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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 state
by 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 agoAlthough rare, there are cosmic rays that do span very high energies. You can access these from, for example, atmospheric showers.
- ngcc_hk 2y agoLooking 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 agointeresting - source(s) on Planet 9 black hole theory?
- valenceelectron 2y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_Nine#Primordial_black_hole https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_Nine#Primordial_black_h... Personally, I'm not very optimistic. Regarding the primordial black hole: "Konstantin Batygin commented on this, saying while it is possible for Planet Nine to be a primordial black hole, there is currently not enough evidence to make this idea more plausible than any other alternative." Regarding planet 9 in general: "Further skepticism about the Planet Nine hypothesis arose in 2020, based on results from the Outer Solar System Origins Survey and the Dark Energy Survey, with the OSSOS documenting over 800 trans-Neptunian objects and the DES discovering 316 new ones.[94] Both surveys adjusted for observational bias and concluded that of the objects observed there was no evidence for clustering.[95] The authors go further to explain that practically all objects' orbits can be explained by physical phenomena rather than a ninth planet as proposed by Brown and Batygin.[96] An author of one of the studies, Samantha Lawler, said the hypothesis of Planet Nine proposed by Brown and Batygin "does not hold up to detailed observations" pointing out the much larger sample size of 800 objects compared to the much smaller 14 and that conclusive studies based on said objects were "premature". She went further to explain the phenomenon of these extreme orbits could be due to gravitational occultation from Neptune when it migrated outwards earlier in the Solar System's history.[97]"