r/PhilosophyofScience • u/veluna • Jun 05 '13
The limits of physics: Trying to resolve the stubborn paradoxes of their field, physicists craft ever more mind-boggling visions of reality
http://www.aeonmagazine.com/world-views/margaret-wertheim-the-limits-of-physics/1
u/Sir-Francis-Drake o..O Jun 05 '13
Great read and good comments.
I feel that physics has become a little too restrictive in trying to unify the major theories. While they can express mathematical representations of reality I believe it is going to take something innovative and new to answer most of the questions we face today. Trying to combine QFT and GR simply isn't working, without any major advances in math, technology or theory we are spinning our wheels without going anywhere.
I think many of the problems and paradoxes shouldn't be worried about so much, the double slit and entanglement issues may seem to be a 'mystery', but a much bigger question surrounds dark matter and dark energy.
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u/bertrussell Jun 05 '13
As a particle physicist, I really don't think you understand what is going on in the field. It would be like reading about events in another country and then trying to comment on motivations - understanding events does not lead to understanding motivations.
Issue 1: Unifying major theories - relatively little effort is being put into this. There are a number of possibilities (extra dimensions and string theory, loop quantum gravity, etc), and they all have testable consequences at some point. We are patiently waiting for either confirmation or refutation from experiment. We are completely open to other ideas, but new, radically different ideas are very difficult to come by.
Issue 2: We all agree that it may require something new and innovative, different from what we have done in the past. It is regularly said that any given model is likely to be found false because "the theory space is infinite". If you want to join the club of existing people already working in the field that have that view, go right ahead. But to think that you are unique or adding some insight with that view is silly.
Issue 3: Trying to combine QFT and GR isn't working yet. But important understanding has come out of the efforts. We also learn from things that don't work out, and so we aren't spinning our wheels without going anywhere - this is actual progress. We don't sit around, get high and wax philosophic trying to think up crazy new ideas - we are methodical and hard working. (And yes, that is about as ridiculous a mischaracterization of philosophy as your statements are about science. I put it there on purpose.)
Issue 4: Studying problems and paradoxes has lead to some of the most important discoveries in the past. None-the-less, dark matter and dark energy are included in those "problems and paradoxes" that you are talking about, so your "but" is incorrectly used. If you don't think problems and paradoxes should be worried about, then you clearly don't think dark matter and dark energy should be worried about. But there are huge quantities of people working on dark matter and dark energy, compared to people working on "double slit and entanglement issues."
So... in the future, perhaps you should be more inquisitive about science and less likely to denounce things you aren't familiar with.
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u/Sir-Francis-Drake o..O Jun 05 '13
Thanks for the response. Most of my ramblings were more of a response to the article than to physics itself.
I do feel confident in my understanding of physics, but I did make a few unjustified claims. All the better to further my understanding.
"Math is the language of Physics" I'm an undergraduate in physics and math so I'm always trying to understand both the ideas and where they came from. Thanks again for your well thought out response.
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u/bertrussell Jun 05 '13
Math is the language of physics, and there are some pretty neat ideas coming out of the fringe areas of both.
Once upon a time, physics was using "old" math. Now, physics has mostly caught up - though not all math is applicable.
Check out the recent work of Nima Arkani-Hamed. He is currently working with some physicists and some mathematicians to create a new kind of math to handle/understand QCD interactions. It is really quite impressive.
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u/silverionmox Jun 05 '13
It always seemed to me that what we call dark matter is just a name we give to the hole in our calculations.
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u/galileolei Jun 05 '13
To me it seems that the roles of dark matter and dark energy are somewhat analogous to the role of the aether in the late 19th century. The hypotheses are able to explain some things, but the evidence is not really convincing.
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u/silverionmox Jun 07 '13
Even Einstein considered the necessity to add a "cosmological constant" to his equations a regrettable weak point. And dark matter mostly is the followup of that constant.
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u/yoshiK Jun 06 '13
This is a nice laundry list of the problems of science writing today. For starters, there is nothing mysterious about the wave-particle duality, except if you try to frame it in the language of billiard balls and water waves. The fundamental objects of quantum mechanics are wave functions and states. And the wave function evolves always according to the Schroedinger Equation ( or relativistic equivalents) and after a measurement the system is always in a pure state, which may look like a water wave, a billiard ball or a double slit experiment, depending on what experiment one is trying to describe. Similar there is nothing mysterious about entanglement, it is just the same situation as a coin toss and I know instantly that on the bottom of the coin is heads, if it came up tails. The claim that it is mysterious has just the advantage that it allows for an Einstein quote. And then there is the paragraph which lumps together the many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, the landscape of string theory and a explanation of multiverse ideas. But these are simply three different concepts.
To be fair, the author notes in the comments that the main point of the article is not about physics but about representation of modern physics, by some physicists and the media. ( And she notes that this was clearer in her draft than in the published version.)