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please forgive my ignorance, has there been notable progress in the field of physics in the last decade? noteworthy breakthroughs i mean i ask out of layman cu

by alickz 2y ago

please forgive my ignorance, has there been notable progress in the field of physics in the last decade? noteworthy breakthroughs i mean i ask out of layman curiosity

janalsncm 2y ago
No worries. I’m (mostly) a layman too, I just happened to have watched this video recently: https://youtu.be/d_o4k0eLoMI https://youtu.be/d_o4k0eLoMI Maybe a more direct answer to your question would be the discovery of the tetraneutron.
Misdicorl 2y ago
The past decade is a difficult framing to ask the question in. Notable breakthrough results are usually understood in hindsight and a decade just isn't a lot of time for that context and understanding to develop. Science also doesn't necessarily develop in this way with consistent progress every X timespan. Usually you get lots and lots of breakthroughs all at once as an important paradigm is shattered and a new one is installed. Then observations with tiny differences slowly pile up and a very blurry/messy picture of the problems with the new paradigm takes shape. But none of those things feels like a breakthrough, especially to a layman. That said: I'll submit the first detection of gravitational waves as two black holes merged together in 2020 as meeting the bar of "notable breakthrough in the last decade".
- ricksunny 2y ago
  >first detection of gravitational waves as two black holes merged together in 2020 a 2015. (Your point is otherwise taken). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_observation_of_gravitational_waves https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_observation_of_gravitati...
hughesjj 2y ago
Absolutely, they're still handing out nobels after all. Personally I think the ER=EPR conjecture and the complexity/action duality hypothesis are incredibly interesting. Technically ER=EPR was formulated in 2000s (maybe 90s?) and CA-duality is approaching if not just past 10 years old, but the thing about asking for breakthroughs is that they take a while to percolate. Ex Hawking radiation wasn't formulated until, like, 50-70 years after the "basis" (schwarzshild, Schrodinger) was formed. There's also been a ton of productive research integrsting computer science and physics lately ( on hn last week: https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.16850 https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.16850 and 2022 novel prize; https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-universe-is-not-locally-real-and-the-physics-nobel-prize-winners-proved-it/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-universe-is-n...) Also JWST just keeps on giving, and gravitational waves were only confirmed in 2017. If you extend a bit further higgs was in the 2010s So, in summary, in the late 10 years - we've shown a break in our intuition of physics (nonloca-realness, that 2022 paper) - proposed some novel yet elegant theories (CA-duality, and I'd hope you'd begrudge me er=EPR) - confirmed some insane provings to the underlying reality (gravitational waves) If those aren't noteworthy, I'd ask what you consider noteworthy any why you consider it noteworthy
- naasking 2y ago
  The Higgs boson was predicted in 1964. Gravitational waves were predicted in 1916. Bell's theorem was published in 1964. Basically every recent discovery in physics has been observations confirming old predictions and refuting the endless zoo of poorly motivated, imaginary particles that seems to be standard practice these days. There have been almost no truly significant, novel predictions that have a hope in hell of panning out in like, 40 years or more. The only mildly interesting, novel idea in physics has been quantum computing, and even that was first published in 1980. > So, in summary, in the late 10 years - we've shown a break in our intuition of physics (nonloca-realness, that 2022 paper) This paper showed no such thing, it has the same superdeterminism loophole as every other paper attempting to refute local realism. Physics is stuck in a local QM-GR minimum, and some truly novel ideas are needed to kickstart things again. Oppenheim's postquantum gravity is the first truly novel idea I've seen in awhile. I also agree that JWST is giving us great data, some of which has placed LCDM on the ropes, but astrophysicists are hard at work adding epicycles to keep it alive.
  - janalsncm 2y ago
    Yes, the Higgs boson is not a new prediction but that doesn’t mean discovering it wasn’t a major breakthrough. There are other theories besides the Standard Model which don’t contain Higgs particles and were ruled out when it was discovered.
  - dboreham 2y ago
    As Frank Yang predicted in 1980 , "the party's over".
  - hughesjj 2y ago
    You don't consider ER=EPR as novel? Or CA-duality? Agreed that Post-quantum gravity is really cool and "fresh" Higgs/Bell/GW were experimental results, I was indeed trying to show that there's a huge lag between prediction and observation. Imo the paradigm shift that we're slowly undergoing is thinking about physics from a information theoretic perspective instead of a kinematics one. I'd argue that's even more fundamental of a change than Newtonian physics to early GR & QM.
FuriouslyAdrift 2y ago
The confirmation of the Higgs boson is pretty huge...
janalsncm 2y ago
I should also add, this page has a section for previously unsolved physics problems that were solved in the past 30 years: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsolved_problems_in_physics https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsolved_problems_in...
seanhunter 2y ago
Experimental validation of the Higgs Boson (2012 but close enough) [1] Direct observation of gravitational waves (2015)[2] exoplanets going from theoretically quite likely to being actually observable things that we find all over the place [3] ...would seem to be examples of very notable results during my lifetime. This is barely scratching the surface and I'm not a physicist but those seem very important to me and likely to stand the test of time and be thought of as important in the future. Non-breakthroughs: These guys who are responsible for the goddam blue leds that on every second device these days always keep me from getting a decent dark nights sleep when travelling until I hunt them all down in the hotel room I'm in or whatever and cover them up.[4] [1] https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2013/summary/ https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2013/summary/ [2] https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2017/summary/ https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2017/summary/ [3] https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2019/summary/ https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2019/summary/ [4] https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2014/summary/ https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2014/summary/

by alickz 2y ago

please forgive my ignorance, has there been notable progress in the field of physics in the last decade? noteworthy breakthroughs i mean i ask out of layman curiosity

janalsncm 2y ago

No worries. I’m (mostly) a layman too, I just happened to have watched this video recently: https://youtu.be/d_o4k0eLoMI https://youtu.be/d_o4k0eLoMI Maybe a more direct answer to your question would be the discovery of the tetraneutron.

Misdicorl 2y ago

The past decade is a difficult framing to ask the question in. Notable breakthrough results are usually understood in hindsight and a decade just isn't a lot of time for that context and understanding to develop. Science also doesn't necessarily develop in this way with consistent progress every X timespan. Usually you get lots and lots of breakthroughs all at once as an important paradigm is shattered and a new one is installed. Then observations with tiny differences slowly pile up and a very blurry/messy picture of the problems with the new paradigm takes shape. But none of those things feels like a breakthrough, especially to a layman. That said: I'll submit the first detection of gravitational waves as two black holes merged together in 2020 as meeting the bar of "notable breakthrough in the last decade".

ricksunny 2y ago
>first detection of gravitational waves as two black holes merged together in 2020 a 2015. (Your point is otherwise taken). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_observation_of_gravitational_waves https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_observation_of_gravitati...

hughesjj 2y ago

Absolutely, they're still handing out nobels after all. Personally I think the ER=EPR conjecture and the complexity/action duality hypothesis are incredibly interesting. Technically ER=EPR was formulated in 2000s (maybe 90s?) and CA-duality is approaching if not just past 10 years old, but the thing about asking for breakthroughs is that they take a while to percolate. Ex Hawking radiation wasn't formulated until, like, 50-70 years after the "basis" (schwarzshild, Schrodinger) was formed. There's also been a ton of productive research integrsting computer science and physics lately ( on hn last week: https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.16850 https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.16850 and 2022 novel prize; https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-universe-is-not-locally-real-and-the-physics-nobel-prize-winners-proved-it/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-universe-is-n...) Also JWST just keeps on giving, and gravitational waves were only confirmed in 2017. If you extend a bit further higgs was in the 2010s So, in summary, in the late 10 years - we've shown a break in our intuition of physics (nonloca-realness, that 2022 paper) - proposed some novel yet elegant theories (CA-duality, and I'd hope you'd begrudge me er=EPR) - confirmed some insane provings to the underlying reality (gravitational waves) If those aren't noteworthy, I'd ask what you consider noteworthy any why you consider it noteworthy

naasking 2y ago
The Higgs boson was predicted in 1964. Gravitational waves were predicted in 1916. Bell's theorem was published in 1964. Basically every recent discovery in physics has been observations confirming old predictions and refuting the endless zoo of poorly motivated, imaginary particles that seems to be standard practice these days. There have been almost no truly significant, novel predictions that have a hope in hell of panning out in like, 40 years or more. The only mildly interesting, novel idea in physics has been quantum computing, and even that was first published in 1980. > So, in summary, in the late 10 years - we've shown a break in our intuition of physics (nonloca-realness, that 2022 paper) This paper showed no such thing, it has the same superdeterminism loophole as every other paper attempting to refute local realism. Physics is stuck in a local QM-GR minimum, and some truly novel ideas are needed to kickstart things again. Oppenheim's postquantum gravity is the first truly novel idea I've seen in awhile. I also agree that JWST is giving us great data, some of which has placed LCDM on the ropes, but astrophysicists are hard at work adding epicycles to keep it alive.
- janalsncm 2y ago
  Yes, the Higgs boson is not a new prediction but that doesn’t mean discovering it wasn’t a major breakthrough. There are other theories besides the Standard Model which don’t contain Higgs particles and were ruled out when it was discovered.
- dboreham 2y ago
  As Frank Yang predicted in 1980 , "the party's over".
- hughesjj 2y ago
  You don't consider ER=EPR as novel? Or CA-duality? Agreed that Post-quantum gravity is really cool and "fresh" Higgs/Bell/GW were experimental results, I was indeed trying to show that there's a huge lag between prediction and observation. Imo the paradigm shift that we're slowly undergoing is thinking about physics from a information theoretic perspective instead of a kinematics one. I'd argue that's even more fundamental of a change than Newtonian physics to early GR & QM.

FuriouslyAdrift 2y ago

The confirmation of the Higgs boson is pretty huge...

janalsncm 2y ago

I should also add, this page has a section for previously unsolved physics problems that were solved in the past 30 years: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsolved_problems_in_physics https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsolved_problems_in...

seanhunter 2y ago

Experimental validation of the Higgs Boson (2012 but close enough) [1] Direct observation of gravitational waves (2015)[2] exoplanets going from theoretically quite likely to being actually observable things that we find all over the place [3] ...would seem to be examples of very notable results during my lifetime. This is barely scratching the surface and I'm not a physicist but those seem very important to me and likely to stand the test of time and be thought of as important in the future. Non-breakthroughs: These guys who are responsible for the goddam blue leds that on every second device these days always keep me from getting a decent dark nights sleep when travelling until I hunt them all down in the hotel room I'm in or whatever and cover them up.[4] [1] https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2013/summary/ https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2013/summary/ [2] https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2017/summary/ https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2017/summary/ [3] https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2019/summary/ https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2019/summary/ [4] https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2014/summary/ https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2014/summary/