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30 years ago I spoke to a fairly well known and regarded physicist who said something rather interesting along the same lines. Quoting as accurately as I can "p

by hggigg 2y ago

30 years ago I spoke to a fairly well known and regarded physicist who said something rather interesting along the same lines. Quoting as accurately as I can "physics looks sexy from the outside due to some celebrities but inside it's mostly worse than anyone wants to admit.". He also suggested I go and study mathematics instead because at least there will likely be some applications for it. I did and I am glad I did.

Gooblebrai 2y ago
Sounds like this criticism would be valid for fundamental physics but there are many other physics fields with experimental results that become technology.
- retrocryptid 2y ago
  if you want to do applications, engineering will get you a 10% higher salary for the same job.
- jerf 2y ago
  Yes, there's definitely some interesting fields that are making progress that are still in the purview of "physics". Materials science, or condensed matter physics, is doing a lot of fascinating work with quasiparticles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quasiparticle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quasiparticle There's a number of fields you could call "quantum engineering" where physics and engineering work together on the cutting edge. Some of the output of that is why our TVs are so good. There's a lot of work to be done on how big systems, where "big systems" can be as small as hundreds or even dozens of atoms, behave, where you can't "just" throw the whole wavefunction into a computer and crunch away on it. It's particle physics that seems to be stuck in a rut. Fundamentally, they're starved for useful data. Until that is resolved, the science really isn't going anywhere. Since people on the internet frequently seem to operate on the silly theory that someone pointing out a problem has some sort of obligation to propose a solution, let me say outright I have no more clue how to resolve this than anyone else does, except to hope that some sort of other progress in other fields creates new opportunities for new experiments.
  - XorNot 2y ago
    > Since people on the internet frequently seem to operate on the silly theory that someone pointing out a problem has some sort of obligation to propose a solution The issue with Sabine is she tends to yell about anyone proposing any solution. CERN would like to build a bigger particle accelerator, but since it's not her favored variant of accelerator they are obviously lying to the public and wasting your tax payer dollars which could be spent instead on the (implied) guaranteed discoveries if people would just listen to her. (note also that this is a false dichotomy: any realistic analysis any set of potentially competing projects would generally conclude they're unlikely to be in competition if they are in fact viable - we usually have plenty of money to do both things provided they're likely to pay off. But the under-developed, under-timelined thing is a lot easier to promise the world with, yet far more likely to wind up just as "clearly blown out it's budget!" as the project being built).
    - randomNumber7 2y ago
      She has reasonable arguments that the money could be invested into more promising research. It's ok you don't agree, but your only argument is to attack her personally. Smells like you are personally invested.
    - throwawaymaths 2y ago
      > CERN would like to build a bigger particle accelerator Sabine has a point though. There isn't any specific thing thing that a larger accelerator is likely to yield a positive answer on. Unlike the current biggest, which was at least explicitly constructed to find the higgs. And before you say dark matter, there's zero evidence that dark matter particles will be in any given mass range nor is there a solud model that predicts an interaction that will generate such a particle.
      - XorNot 2y ago
        The topic of this video is that people are struggling to find new paths forward due to a lack of experimental data and a lack of results from theoretical approaches - which ultimately is contingent on finding some new experimental data they can predict. So one way or another, it's quite likely you will need a larger accelerator. Moreover, logistically, not building that accelerator means you quite likely never have it - CERN's timelines go beyond 2050. The people who would be operating the next generation of accelerators haven't been born yet. If nobody is building anything, the knowledge and know how to do it is likely to be lost. Like I said: it's a false dichotomy. It's one thing to frame the problem as "we should spend some money on these approaches which look promising". It's quite another to frame it as "those people are stealing all the money which should be spent on obviously correct alternative". There is more then enough money to build everything, provided a solid case can be made for it - and not "we should do this" but "how we will do this". CERN tends to win bids because they're not delivering a concept, they're delivering a timeline and plan of exactly how they will get there.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
zarzavat 2y ago
IANAP but it seems that fundamental physics suffers from a lack of monotonicity of knowledge. Although physics does its best to explain things, those explanations are more like guesses than known facts. A theoretical physicist can have their life's work undone simply because someone else comes up with a better guess, or experiment says no. You spend your life working on SUSY and then... nope. Even very established knowledge can be overturned. People will say "that's science" and indeed that's fundamental physics, but other fields don't really work like that. In chemistry and biology, certainty isn't in such short supply. Nobody is asking "but is DNA a double helix?" Researchers take a problem, they attack it, then they publish the results, it gets replicated (or not), and the set of knowledge grows. Mathematics is more similar to chemistry and biology insofar as mathematical knowledge takes the form of an ever-growing set of proven facts generated by research. Take a problem, prove it, other mathematicians check it, the set of knowledge grows. Fundamental physics has issues because the "check" stage now often costs millions or billions of dollars (build a particle accelerator, neutrino detector, gravitational wave detector, satellite, etc), and even then it might not give a definitive answer. Just look at the g-2 situation where they notice a discrepancy, they spend millions of dollars trying to determine if this single discrepancy is real, and then someone publishes a paper "haha I recalculated it, you just wasted your time". Not a criticism of fundamental physics because clearly that's just how it is. I'd rather have guesses than ignorance. The gravitational wave research seems to be doing okay at least.
- pfdietz 2y ago
  SUSY was never "established knowledge". It was a stack of increasingly baroque theories that had little or no experimental justification.
- matusp 2y ago
  ELI5 what is the G2 situation?
  - AnimalMuppet 2y ago
    g-2. g minus 2. g is the magnetic moment of an electron. It is expected to be very close to 2. g minus 2 is a value that can be measured, and that can be calculated, both very precisely. If I understand the current situation, for electrons g-2 agrees between experiment and measurement to 10 digits. For muons, though, it doesn't. (Muons are harder to measure, because they decay. And they are somewhat less well understood theoretically, so there's room on both sides of that question.)

by hggigg 2y ago

Gooblebrai 2y ago

Sounds like this criticism would be valid for fundamental physics but there are many other physics fields with experimental results that become technology.

retrocryptid 2y ago
if you want to do applications, engineering will get you a 10% higher salary for the same job.
jerf 2y ago
Yes, there's definitely some interesting fields that are making progress that are still in the purview of "physics". Materials science, or condensed matter physics, is doing a lot of fascinating work with quasiparticles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quasiparticle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quasiparticle There's a number of fields you could call "quantum engineering" where physics and engineering work together on the cutting edge. Some of the output of that is why our TVs are so good. There's a lot of work to be done on how big systems, where "big systems" can be as small as hundreds or even dozens of atoms, behave, where you can't "just" throw the whole wavefunction into a computer and crunch away on it. It's particle physics that seems to be stuck in a rut. Fundamentally, they're starved for useful data. Until that is resolved, the science really isn't going anywhere. Since people on the internet frequently seem to operate on the silly theory that someone pointing out a problem has some sort of obligation to propose a solution, let me say outright I have no more clue how to resolve this than anyone else does, except to hope that some sort of other progress in other fields creates new opportunities for new experiments.
- XorNot 2y ago
  > Since people on the internet frequently seem to operate on the silly theory that someone pointing out a problem has some sort of obligation to propose a solution The issue with Sabine is she tends to yell about anyone proposing any solution. CERN would like to build a bigger particle accelerator, but since it's not her favored variant of accelerator they are obviously lying to the public and wasting your tax payer dollars which could be spent instead on the (implied) guaranteed discoveries if people would just listen to her. (note also that this is a false dichotomy: any realistic analysis any set of potentially competing projects would generally conclude they're unlikely to be in competition if they are in fact viable - we usually have plenty of money to do both things provided they're likely to pay off. But the under-developed, under-timelined thing is a lot easier to promise the world with, yet far more likely to wind up just as "clearly blown out it's budget!" as the project being built).
  - randomNumber7 2y ago
    She has reasonable arguments that the money could be invested into more promising research. It's ok you don't agree, but your only argument is to attack her personally. Smells like you are personally invested.
  - throwawaymaths 2y ago
    > CERN would like to build a bigger particle accelerator Sabine has a point though. There isn't any specific thing thing that a larger accelerator is likely to yield a positive answer on. Unlike the current biggest, which was at least explicitly constructed to find the higgs. And before you say dark matter, there's zero evidence that dark matter particles will be in any given mass range nor is there a solud model that predicts an interaction that will generate such a particle.
    - XorNot 2y ago
      The topic of this video is that people are struggling to find new paths forward due to a lack of experimental data and a lack of results from theoretical approaches - which ultimately is contingent on finding some new experimental data they can predict. So one way or another, it's quite likely you will need a larger accelerator. Moreover, logistically, not building that accelerator means you quite likely never have it - CERN's timelines go beyond 2050. The people who would be operating the next generation of accelerators haven't been born yet. If nobody is building anything, the knowledge and know how to do it is likely to be lost. Like I said: it's a false dichotomy. It's one thing to frame the problem as "we should spend some money on these approaches which look promising". It's quite another to frame it as "those people are stealing all the money which should be spent on obviously correct alternative". There is more then enough money to build everything, provided a solid case can be made for it - and not "we should do this" but "how we will do this". CERN tends to win bids because they're not delivering a concept, they're delivering a timeline and plan of exactly how they will get there.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

zarzavat 2y ago

IANAP but it seems that fundamental physics suffers from a lack of monotonicity of knowledge. Although physics does its best to explain things, those explanations are more like guesses than known facts. A theoretical physicist can have their life's work undone simply because someone else comes up with a better guess, or experiment says no. You spend your life working on SUSY and then... nope. Even very established knowledge can be overturned. People will say "that's science" and indeed that's fundamental physics, but other fields don't really work like that. In chemistry and biology, certainty isn't in such short supply. Nobody is asking "but is DNA a double helix?" Researchers take a problem, they attack it, then they publish the results, it gets replicated (or not), and the set of knowledge grows. Mathematics is more similar to chemistry and biology insofar as mathematical knowledge takes the form of an ever-growing set of proven facts generated by research. Take a problem, prove it, other mathematicians check it, the set of knowledge grows. Fundamental physics has issues because the "check" stage now often costs millions or billions of dollars (build a particle accelerator, neutrino detector, gravitational wave detector, satellite, etc), and even then it might not give a definitive answer. Just look at the g-2 situation where they notice a discrepancy, they spend millions of dollars trying to determine if this single discrepancy is real, and then someone publishes a paper "haha I recalculated it, you just wasted your time". Not a criticism of fundamental physics because clearly that's just how it is. I'd rather have guesses than ignorance. The gravitational wave research seems to be doing okay at least.

pfdietz 2y ago
SUSY was never "established knowledge". It was a stack of increasingly baroque theories that had little or no experimental justification.
matusp 2y ago
ELI5 what is the G2 situation?
- AnimalMuppet 2y ago
  g-2. g minus 2. g is the magnetic moment of an electron. It is expected to be very close to 2. g minus 2 is a value that can be measured, and that can be calculated, both very precisely. If I understand the current situation, for electrons g-2 agrees between experiment and measurement to 10 digits. For muons, though, it doesn't. (Muons are harder to measure, because they decay. And they are somewhat less well understood theoretically, so there's room on both sides of that question.)