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It's not always obvious what the applications of advances in physics will be until long after they happen. Do you think that Maxwell could have possibly foresee

by foob 15y ago

It's not always obvious what the applications of advances in physics will be until long after they happen. Do you think that Maxwell could have possibly foreseen the depth of the impact that electricity and magnetism would have on mankind? Did Einstein expect that general relativity would allow for timing corrections in GPS satellites? Did Heisenberg realize the potential impact of a scanning tunneling microscope? Basic physics research has a long history of leading the way for technological advances. I expect that, in one way or another, this trend will continue in the future.

andrewcooke 15y ago
well, there's a pretty simple argument that maxwell could have used, but which current particle physics cannot: the experiments that maxwell did were in "normal conditions". they didn't need extreme energies, or scales. so any new knowledge could clearly affect our everyday lives. in contrast, if the only effects that a theory has are at the scale where you need to construct huge machines to examine conditions found only in remote astronomical objects then it's much harder to make the same case. in other words - if there is some useful application for this then we could also use that to test the science (much more cheaply and simply than we are doing now). there is huge pressure to find some "laboratory scale" application because that would lead to a breakthrough that avoids all this tedious messing around with massive underground machines. that no such test is possible argues strongly against any application. this is a very strong argument. you might say, for example, that finding the higgs particle could lead to a simplified explanation of X that would improve Y and so Z. but every scientist working on this is already desperately searching for consequences like X because they could then jump to Z and so prove that the higgs particle exists....

by foob 15y ago

andrewcooke 15y ago

well, there's a pretty simple argument that maxwell could have used, but which current particle physics cannot: the experiments that maxwell did were in "normal conditions". they didn't need extreme energies, or scales. so any new knowledge could clearly affect our everyday lives. in contrast, if the only effects that a theory has are at the scale where you need to construct huge machines to examine conditions found only in remote astronomical objects then it's much harder to make the same case. in other words - if there is some useful application for this then we could also use that to test the science (much more cheaply and simply than we are doing now). there is huge pressure to find some "laboratory scale" application because that would lead to a breakthrough that avoids all this tedious messing around with massive underground machines. that no such test is possible argues strongly against any application. this is a very strong argument. you might say, for example, that finding the higgs particle could lead to a simplified explanation of X that would improve Y and so Z. but every scientist working on this is already desperately searching for consequences like X because they could then jump to Z and so prove that the higgs particle exists....