be doing actual science, grounded in realism. If they want to put on a philosopher hat after work and talk about Boltzmann brains, on the other hand, that's great. I, for one, will lap up the crazy philosophies generated by the mind of a physicist, with gusto. But I'd rather they (or so least, most physicists) stick with actual science, aka, their job, most of the time.
- daxfohl 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

djaque 6y ago

Whenever I see headlines like this, I'm reminded that physics has a communication problem where the public thinks that high energy physics is the only type (or the only worthy type) of physics out there. There's a lot more to the field than the next theory of everything, and those other fields aren't stuck For instance, in just this decade human kind turned on the first x-ray free electron laser and increased the state of the art in the brightness of x-ray sources by 10 ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE!!! I'm not sure I can fully explain how transformational that level of improvement was because I work on the accelerator side, not the user side. But, at least understand that there are entire subfields that now exist which didn't before. Not just physics, but in biology, chemistry, materials science, and numerous other fields. It's an instrument so powerful that every other scientifically advanced nation is now building their own. That instrument was developed by physicists and not high energy physicists. I feel that this also gets at a sort of toxic notion that I've noticed some high energy physicists in my own department have (not all, but you probably know the people that I'm talking about). The notion is that if you aren't working on 12 dimensional quantum theories of gravity or the holographic principle and black hole physics, then you aren't a real physicist. Somehow they think that if your work has a real world impact, then it's tainted in some way. I'm not sure how it's gotten this way, but I've actually been told as much by another grad student that my field should be moved to the engineering department because we aren't doing real physics.

AnimalMuppet 6y ago
Heh. Tell them that their field should be moved to the theology department.
ganzuul 6y ago
It's almost as if they are saying that their 'real physics' isn't science, because in real science observation is first and foremost. I'm really looking forward to what XFEL can do for material science. Perhaps we can finally replace plastics with something like eutectic systems, bulk metallic glass, or the classic transparent aluminum.
- akvadrako 6y ago

foobar1962 6y ago

The time for another Einstein will only be after there has been another Michelson–Morley experiment.

Koshkin 6y ago
To be fair, Einstein did not know about (or even had a need in) the Michelson-Morley experiment when he created SR.
- jonathanyc 6y ago
  That’s unclear—Einstein himself made contradictory remarks on this. See http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1974Obs....94...81J http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1974Obs....94...81J

Mugwort 6y ago

Physics doesn't need another Einstein. Einstein explained Brownian motion, the Photoelectric effect, created special relativity and general relativity, the cosmological constant, helped found quantum mechanics, served as an invaluable critic of quantum mechanics. Then he foundered. Einstein never accepted particle physics, refused to follow new developments and became a dinosaur. This sadly is what most "physicists" are doing today, the followed in Einstein's footsteps, mostly the dinosaur part. What does physics need? The world doesn't know. Nobody knows but someone will do it, someday in a manner no one else thought possible or could really anticipate. In fact, that's not entirely true but new developments will happen and only a handful of people will be in the loop. Lorenz, Poincare etc. e.g. laid some vital groundwork for relativity. My own two cents on the matter is that we really don't understand our theories well enough and are badly in need of a firmer foundation. The situation is analogous to calculus before Weierstrass, Cauchy, Dedekind and Cantor. Of course, mathematics wasn't completely stuck just because calculus wasn't fully developed. Probability and non-Euclidean geometry were stunning developments which predated a truer understanding of real numbers. So it is with physics right now. Unification, strings, etc. isn't working out so well right now. Quantum computing is now a thing and Quantum mechanics is enjoying a second revolution not unlike the General Relativity Renaissance led by Penrose, et. al. We can't predict the future. We don't know the sequence things we need to take the next step in AI or even if there is one. Will some form of deep learning be all we need? Probably not but possibly yes. Physics is right where it should be. Frustration is part of the process. We're feeling some pain because our approach isn't working. Instead of having answers to everything maybe we should focus on better questions.

canofbars 6y ago
I'm not a physicist or even a researcher of anything but I sometimes watch youtube videos of people experimenting with material sciences and chemistry and a trend I have seen is that even things that we consider to be very basic have a huge lack of good quality information available. One youtuber I saw spends time looking at new research papers for ideas and has found that they are just impossible to reproduce. Following the steps exactly as well as every possible variation doesn't produce anything close to the results described in the paper. In another video [0] he attempts to make glass and finds that almost all of the information available on the internet about making glass is not enough to actually make glass since they contain only enough information to register a patent but not enough to make from scratch. I wonder if we will see huge gains by just making complete and unobfiscated information available to the public since it looks like even the foundations of society are secret company internal information. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUcUy7SqdS0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mUcUy7SqdS0

spodek 6y ago

I have a PhD in physics but work on sustainability -- what I consider the most important role for someone who understands nature today. I constantly meet people who are surprised to find that turning on a light in their homes causes fossil fuels to be burned. Their ignorance is their business, but the greenhouse gases become everyone's.

pier25 6y ago
Yeah common people think emissions come mostly form cars. Globally all transportation represents like 15% while electricity production is like 25% of our emissions.
- BlueTemplar 6y ago
  Source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas#Greenhouse_gases_emissions_by_sector https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_gas#Greenhouse_gase...
defterGoose 6y ago
Can I ask what you're working on specifically? As a lapsed graduate-level physicist turned entrepreneur, problems related to climate change have been making me frantically search for a place where I can make meaningful contributions.
- spodek 6y ago
  Nearly everyone says we know what to do, we just lack the will to do it. We lack leadership -- not telling people facts, figures, doom, gloom, and instructions. That's management, which is important, but leadership -- helping people do what they want to but haven't figured out how. No leaders or people with authority understand nature and I think it's easier for scientists to learn leadership than leaders to learn science. I support more science, but it's overwhelmingly clear. We don't need more science to create a vision and strategy. People need to feel meaning and purpose, to have an expectation of success. That comes from what leaders work on -- stories, images, role models, systems, emotions, and culture. So I focus on leadership -- bringing what people like Mandela, Eisenhower, Ali, and Deming brought but I don't see anyone doing today. My TEDx talks https://joshuaspodek.com/tedx https://joshuaspodek.com/tedx and podcast illustrate what I'm working on, though I've advanced a lot since then. Here are podcast episodes describing my strategy: - https://shows.pippa.io/leadership-and-the-environment/episodes/224-clarifying-my-strategy https://shows.pippa.io/leadership-and-the-environment/episod... - https://shows.acast.com/leadership-and-the-environment/episodes/301-does-it-scale-my-modified-tesla-strategy https://shows.acast.com/leadership-and-the-environment/episo... - https://shows.pippa.io/leadership-and-the-environment/episodes/260-creating-the-muhammad-ali-of-the-environment https://shows.pippa.io/leadership-and-the-environment/episod... - https://shows.acast.com/leadership-and-the-environment/episodes/310-the-start-and-end-of-any-serious-conversation-on-the-env https://shows.acast.com/leadership-and-the-environment/episo...

kristianpaul 6y ago

Physics needs more data, this is not a single person effort. Actually i’m those who believe this a golden edge for Physics and the constraint is not having another single brilliant guy but resources that could help us validate even further or break what its already known.

fizixer 6y ago

> Physics is stuck I agree. > needs another Einstein to revolutionize it Nope. The smartest minds today need to work on two topics: AI/AGI, and anti-aging/longevity Once these two problems are cracked, we'd be on a smoother transition path towards Type-1 Kardashev civilization. Then the smartest (long-living) minds can sit down with their favorite AGI collaborators in their ivory towers and have all the fun they want to have.

arcticfox 6y ago
Although another 'Einstein' making breakthroughs is totally possible, AGI gives me a lot of solace as a sort of back-up plan. If we have indeed hit some type of human wall, AGI at least gives us some long term option to potentially leap it. I'm not sure how much longevity research would help on that front, given the age distribution of scientists making breakthroughs, but it's nice in its own right.
- fizixer 6y ago
  The longevity is really healthful and youthful longevity, not longevity for its own sake. I recommend looking into longevity forums, SENS foundation, Aubrey de Grey talks, etc, etc.
- throwaway316943 6y ago
  I dunno, it might be interesting to have conferences where Einstein, Newton, Hawking, and others were in attendance at the same time.

lebuffon 6y ago

I have read that in the 1800s the upper crust were being told to not allow their children to pursue a career in Physics. The commonly held view was that Newton had uncovered all the good bits and there was really nothing left to discover. Then someone asked "What are those blue sparks I see when I take off my jumper (sweater) in a dark bedroom?" We just need to find the next sparks. :)

djaque 6y ago
It reminds me of a story about Max Planck [1] being told by his advisor to not pursue theoretical physics because it was only the small details that were left to work out. Of course, he went on to help start the revolution in quantum physics. > in this field, almost everything is already discovered, and all that remains is to fill a few unimportant holes [1] https://hsm.stackexchange.com/questions/2129/who-said-that-essentially-everything-in-theoretical-physics-had-already-been-dis https://hsm.stackexchange.com/questions/2129/who-said-that-e...
pvg 6y ago
This is an anecdote usually told about Max Planck (and may have originally been recounted by Planck!) and his adviser, Philipp von Jolly. Some decent sourcing here: https://hsm.stackexchange.com/questions/2129/who-said-that-essentially-everything-in-theoretical-physics-had-already-been-dis https://hsm.stackexchange.com/questions/2129/who-said-that-e... Electricity was a subject of intense study throughout the 19th century and before (think of the people we've named units and effects after - Galvano, Volta, Ampere, Ohm, etc)
redis_mlc 6y ago
Not much changed in 150 years: Post-2000 SV VC: So what kind of work do you do? Me: Software Engineer. Post-2000 SV VC: Oh, sorry to hear that. Software is a dying industry. You need to learn a new career.

vertbhrtn 6y ago

In some sense, the modern institute of science is somewhat like an orthodox church: a few pre-approved lines of thinking with a swift punishment for heretics. This is the biggest strength of science: this rigidness of thought is what protects it from clever charlatans. But this is also its biggest weakness because this risk-averse behavior, when scientists can't risk saying unapproved things without torpedoing their own reputation, is why science makes only tiny steps. Right now physics has reached a rather big obstacle on its way and the usual risk-averse-one-tiny-step-at-a-time tactics won't work.

mrtksn 6y ago
Wasn’t it always like that? If someone actually believes in non-orthodox ideas will simply face the backlash, follow the path anyway and later be recognized for the extraordinary accomplishments if these ideas turn out to be worth the salt. It’s much better to give a hard time to dedicated people than to risk giving an easy time to charlatans. Since you can’t really judge novel ideas, you can make the process just hard enough that charlatans drop out to some area where they can get fame and money for cheaper.
- foobar1962 6y ago
  One of the challenges with unorthodox ideas is that occasionally some of them lead to great new understandings, but it's a very low signal-to-niose ratio. The orthodoxy can perhaps be excused for their reluctance for entertainment.
- vertbhrtn 6y ago
  Professional scientists can't bet their reputation on a novel idea: a 1% chance it'll work out and 99% chance the scientist will be sent to academia's exile. It's better than what would've happened to them in medieval ages, though. In past, many of the breakthru ideas came from aristocrats: they were rich enough to not give a shit about their reputation in academia.

Fellshard 6y ago

Fluff 'science' from Salon is not exactly a resounding endorsement for the article's content.

LatteLazy 6y ago

Around when Einstein started there were only a few unsolved problems in physics. One gave up quantum mechanics, another relativity. That was basically chance. Maybe dark matter research will just find dark matter and yield neither more questions nor useful applications. Maybe it will yield a whole new area of enquiry with 1001 useful applications. We just don't know. No one should assume that X Hours/Dollars/Papers in physics represents an actual amount of "discovery".

amai 6y ago

It seems to me that the idea of supersymmetry will have the same fate as the idea of an aether. But physics wasn't stuck at the heydays of the aether theory and it is also not stuck now. There is much more to physics than just supersymmetry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsolved_problems_in_physics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsolved_problems_in_p... But maybe some fresh ideas from other fields of physics are necessary for particle physics. The problem it seems to me is that the people working in high energy physics and string theory are often very narrow minded and are ignoring important developments outside of their own field.

sriku 6y ago

I've always been amaZed by the collaboration and synthesis of ideas that happened during Einstein's time. Consider how important and contributive the following were to the famous relativity theories and the other names involved - - Mach's principle - Michelson - Morley experiment - Maxwell's equations of electromagnetism - minkowsky space-time - Lorentz transformations - Riemann's geometry - Ricci curvature tensor - Christoffel's connection symbols - Newton's observation and attempt to account for the perihelion precession of mercury's orbit (not to mention his motion and gravity laws in the first place) - Schwarzschild's solution to the field equations - Kerr metric and solutions - .. and amongst all that we have the Einstein field equations

Svoka 6y ago
Yes. It seems that folks forget that Einstein didn't invent all this things.

bronlund 6y ago

Einstein ruined physics for everybody. The only question is if it was on purpose. Everything is just vortices in a higher dimensional fluid. It's just turbulence and harmonies. The problem is that if everyone knew how the universe really worked, it would kind of ruin the day for a lot of people.

bumblebritches5 6y ago

So is materials science and chemistry. they need a paradigm shift.

zwilliamson 6y ago

Shout out to the sophons from Trisolaris interfering with research.

cbHXBY1D 6y ago
I always thought it interesting that Liu was tacitly saying that new breakthroughs in physics can only be done in places like CERN with a LHC-like project. Humans couldn't make theoretical breakthroughs anymore.