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Has Physics Gotten Something Really Important Really Wrong? (npr.org)

Slashdot reader schwit1 quotes an article from NPR: Some researchers now see popular ideas like string theory and the multiverse as highly suspect. These physicists feel our study of the cosmos has been taken too far from what data can constrain with the extra "hidden" dimensions of string theory and the unobservable other universes of the multiverse... it all adds up to muddied waters and something some researchers see as a "crisis in physics."
The article quotes Roberto Mangabeira Unger and Lee Smolin, the authors of a new book arguing that "Science is corrupted when it abandons the discipline of empirical validation or dis-confirmation. It is also weakened when it mistakes its assumptions for facts and its ready-made philosophy for the way things are." And according to this analysis of the book, what they're proposing is "to take a giant philosophical step back and see if a new and more promising direction can be found. For the two thinkers, such a new direction can be spelled out in three bold claims about the world. There is only one universe. Time is real. Mathematics is selectively real."

7 of 387 comments (clear)

  1. Michael Moorcock Just Called... by RobotRunAmok · · Score: 5, Funny

    He wants his Multiverse back.

    1. Re:Michael Moorcock Just Called... by Jeremiah+Cornelius · · Score: 3, Funny

      Well, He was only really using 1 or 2 of them, lately. Not even touching the one I'm from, despite being first documented in only 1964.

      Less than eye-blink, cosmically speaking.

      --
      "Flyin' in just a sweet place,
      Never been known to fail..."
  2. epicycles by TeknoHog · · Score: 3, Funny

    "Extra dimensions are the epicycles of Modern Physics" -- Mark Maughan

    Mathematics is selectively real

    I quite agree with this. Oftentimes, mathematics is rather complex.

    --
    Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
  3. String theory... by mschaffer · · Score: 3, Funny

    I guess that String Theory is knot for everyone---especially empiricists.

  4. Obligatory XKCD by InfiniteZero · · Score: 5, Funny
  5. Re:old wisdom by rtb61 · · Score: 3, Funny

    Time is arbitrary, it is nothing more than a relative measure of change, how long that change takes is only relative to itself, the time it takes is only ever going to be relative to other changes. That duration in and of itself is completely meaningless. There are at least three greater cosmos, the microverse, the universe and the macroverse. A inherent balance of motion and size, represented differently in different ways within each verse. What exactly is going on in the microverse and macroverse, well trapped in the universe, we can only guess and hint at and try to make use of it as we are both to big and too small to effectively relate to them in any meaningful way, beyond hypothesising on them and trying to make use of the product of those hypothesises in our universe. Beyond the microverse and the macroverse, there is also the chaosverse and we all are a temporary extrusion from the chaosverse, the universe and it's associated microverse and macroverse.

    --
    Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
  6. pish posh by Thud457 · · Score: 3, Funny

    DC fixed this back in 1986.

    And in 1994.
    And in 2005.
    And in 2008.
    And they're fixing it now.

    I tell you what, from what I've seen, the script writer on this version of reality is a hack of the lowest caliber. And lately he stumbles from one ridiculous crisis to another without resolving anything.
    I mean, have you seen that storyline about the tech billionaire that is single-handedly remaking both space travel and the auto industries? Preposterous!

    --

    the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff