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Physicists War Over a Unified Theory

Posted by michael on from the stop-throwing-erasers dept.

beggs writes: "I was looking through the New York Times and came across an article which talks about a new front in the war to find a unified theory, but this one does not come from the particle physicists, it comes from the solid state physicists. Here is a little quote for wet your appetite: 'some solid-state physicists are trying to show that the laws of relativity, long considered part of the very bedrock of the physical world, are not platonic truths that have existed since time began.'"

5 of 451 comments (clear)

  1. This Makes Me Nervous... by Embedded+Geek · · Score: 5, Funny

    I am I the only one, but is anyone else worried that when they finally find the unified theory, "The Theory that Explains Everything," that it'll wind up being Murphy's Law?

    --

    "Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."

    1. Re:This Makes Me Nervous... by (void*) · · Score: 4, Funny
      Pardon me, that's the Meta-Murphy law, which has yet to be proven.


      One law at a time, one law at a time.

  2. Re:natural laws hold true, but values do not by gowen · · Score: 4, Funny
    In everyday work, (yes - I am a physicist) I choose units where c is one. It makes things so much easier.

    At my old university, we simply referred to these as "God's Units". Of course, I'm in a maths department now, so we just write c and leave all the fiddling about with actual numbers to the physicists.
    --
    Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
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  4. Re:We never really know anything by blamario · · Score: 5, Funny

    To quote (by memory) from the Hitchhikers' guide:

    There's a theory saying that, if we ever figure out the Universe, it will be immediately replaced by something even more complicated. There's another theory saying that already happened.