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Do you have an example of a meaningful breakthrough in that field in the last 25 years? What's more likely, that we are nearing completion of understanding, or

Do you have an example of a meaningful breakthrough in that field in the last 25 years? What's more likely, that we are nearing completion of understanding, or that our approach is misguided and in need of Newtonian revolution of method?

gsk22 2y ago
Physics is the poster child of a discipline that knows its foundations are wrong. Basically every physicist understands that our current theories are full of holes and a new way of thinking is needed. So I don't really buy the idea that physics in particular is stifled by a rigid adherence to the status quo.
- andrewflnr 2y ago
  The charitable version of this is that to reconcile all the holes, we in fact need radically new and different mathematical underpinnings that aren't currently on the horizon. I don't know how that could be true; certainly any new foundation would have to reduce to something very like the current theories under already-studied conditions. If it is, though, we might be on a really big local maximum, and the path off of it might look really weird and nonsensical for a long time (which is why I can't quite bring myself to fully dismiss Stephen Wolfram, for instance :D).
  - MadnessASAP 2y ago
    Maybe the trick is to forget math entirely! Accept we live in a universe where 2+2=, where pi will change before your even half way around the circle! Cast off the shackles of rationality and embrace a universe where the only constant is change. While you're at it you should smoke this shit, it's wild.
    - andrewflnr 2y ago
      Username checks out.
fragmede 2y ago
25 years takes us back quite a bit. Meaningful breakthroughs in physics I can think of: The Higgs Boson was a pretty big thing. We "saw" gravitational waves with LIGO. There was that picture of a black hole. Despite the unavailability of a useful quantum computer, there's been a ton of advancement in that area. Neutrino stuff won the 2015 Nobel Prize that stuff will require new physics.
abdullahkhalids 2y ago
Not 25, but about 30 years ago, Peter Shor showed that quantum systems could be arranged and evolved in a manner that we could factorize large numbers exponentially faster than using classical means. That was a humongous expansion in what we thought were the possible physical evolutions in our universe. Related ideas have been used since to significantly expand our understanding of blackholes, for example.
jhanschoo 2y ago
> heavily influenced by established theories and teachings, potentially stifling true innovation. > Do you have an example of a meaningful breakthrough in that field in the last 25 years? I think your expectations are too high. Physical theories have frequently been constrained by instruments. Relativistic phenomena are not observable without modern precision instruments. Except for isolated cases regarding light that might otherwise be explained by material properties, QM phenomena is not observable except at low temperatures, in a vacuum, with lasers, at high energies, etc.. All modern physics concern mechanics extremely distant from human experience, and likewise the equipment and experiments to observe them demand cutting-edge technology. Science progresses hand-in-hand with the quality of experimental instruments. Without modern instruments, Occam's razor demands that these theories are useless concepts for apprehending the world. So for example, computations required to approximately simulate QM beyond toy examples are intractable with classical computers. If you want a GUT that unifies relativity with QM, we have several candidates, but the circumstances to identify which ones are correct and useful are just so empirically remote and computationally intractable. Hence no (in response to ancestor comment), I don't think that modern physics is crippled by orthodoxy, we simply don't need new ideas to explain our observations for the quality of experimental infrastructure that we presently have. In response to your comment, I would say that we are clearly nearing completion of understanding, as limited by experimental technology. Note of course, that material science and chemistry regularly progresses, but this doesn't seem to what you are looking for when you speak of meaningful breakthroughs.
- taylodl 2y ago
  This makes a lot of sense. I have heard from several people that we have multiple models of gravity to replace GR, for example, but we don't know which one to pick because our instruments lack the requisite energy levels. Even with the energy levels we can produce in the lab, they all agree. This gets more difficult as we go along because any replacement of GR has to reproduce all of GR's results, demonstrate where GR is wrong - with experimental evidence, and demonstrate that its predictions get it right. TL;DR - to your point, it's not that we don't have ideas, it's we have no means to verify them.

gsk22 2y ago

Physics is the poster child of a discipline that knows its foundations are wrong. Basically every physicist understands that our current theories are full of holes and a new way of thinking is needed. So I don't really buy the idea that physics in particular is stifled by a rigid adherence to the status quo.

andrewflnr 2y ago
The charitable version of this is that to reconcile all the holes, we in fact need radically new and different mathematical underpinnings that aren't currently on the horizon. I don't know how that could be true; certainly any new foundation would have to reduce to something very like the current theories under already-studied conditions. If it is, though, we might be on a really big local maximum, and the path off of it might look really weird and nonsensical for a long time (which is why I can't quite bring myself to fully dismiss Stephen Wolfram, for instance :D).
- MadnessASAP 2y ago
  Maybe the trick is to forget math entirely! Accept we live in a universe where 2+2=, where pi will change before your even half way around the circle! Cast off the shackles of rationality and embrace a universe where the only constant is change. While you're at it you should smoke this shit, it's wild.
  - andrewflnr 2y ago
    Username checks out.

fragmede 2y ago

25 years takes us back quite a bit. Meaningful breakthroughs in physics I can think of: The Higgs Boson was a pretty big thing. We "saw" gravitational waves with LIGO. There was that picture of a black hole. Despite the unavailability of a useful quantum computer, there's been a ton of advancement in that area. Neutrino stuff won the 2015 Nobel Prize that stuff will require new physics.

abdullahkhalids 2y ago

Not 25, but about 30 years ago, Peter Shor showed that quantum systems could be arranged and evolved in a manner that we could factorize large numbers exponentially faster than using classical means. That was a humongous expansion in what we thought were the possible physical evolutions in our universe. Related ideas have been used since to significantly expand our understanding of blackholes, for example.

jhanschoo 2y ago

> heavily influenced by established theories and teachings, potentially stifling true innovation. > Do you have an example of a meaningful breakthrough in that field in the last 25 years? I think your expectations are too high. Physical theories have frequently been constrained by instruments. Relativistic phenomena are not observable without modern precision instruments. Except for isolated cases regarding light that might otherwise be explained by material properties, QM phenomena is not observable except at low temperatures, in a vacuum, with lasers, at high energies, etc.. All modern physics concern mechanics extremely distant from human experience, and likewise the equipment and experiments to observe them demand cutting-edge technology. Science progresses hand-in-hand with the quality of experimental instruments. Without modern instruments, Occam's razor demands that these theories are useless concepts for apprehending the world. So for example, computations required to approximately simulate QM beyond toy examples are intractable with classical computers. If you want a GUT that unifies relativity with QM, we have several candidates, but the circumstances to identify which ones are correct and useful are just so empirically remote and computationally intractable. Hence no (in response to ancestor comment), I don't think that modern physics is crippled by orthodoxy, we simply don't need new ideas to explain our observations for the quality of experimental infrastructure that we presently have. In response to your comment, I would say that we are clearly nearing completion of understanding, as limited by experimental technology. Note of course, that material science and chemistry regularly progresses, but this doesn't seem to what you are looking for when you speak of meaningful breakthroughs.

taylodl 2y ago
This makes a lot of sense. I have heard from several people that we have multiple models of gravity to replace GR, for example, but we don't know which one to pick because our instruments lack the requisite energy levels. Even with the energy levels we can produce in the lab, they all agree. This gets more difficult as we go along because any replacement of GR has to reproduce all of GR's results, demonstrate where GR is wrong - with experimental evidence, and demonstrate that its predictions get it right. TL;DR - to your point, it's not that we don't have ideas, it's we have no means to verify them.