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Absolutely, they're still handing out nobels after all. Personally I think the ER=EPR conjecture and the complexity/action duality hypothesis are incredibly in

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.
  - hughesjj 2y ago
    Eh, I suppose that was more the Field era
  - naasking 2y ago
    They might be novel mathematical constructs but seemingly have no bearing on our universe. ER=EPR doesn't really solve anything because GR remains fundamentally incompatible with QM's linearity. That's the problem that needs to be solved. The core idea of ER=EPR wasn't even particularly novel, as Hadley effectively did something very similar back in 1997 [1]. CA-duality is again mathematically interesting, but physically dubious because it's based on anti-de Sitter space, which does not describe our universe. Information theoretical formulations of QM are mildly interesting, but I don't think they will be revolutionary, and I don't think they are tackling the core problem, which is QM's linearity where we classically observe a non-linear universe. [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9706018 https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9706018
- 2y ago
TheOtherHobbes 2y ago
I think those qualify more as interesting suggestions and experimental confirmations than as breakthroughs. I suspect "breakthrough" is supposed to mean "huge definitive paradigm shift." We haven't had many of those in all of history, and we certainly haven't had one in the last decade. Everyone is still very, very confused about quantum fundamentals. Non-local realness is really a Bohmian idea, and that's certainly not new. Universe-as-information is new but there's a huge gap between that and the Standard Model. And so on. None of these problems are settled in the way that GR and QM settled various issues. You may say that's too high a bar and things are moving. But there's been more of a history of missteps (string theory, supersymmetry, so far at least) that were sold as potential breakthroughs than genuinely transformative insights.

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.
- hughesjj 2y ago
  Eh, I suppose that was more the Field era
- naasking 2y ago
  They might be novel mathematical constructs but seemingly have no bearing on our universe. ER=EPR doesn't really solve anything because GR remains fundamentally incompatible with QM's linearity. That's the problem that needs to be solved. The core idea of ER=EPR wasn't even particularly novel, as Hadley effectively did something very similar back in 1997 [1]. CA-duality is again mathematically interesting, but physically dubious because it's based on anti-de Sitter space, which does not describe our universe. Information theoretical formulations of QM are mildly interesting, but I don't think they will be revolutionary, and I don't think they are tackling the core problem, which is QM's linearity where we classically observe a non-linear universe. [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9706018 https://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/9706018
2y ago

TheOtherHobbes 2y ago

I think those qualify more as interesting suggestions and experimental confirmations than as breakthroughs. I suspect "breakthrough" is supposed to mean "huge definitive paradigm shift." We haven't had many of those in all of history, and we certainly haven't had one in the last decade. Everyone is still very, very confused about quantum fundamentals. Non-local realness is really a Bohmian idea, and that's certainly not new. Universe-as-information is new but there's a huge gap between that and the Standard Model. And so on. None of these problems are settled in the way that GR and QM settled various issues. You may say that's too high a bar and things are moving. But there's been more of a history of missteps (string theory, supersymmetry, so far at least) that were sold as potential breakthroughs than genuinely transformative insights.