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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]
- lamontcg 2y ago
  > It's particle physics that seems to be stuck in a rut. You could look at the discovery of tetraquarks and pentaquarks, and high precision tests of the standard model though as a lot of progress. What it hasn't done though is create some sexy upending of our current models of physics, we keep asking questions and mostly the responses coming back are in line with theories that we knew 40 years ago. But that's still a lot of experimental progress. There just isn't any useful theoretical physics progress. All the beyond-standard-model theories that might have been useful have been falsified, and the ones that remain can be made to predict anything and aren't useful. But we wouldn't know that if there hadn't been a lot of experimental progress. The LHC was an exceptionally useful experiment. It destroyed more dreams of physics theories than any single experiment ever before. Someone should go back and mark up all the published articles and preprints that were falsified by the LHC.
  - chii 2y ago
    > What it hasn't done though is create some sexy upending of our current models of physics which is fine imho. It's only been around 100 years since that happened last time! Far too short to have another one.
  - zepolen 2y ago
    I think this guy has hit the nail on the head: https://energywavetheory.com/subatomic-particles/ https://energywavetheory.com/subatomic-particles/ Take a look at how stupidly complex the standard model is compared to the other: https://energywavetheory.com/equations/theory-comparison/ https://energywavetheory.com/equations/theory-comparison/ Everything in the universe on that site is eloquently and simply explained, including gravity as a shading effect (think an eclipse/water waves acting on an obstacle: https://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/attachment.php?attachmentid=150945 https://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/attachment.php?attachmentid...) ie. When a large mass causing the shading effect (eg earth) absorbs energy waves acting on us it causing less energy to reach you from the earth's direction and that means energy from above us pushes us down to Earth. All the math checks out too. Yes, the entire theory is based on the fact that aether exists, which has supposedly been disproved, but what if that's incorrect and launched an entire wild goose chase of alternative physics (string theory, standard model) all based on a flawed assumption. I think this reddit comment describes the situation beautifully: https://old.reddit.com/r/AskPhysics/comments/14o41lc/why_does_an_idea_of_aether_persist_into_the/jqcz7lx/ https://old.reddit.com/r/AskPhysics/comments/14o41lc/why_doe...
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

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]
lamontcg 2y ago
> It's particle physics that seems to be stuck in a rut. You could look at the discovery of tetraquarks and pentaquarks, and high precision tests of the standard model though as a lot of progress. What it hasn't done though is create some sexy upending of our current models of physics, we keep asking questions and mostly the responses coming back are in line with theories that we knew 40 years ago. But that's still a lot of experimental progress. There just isn't any useful theoretical physics progress. All the beyond-standard-model theories that might have been useful have been falsified, and the ones that remain can be made to predict anything and aren't useful. But we wouldn't know that if there hadn't been a lot of experimental progress. The LHC was an exceptionally useful experiment. It destroyed more dreams of physics theories than any single experiment ever before. Someone should go back and mark up all the published articles and preprints that were falsified by the LHC.
- chii 2y ago
  > What it hasn't done though is create some sexy upending of our current models of physics which is fine imho. It's only been around 100 years since that happened last time! Far too short to have another one.
- zepolen 2y ago
  I think this guy has hit the nail on the head: https://energywavetheory.com/subatomic-particles/ https://energywavetheory.com/subatomic-particles/ Take a look at how stupidly complex the standard model is compared to the other: https://energywavetheory.com/equations/theory-comparison/ https://energywavetheory.com/equations/theory-comparison/ Everything in the universe on that site is eloquently and simply explained, including gravity as a shading effect (think an eclipse/water waves acting on an obstacle: https://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/attachment.php?attachmentid=150945 https://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/attachment.php?attachmentid...) ie. When a large mass causing the shading effect (eg earth) absorbs energy waves acting on us it causing less energy to reach you from the earth's direction and that means energy from above us pushes us down to Earth. All the math checks out too. Yes, the entire theory is based on the fact that aether exists, which has supposedly been disproved, but what if that's incorrect and launched an entire wild goose chase of alternative physics (string theory, standard model) all based on a flawed assumption. I think this reddit comment describes the situation beautifully: https://old.reddit.com/r/AskPhysics/comments/14o41lc/why_does_an_idea_of_aether_persist_into_the/jqcz7lx/ https://old.reddit.com/r/AskPhysics/comments/14o41lc/why_doe...

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]