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."

Comments

old wisdom

[phantomfive]

what they're proposing is "to take a giant philosophical step back and see if a new and more promising direction can be found.

OK, good advice, now do it. If you think there is some massive new physics to be discovered, then discover it. When you do, you will be admired and respected for generations, instead of mocked by me on Slashdot.

Re:old wisdom

[DogDude]

You didn't RTFA, obviously. You might want to try that. It's super interesting, and brings up an important point that you obviously missed.

Re:old wisdom

[Tough Love]

General physics is more or less solved. It makes sense.

Is this a troll? OK, if not, then explain to me why there are three generations of leptons, not two or four or some other number. Why do the elementary particles have the particular masses they do? What causes quark confinement? Why does velocity have a limit, and why does the limit have the value it does? Why do any of the fundamental physical constants have the values they do? What about these problems? Should we expect answers in a year of two?

Re:old wisdom

[ultranova]

On the other hand, it's sort of like saying, "we know little of the fish that live in the deep oceans, and we've seen fish that come in all sorts of forms.... since I can't rule out that there's a fish down there that looks exactly like Justin Bieber, then there must be one".

No. It's like having a model of fish growth that predicts there are fish shaped like Elvis, Frank Sinatra and Justin Bieber down there, and you already captured Elvis and Frank.

Your example is intentionally ridiculous, but seemingly ridiculous predictions of quantum physics keep on being shown to be correct.

Re:old wisdom

[TheRaven64]

Science isn't about being right or wrong, it's about making useful predictions. If your theory lets people make predictions about a system that you can then validate and see that they were mostly correct, then it's science. Newton's laws of motion are a good example of this. They're categorically wrong, as various experiments have shown, but for things the size that a human will typically deal with the errors from failures of the model are far less than the errors from measurement. For very large, very small, or very fast things, the errors will be greater and so you need different models (and, eventually, we hope a single model that works for all scales). If your model doesn't make any predictions, then it isn't science, it's speculative fiction.

But Seriously...

[RobotRunAmok]

String theory, multiple universes, complexity, quantum teleportation... these are to Physics what Division I football is to college, which is to say, it sells tickets and opens purse strings. No one is going to buy a book on Newtonian physics and relive their junior year in high school. But let Brian Greene write something crazy and out there about a "Holographic Universe" or somesuch and the peeps will scoop it up, and maybe even decide to become physics and math majors, and there are lots of worse results than that. So let the alumni donate for the football team, and let the googley-eyed high schoolers all plan on high-paying and fulfilling careers as Quantum Mechanics. It puts butts in the seats...

Re:But Seriously...

[fermion]

On the other hand, we do think that the laws of the universe should be based on the same principles at all levels, so the fact that General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics do not mesh well is a problem we need to solve. If some physics people want to look for other ways to solve the problem fine, but we do not discount a theory in modern physics simply because we cannot observe the phenomena with out current equipment.

We have to recall the Quantum mechanics was a radical explanation for a real problem. Theory says that if you put a heat source in a black box the universe should be destroyed. This does not happen so the theory was wrong and we ended up with a theory was very difficult to prove. I have had professors tell me that the absolute proof of quantum mechanics, i.e. an experiment that could not be explained using an alternative theory, did not exist until the 1960's when lasers were used. That does not mean that an alternative theory will win out, but there is a great deal of support for QM.

Likewise, general relativity is only now getting empirical evidence that supports it as the most likely out of competing theories. We must recall that the impetus of general relativity was a lack of symmetry in the mathematics of Maxwell laws, having to do with identical magnets moving with respect to one another. Warped space is an elegant explanation for why things happen, but it may not be the best explanation.

Time is more complex. Right now thermodynamics, which is not considered as grounded as Newtonian mechanics, says the the universe evolves in one direction defined by the fact that entropy always increases. The are some measurements of the asymmetry of a nucleus that indicates that direction of time is a constant, but I don't think anything in physics right now decisively says there is an arrow in time, just an arrow in the evolution of the universe, which is why we don't have perpetual motion.

This guy is nothing more than the friction described in The Structure of Scientific Revolution. There are always going to be people who do not assimilate the growing accumulation of data, who are stuck in the current paradigm, and who will oppose all efforts to a paradigm shift. They understand that Physics does change, but they get hung up on disproving new theories and not their pet theories that they assume are already beyond reproach.

My thoughts...

[Anonymous Coward]

I have spent the last 14 years of my life studying fundamental theoretical physics and mathematics. I find a lot of the research in cosmology very unappealing, because it is way too speculative and far-fetched (multiverse, eternal inflation, bounce, cyclic cosmology, etc). And the mathematics behind these things is very primitive and simple, there is no elegance.

But string theory is different. Although it has not been a success phenomenologically, it has led to many beautiful results in mathematics and field theory, such as Mirror Symmetry and AdS/CFT. Further research in string theory is definitely worthwhile, and Lee Smolin is unreasonably biased against it. These other "quantum gravity" approaches that Smolin champions are completely disconnected from any kind of real physics, and they have not led to any kind of deep mathematical insights.

Re:My thoughts...

[Anonymous Coward]

When you have something insightful to say, please log in. Most people with mod points don't like throwing them at AC's. Your argument is cogent, well thought out, and interesting.

People with mod points should be browsing with no filters.

If you are moderating an already filtered view you are doing it wrong. Also, what does AC vs another pseudonym matter, because if you're using past posts to moderate a current one, you're doing it wrong again. People share accounts, misrepresent themselves, use multiple accounts, so don't put any weight on post history, just read the post.

Re:My thoughts...

[thinkwaitfast]

So you are one of those judgemental people who check out peoples history and downvote it when someone says something you disagree with rather on the quality of argument while failing to provide a counter argument.

Re:My thoughts...

[bsolar]

I don't see how the "overall view" of a poster has anything to do to with moderating a new post: even a troll can be insightful once in a while and even a very informative poster could happen to be overrated.

Re:Does this imply that

[DogDude]

No. Climate change and income inequality are easily provable by science. We're talking about grown-up things that are much more difficult, if impossible to prove.

Re:History repeats itself

[sittingnut]

There is no crisis of physics here, jut a massive layer of incomplete work.

that is a crisis.
furthermore there has been hardly any real progress in resolving this incomplete work/problems, for several decades.

you seems to have got confused.

"There is only one universe" - sounds like theological clam. And just as unconfirmed ad multiverses.

but we can confirm existence of one universe.
existence of others should only be included in theories if there is confirmation, not because its easier to do maths, by assuming multiverses, when working on some pure theories.

"Time is real" - Einstein might disagree. Time is the imaginary part in the complex equations of space-time.

depending on personal authority, however great , is not part of science.
your last sentence says a lot about what is wrong . theoretical assumptions should not be taken for unquestionable facts.

"Math is selectively real" - Only f the reality is defined by the capabilities of our brains and our technologies,

when you abandon empirical validation, which is what your claim implies, you are in the field of pure unfalsifiable theory, and thus theology.
gods or ghosts(and many other things) are also defended with claims about limits of our brains and technologies.

Bad ratio of scientists to experimental data

[Kjella]

The time where you could find new physics in your average lab is mostly over. We often need huge, one-in-all-mankind projects like the Large Hadron Collider, the Hubble telescope and various other huge, super-powerful or super-sensitive systems to make experimental progress. They're massively expensive and take forever to create so maybe once a decade there's a new source of data. Meanwhile there's a ton of professors looking to research something, what's cheap to do? Computer models. Computer simulations. Not that I'm saying we know everything, far from it. But there's what we know, what we don't know and just a very thin slice that we're actively experimenting on right now. And we have our best and brightest working at CERN etc. it's the rest that need to justify their existence.

mathematics is not selectively real

[superwiz]

Mathematics is not real at all. And it is entirely real. It studies implications of assumptions. The assumptions do not at all have to be based in reality. Ask your favorite mathematician about axiom of choice if you don't believe me on that one. Math is based on a priori deductions. These deductiosn do not need to be and, in fact, cannot be verified through observations. Sometimes the conclusions which are made from mathematical assumptions match the observed reality. And then scientists try to see if the underlying assumptions on which those conclusions were based also match reality. Sometimes they do. Sometimes they don't. Without empirical validation, science remains unproved and a-priori-based hypothesis. Only observation can make it a posteori conclusive.

Yes exactly, maths results

[mx b]

But string theory is different. Although it has not been a success phenomenologically, it has led to many beautiful results in mathematics and field theory, such as Mirror Symmetry and AdS/CFT. Further research in string theory is definitely worthwhile, and Lee Smolin is unreasonably biased against it.

Yes, string theory is a bit different in that it hasn't been able to make any testable predictions, which makes it non-science. Science is based on the idea of experimental evidence, and falsifiability. It isn't science, it isn't physics.

Now it very well may have some beautiful results in mathematics. Maybe it will have applications and effects on topology, cryptography, who knows. But those things are mathematics, not science.

I tend to agree with Smolin that string theory, as currently presented (and I understand it), is not a scientific theory, even though it is interested and deserves its own mathematical research. The problem is, string theory gets the ratings, so we have more cosmologists and string theorists as professors physics, taking the few positions (and associated funding!) away from people that want to be true experimental physicists. That's where the semi-outrage is.

Re:Quantum physics

[Brett Buck]

We weren't able to see germs until we had a powerful enough micrcoscope - but germ theory predicted that they existed, and that you should look for them and if you looked carefully enough, you would see them Just like the Higgs Boson - it was predicted for many decades before any instrument could detect it, and no one was really sure that it existed until it was detected at the mass predicted.

      Much of string theory, as an example, is theoretically unobservable, in that no matter what you do you can never see them at all, That's about like saying germs are not just too small to see with current equipment, they are invisible by their nature.

pfff..

[SuperDre]

the authors of a new book

enough said.....