Comment by catlifeonmars
20 days ago
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”.
20 days ago
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.
The volume of journal papers published isn't well-correlated with progress, sadly.
I have a physics degree and I regularly read the latest published research. Please don't make ad hominem attacks.
> How long has scientific inquiry about physics been going on? In that frame, is 50 years a long time or a short time?
Unlike all other sciences, on a long horizon, eventually Physics will be "completely solved", with no more fundamentals to discover, only applications, which are generally considered other sciences or engineering. We far from achieving this end-state.
The point is that we made giant strides every few years for decades, and then... nothing. The field has hardly advanced since the 1970s!
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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.
> Astrophysics is doing just fine, as one counter example.
I would argue that almost all of that is due to improvements in instrumentation that have lead to no new fundamental theories with wide acceptance. If anything, several older theories are now being increasingly questioned, but with no viable alternatives. (Or too many viable alternatives.)
However, there have been many "medium sized" astrophysics theoretical achievements in recent decades, which puts astrophysics head and shoulders above much of the rest of physics.
I.e.: we now better understand the theory of elemental synthesis and can account for the origins of the entire periodic table, which is research from this century. That's pretty decent chunk of fundamental knowledge that we've acquired only recently!
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?