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I think this is the Royal Academy of Sciences way to admit that Physics as a research subject has ground to a halt. String theory suffocated theoretical high en

• noobermin 2y ago
  String theory and the foundations are not the only area of physics. It would be nice for theorists to remember that.
• mppm 2y ago
  It really has not, though. There is more to physics than high-energy and cosmology, and there is no shortage of deserving contributions of smaller scope. It really is bizarre that deep learning would make it to the top of the list.
  • Ma8ee 2y ago
    Could you give me some examples of areas of fundamental physics that are vital and have done some significant discoveries lately? I genuinely would like to know, because I really can't think of any.
    • eigenket 2y ago
      "Vital" is completely subjective but I'd throw stuff around quantum information into the ring. Maybe you'd consider the loop-hole free Bell tests performed in 2015 and awarded the 2022 Nobel prize to count?
      • Ma8ee 2y ago
        I think the prize in 2022 was a nice prize, but it could still be considering just tidying the corners. In the end it just proved that things really work as most of us has thought it worked for decades.
    • mppm 2y ago
      I'm probably not the right person to ask, but off the top of my head: superconductivity of high-pressure hydrides; various quantum stuff like quantum computing, quantum cryptography, quantum photonics, quantum thermodynamics; topological phases; rare decays (double beta, etc.); new discoveries in cosmic rays, etc. My point was that physics is a big and active field, stagnation at the smallest and largest scales notwithstanding. Note also that the Nobel committee is not in any way limited to "newsworthy" stuff and has in many cases awarded prizes decades after the fact.
• eigenket 2y ago
  I think this is (very) inaccurate. It feels more like them trying to jump on a "hot topic" bandwagon (machine learning/AI hype is huge). Physics as a discipline hasn't really stalled at all. Fundamental physics arguably has, because no one really has any idea how to get close to making experimental tests that would distinguish the competing ideas. But even in fundamental physics there are cool developments like the stuff from Jonathan Oppenheim and collaborators in the last couple of years. That said "physics" != "fundamental physics" and physics of composite systems ranging from correlated electron systems, and condensed matter through to galaxies and cosmology is very far from dead.
  • 620gelato 2y ago
    > trying to jump on a "hot topic" bandwagon I don't know exactly what they hope to gain by jumping on that bandwagon though; neither the physicists nor the computer scientists are going to value this at all. And dare I say, the general populace associated with the two fields isn't going to either - case in point, this hn post. If there weren't any noble-worthy nominations for physics, maybe skip it? (Although that hasn't happened since 1972 across any field)
    • klwant 2y ago
      One possibility is that they think this will access hype funding. Put "AI" in a physics paper and watch the grants roll in.
      • eigenket 2y ago
        I kinda doubt it. The kind of people who end up nominating people for Nobels or even making the decisions on these aren't really struggling for grant funding.
        • ImaCake 2y ago
          But the system they have succeeded in optimises for people who can sell themselves well enough to get that funding. These people live and breathe selling themselves for funding. Every buzzword, sexy plot, and dynamic presentation has got them here and it's not like they plan to stop.
• api 2y ago
  My sense is that we might have reached the limits of what we can do in high-energy or fundamental physics without accessing energy levels or other extreme states that we currently can't access as they are beyond our capacity to generate. From what I've read (not a professional physicist) string theory is not testable unless we can either examine a black hole or create particle accelerators the size of the Moon's orbit (at least). Many other proposed theories are similar. There is some speculation that the hypothetical planet nine -- a 1-5 Earth mass planet predicted in the far outer solar system on the basis of the orbits of comets and Kuiper Belt / TNO objects -- could be a primordial black hole captured by the solar system. A black hole of that mass would be about the size of a marble to a golf ball, but would have 1-5g gravity at the distance of Earth's radius. If such an object did exist it would be within space probe range, which would mean we could examine a black hole. That might get us un-stuck. If we can't do something like that, maybe we should instead focus on other areas of physics that we can access and that have immense practical applications: superconductivity, condensed matter physics, plasmas / fusion, etc.
  • slashdave 2y ago
    Although rare, there are cosmic rays that do span very high energies. You can access these from, for example, atmospheric showers.
    • ngcc_hk 2y ago
      Looking at history it is a bit odd that cosmic rays as high energy collider were not a field by itself.
  • sampo 2y ago
    > My sense is that we might have reached the limits of what we can do in high-energy or fundamental physics without accessing energy levels or other extreme states that we currently can't access How can we know, as past decades theoretical high-energy physics has studied made-up mathematical universes that don't tell much about our real universe. We haven't really given it that much of a try, yet.
  • aghilmort 2y ago
• alwinaugustin 2y ago
  Even Sheldon Cooper stopped researching string theory at one point.
• amai 2y ago
  > Physics as a research subject has ground to a halt Max Planck was told by his professor to not go into Physics because "almost everything is already discovered". Planck said he didn't want to discover anything, just learn the fundamentals.
  • Ma8ee 2y ago
    First, I didn't say that I thought everything already was discovered, but that the fundamental physics community doesn’t discover new things. That is due to how physics research is practiced today and has nothing to do with how much that is left to discover. Second, even if it obviously wasn't true when Planck was told that almost everything is discovered, it doesn't say anything about the state today.
  • bmitc 2y ago
    Are people working on fundamentals these days? It seems to be a forgotten art, where everyone is working at the edge of something.
• killerstorm 2y ago
  What if the next breakthrough is complex and not directly accessible from our current state of math/physics thought? I see no reasons to expect steady progress. Nobody knows how long it would take to prove Riemann hypothesis, for example.
• bdjsiqoocwk 2y ago
  May I ask, very humbly, what are you credentials when making that assessment?
• mikaeluman 2y ago
  Partially agree. It also seems like a desperate way to connect themselves to "AI" and the hype.
• EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 2y ago
  Upon reading the Hopfield paper back in 1982, I concluded that it's not worth it to pursue a physics career, and more efficient to put the effort into AI research, as at some point the AI will solve all the remaining science problems in a couple of milliseconds. I might have erred by a few decades, but overall seems like we are on track.