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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."
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."
Smolin & Woit have been harping on this a long time.
Go read The Trouble with Physics and Not Even Wrong, both published in 2006
They might be right or they could be (not even) wrong.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
No, they're are postulates that even their strongest adherents admit cannot be tested at the moment, and may not ultimately be true. The authors confuse researchers tendency to argue in favor of theories with researchers overestimating the evidence.
The problem, as always, is people judging science by press releases, documentaries and the utter idiocy and ignorance of most scientific journalism.
Within physics itself, you know, the actual community of physicists, string theory is seen as an interesting model, but one that as of yet simply cannot be stated even in the most tenuous terms as an actual description of reality. That being said, string theory and other related theories have contributed a considerable amount to the mathematical toolkit available to physicists, so that even if they are ultimately discarded, they will have had their use.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
General relativity is very different than particle physics. That's why Einstein chose to ignore it.
OK, you are a troll or just ignorant. Einstein is one of the great contributors to quantum mechanics and received a Nobel prize for it.
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
| Higgs was ridiculed for good 50 years.This is no different.
It's completely different. The scalar "Higgs/6 other authors" field was never ridiculed.
Higgs field was an essential part of an extraordinarily empirically successful theory and was generally accepted as 'probably real' by the 1970's, but was difficult to find experimentally.
Please use paragraphs... a wall of text is very unappealing to read.