Comment by jiggawatts
21 days ago
I’m personally convinced that at least for physics we have sufficient data for the next big theoretical breakthrough and we lack only the imagination and the computer power required to numerically validate the maths through simulations.
It feels an awful lot like the decade before Einstein’s landmark papers on quantum mechanics and relativity.
Watch how people like Terrence Tao et al are transforming how mathematics is done: with AI assistance and the Lean theorem prover, at a level of collaboration and consistency never before possible.
Something similar is just around the corner for the other sciences, the ability to mechanise the integration of vast tracts of previously disconnected facts and insights.
Surely something of value will pop out of the result…
Physics research is not particularly in a state of stagnation, so I’m not really sure what you mean by the “next big theoretical breakthrough”.
I firmly disagree:
No new successful fundamental theory has even gotten off the ground since the Standard Model, which is half a century old at this point.
Our understanding of gravity hasn’t improved substantially in a century. String Theory is dead, stop whipping it. Other quantum gravity theories each have one proponent going in circles futilely looking for a big breakthrough that never comes.
Superconductivity was discovered 115 years ago and we still don’t understand it! We’re “finding” new HT materials by accident and then attempting to explain how they work. Nobody can figure out how to predict a new one, ab initio.
Our understanding of the universe is improving only in the sense that we’re now more certain that we don’t know much at all about: its early history, far future, present behavior of gravity, or its content.
I’m not aware of any “sea change” akin to the scale and scope of QM or GR in many decades despite clear need for one.
Physics has stagnated for a long time now.
My conspiracy theory is that there has been a brain drain into the finance industry, but that doesn’t explain everything.
> No new successful fundamental theory has even gotten off the ground since the Standard Model, which is half a century old at this point.
How long has scientific inquiry about physics been going on? In that frame, is 50 years a long time or a short time?
This feels a bit like the perspective of a non-specialist with access to the findings that end up in the popular press vs. things that are discussed at conferences/in journals.
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You are still mainly describing fundamental physics and cosmology, with superconducting tacked on.
But there's been tons of advances in experimental physics, biophysics, quantum sensing, condensed matter, topological materials, computational methods especially tensor networks like DMRG, quantum information, astrophysics, and probably many more I'm forgetting.
There's really not that much need for a sea change except for the areas you mention that get a lot of attention.
I know a lot of current physics are being built on QM, because it is a solid foundation with tons to explore. Just because interpretations of QM is hard to probe doesn't mean there's not a ridiculous amount of applications to progress through.
I think what you mean to say is select topics in specific fields in physics have stagnated. Possibly because they are not necessarily the most interesting fields of study. Astrophysics is doing just fine, as one counter example.
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jiggawatts says >"My conspiracy theory is that there has been a brain drain into the finance industry, but that doesn’t explain everything."<
If the top brains went into the finance industry wouldn't we by now have better theories of how an economy works? Prediction in economics seems far poorer than in physics.
Or perhaps economics is inherently a much more difficult problem than physics?