Why has there been no progress in physics since 1973?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 14 มิ.ย. 2024
- The twentieth century was a truly exciting time in physics.
From 1905 to 1973, we made extraordinary progress probing the mysteries of the universe: special relativity, general relativity, quantum mechanics, the structure of the atom, the structure of the nucleus, enumerating the elementary particles.
Then, in 1973, this extraordinary progress... stopped.
I mean, where are the fundamental discoveries in the last 50 years equal to general relativity or quantum mechanics?
Why has there been no progress in physics since 1973?
For this high-budget, big-hair episode of The Last Theory, I flew all the way to Oxford to tell you why progress stopped, and why it’s set to start again: why progress in physics might be about to accelerate in the early twenty-first century in a way we haven’t seen since those heady days of the early twentieth century.
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Eric Weinstein / ericrweinstein
His claims that there has been no progress in physics since 1973:
• BigThink / ericrweinstein
• The Joe Rogan Experience open.spotify.com/episode/7MDx...
Lord Kelvin en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William...
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Prefer to listen to the audio? Search for The Last Theory in your podcast player, or listen at lasttheory.com/podcast/039-wh...
The full article is at lasttheory.com/article/why-ha...
Kootenay Village Ventures Inc.
"something paralyzing happens when a pursuit becomes a profession" was a key sentence here.
Spot on
Not really. You just get bit science. Change in infinitesimally small bits.
@@donaldkasper8346 and he meant to say it's way slower?
@@tmy3411 Bit science is smaller and slower, and less accurate in that big principles are not considered and not found. It also leads to conformance incrementalism in that results not conforming to orthodoxy are not considered.
Yes, development and progression slows and even stops in all directions once you take on the title of "professional physicist".
This is because framing oneself as a "professional" implies finality which does not coexist well with the ideas of development and progression.
Once you've arrived at your 'professional destination' you begin to find it difficult to spend your mental energy on ideas/theories that risk uprooting your career status in life. Career status = social and political currency in life and tends to make life easier.
This is why professional physicists voluntarily choose to not progress the science of physics.
What physicist dares to interpret unexplained phenomenon like entanglement that resembles "magic"?
If you asked a physicist to make a choice between a safe career and pushing the boundaries of science by pursuing original and novel theories about physics which risk of losing your reputation and wasting 8 years of college, what do you believe their default human response will be?
The problem with the lack of progression in physics is a human/system problem.
All problems have a solution.
We can and will solve this problem.
How long that takes remains to be seen.
I was in a similar situation in 1991. I was doing my master degree in Theoretical physics in the renowned physics department of Sharif Univ of Technology in Iran. I had this dream of doing physics at any cost, even if I was just a simple high school teacher. Then came the realization that all those beautiful theories of the early 20'th century physics such as Quantum theory and relativity now had been reduced to pursuit of imaginary equations: gravity in 2 D, Know Theory, String Theory.... To me, they were just playing with formulas. I loved physics the way Feynman was teaching it, but they in the department were just doing pages and pages of math formulas ... performing dubious renormalization wherever they get stuck.. and having no grounding in real physics. That's when I knew I have to leave. I switched to computer science and happily been in this field ever since.
I really relate to your story. It sounds like you made the right call, switching from physics to computers. Thanks for sharing this, Reza.
Einsteins gravitational explanation is pure philosophy and Einstein was terrible in philosophy...Mass Does Not bend space....Pure space is emptiness...ie, NOTHINGNESS....No force can bend that which does not exist. Sure, If Einstein had stated mass bends gravitational waves, that is an actual cause effect logic, but Einstein rejected that altogether.
@@hoonyiego35could you give me some information on those or at least resources where I can learn more
@@waltermorris5786 Nothingness is an impossibility.
What happened to physics? Math was the language to quantify observations. Then nothing new came along, so they started to diddle with their equations and proclaimed when they concocted something exciting like infinity is real (black holes) they demanded it is what we call real. Then they made themselves Gods so any equation they came up with, it is called real because they imagined it. Then they look through all the fine garbage noise of big instruments and find a signal. They can hunt a quadrillion signals of nothing, but they find one matching their equation, they proclaim discovery and that one in one quadrillion is called real and relevant. Supercomputers allowed this. Infinite noise crap random number generation always kicking out a signal to match their newest equations from time to time, worthy of a discovery paper.
If people reduce physics to high energy particle physics, this video might be spot-on. If people talk about physics in its entirety, not so much.
Yup. Progress in fields like laser physics (and the atomic and molecular physics enabled by it) and solid state physics has been quite spectacular.
As for elementary particle physics, too much attachment to theories not supported by experiments does seem to be a problem. But the main issue might be that the old theory might just be correct and complete.
The issue is that for decades and growingly so Quantum Mechanicism has become a dogma. Reputed scientists even claim online that General Relativity, the most proven theory ever, a practical fact hard to question at all, "must be wrong" only because they fail at getting it inside the QM paradigm. Obviously it's not wrong (it may need some polishing in the future such as a quantization of space-time?, maybe, we'll see) but for people whose only truth is QM it must feel that somehow it "must be wrong". What if it is QM which is wrong?, what if physicists (as Maudin has been denouncing) totally misunderstood what Bell found with his inequalities?, what if it is QM which is unduly "classical" (Newtonian) because of overreliance on lineal space and time (Schrödinger equation)?, what if the Standard Model is unnecessarily complicated and could be simplified and improved as result (all the opposite to what most physicists have been doing, which is searching for "new particles")?, what if non-locality could be explained by General Relativity (photons have no proper time, everything is "here and now" for them)?
Also how does mass (concentrated energy) bend space-time? A question that I don't see even asked but that should be the crux of any attempt at Unification...
So many questions, so much lack of answers or even research into them?
@@richardmetzler7909Not necessarily complete. Fermion masses and the nature of dark matter still evade comprehension.
@@HunnidTheTrapper02if it exists even
Good point. I tend to focus on particle physics, but there are research fields actually producing new results. Still, the obsession with chasing after grants is the biggest problem in academia. It's like a junkie looking for the next hit of heroin.
This is why I abandoned physics for engineering in '78. I told them string theory was based on a fallacy and I was told in no uncertain terms that if I couldn't accept that string theory was the future then there was no place for me in the field. I agreed. And I still contend that it's based on a false assumption. You cannot have a 1-dimensional physical object in a 3-dimensional world.
Interesting that you were told that directly. Sounds like you made the right decision!
Quantum mechanics is a fundamental law of physics.
You can't ignore the fundamental laws!
Who the hell do you think you are?
Talk about arrogance..
i agree...mathematicians have stolen "physics".....11d strings all to generate just 3d + time?.....smells fishy
why would you say that? doesnt the standard model have the electron as 0 dimensional? and that is in 3d. So why cant there be 1 dimensional things?
@@SuperGauravgautam a model is an approximation of reality, it most definitely is NOT reality itself. Just because we can use an assumption for calculation, doesn't mean the reality looks exactly like your assumption.
I think there is an argument to be made that the days where individuals could do meaningful work in Physics are largely behind us, and that they effort it takes to make progress in physics requires very large collaborations of scientists which, almost axiomatically, are slower in the progress they make. When I was working as an engineer for a small university, I helped to put on an conference for LIGO (the team which won the Nobel prize for discovering gravity waves). It required literally hundreds of physicists and engineers and support staff all over the world working together to achieve the detection of gravity waves. You simply can't do it alone in your mansion. Maybe there are still areas of physics that could be revolutionized by another Kelvin or Einstein, but there are also definitely areas of physics where the low hanging fruit have been picked, and going deeper requires monumental collective efforts.
The low-hanging Apples have already Fallen.
Yes, for sure, in _experimental_ physics, we need lots of money and lots of people to probe the very large and the very small.
I do hope, though, that it's still possible to make a major individual contribution to _theoretical_ physics.
It only detected a thing thst was predicted by the theoretical work
@@commanderofkesariyaknights Oh is that all it did? Well then...Nobel Prize revoked!
@@lasttheory But theoretical and experimental physics aren't independent, they are iterative. I'm not saying that it means it's impossible for some individual to make some major breakthrough in theoretical physics, and I'm not saying that we shouldn't make sure that our institutions aren't designed in ways that discourage this. But I do think it's reasonable to suggest larger collaborations of scientists might be required to do the work needed to make meaningful breakthroughs in physics. I don't think we can say that it's the institutions that are making the decision to push physics more towards collaboration and large teams; I think there is a reasonable argument to be made that it's the actual nature of the problems physicists are trying to solve that require this approach.
Admittedly, as an engineer I am more familiar with the experimental side of things; maybe there is some argument that refutes the idea that on the theoretical side collaboration isn't required in the way it is on the experimental side. But if that's the case, I'd sort of like to hear an argument as to how we know that.
This isn't a problem unique to physics whatsoever; this is a general problem of academia at large. I come from Sociology, and spent a half decade in school hearing the signs of this same story from numerous people in both the social and hard sciences, both fellow grad students and professors. To put a bow on it, I personally stopped short of earning the PHD and opted for a life that aims to generate the means to pursue sociological curiosities independently! To hear others have succeeded at this sort of thing is heartening
Interesting to hear that you've had a similar experience. And yes, I think many people have found that earning to support non-money-making activities elsewhere is a good way to go.
Interesting, how did you end up doing that?
They can't agree on world IQ map and consequences of that.
Discoveries are normally made by newcomers into a field. Older members of any field tend to fall into the relevant orthodoxy and stop challenging the accepted mantra. The present system tends to reduce or eliminate any new concepts.
Why aren't you complaining about the lack of exciting new geographic discoveries? Physics is not a race for new concepts, but learning the truth about the world. Truth sets the limit of knowing new things.
@@peceed "race" was not mentioned(you're probably referring to 1973_2023), and it's true that creativity is stifled by rigid parameters of index.
From the little I know it seems that they are defining out every possible avenue of solution so that we are left with only the ridiculous possibilities such as the Copenhagen interpretation or the Many-Worlds interpretation.
@@EricBarthDev The dogs bark, but the caravan goes on.
@@JackPullen-Paradox These issues are orthogonal, and many-worlds doesn't change anything, it doesn't have operational meaning.
I started studying physics in 1973. I got a job right away in the High Energy Physics (HEP) department. There I learned to program. I also learned a lot of physics in my job. I had complete access to the professors all the time (we basically lived in the department). I ended up dropping out. I used the programming skills I had learned to get a job making what college grads were making. This was after two years. I later went back and got my computer science degree. Interestingly, my oldest son did the same thing decades later, although he started out in aerospace engineering.
One thing I found was the limits you talk about. I was at a large state university. The rule was that you could sign two three-year contracts as an assistant professor. Then you would either have to get tenure or leave. So, at the end of my first year my first, and one of my favorite, professors was at that point. There was one slot open and four professors up for it. They all deserved it. He did not get it and had to leave. He ended up going to a large corporation as the head of their CAT scanner division. He was also head of the physics and software parts of the division. Although the university I was at paid well, I am sure that his compensation rose by at least a factor of ten. He would have been happy to stay in a research position. There were three of us who were very good friends. One went on to become a PhD and is now a researcher in India. The other, also Indian, also dropped out. He started his own small company. He later went back to school in business and eventually got his MBA.
life got sucked out my mind on the concept of physics but not physics itself. physics must start in your kitchen. engineering in your garage. life in the playground. happiness in your heart
There has been a lot of progress in Physics. The problem is that some people's idea of progress is something that shakes the foundation of the present theories, like GR or quantum physics in the early 20th century did. How much time did it take to arrive at that from Newtonian physics?
Ground breaking new discoveries are the exception, not the rule.
Yes, I think you're right. I do think, though, that groundbreaking discoveries have been coming more and more quickly, and we're due some foundational progress right now!
@@lasttheory Agreed!
@@lasttheory we'll need the experimental breakthrough before anything theoretical, it's an experimental science after all
@@josir1994 I'm not sure I agree! Firstly, we have plenty of observational data that we struggle to explain, especially observations of the cosmos. Secondly, theoretical advances often _precede_ experimental breakthroughs. No one even thought to measure the deflection of light around the sun until Einstein's theory predicted that it would, indeed, bend.
@@lasttheory Einstein didn't predict light would bend around the sun out of thin air, there were measurements showing the speed of light is same in different inertial frames and is incompatible with Newtonian mechanics. That's why there is the equivalence principle rather than something else. There needs to be a crack somewhere in the experimental data for theorist to do anything new.
Maybe all the low hanging fruit has been picked. I earned a Ph.D. in nuclear physics in the early 90s and became disenchanted with the field due to the publish-or-perish academic environment. Plus, the experiments were uninteresting, focused mainly on determining obscure details no one apart from the very narrow and highly specialized field cared about. Still, i love the subject. Thanks for sharing your views.
The low hanging fruit is still in abundance - you could disprove nonsense like 'space time', dark matter and black holes in a few weeks and make an incredibly powerful contribution to the world of science
Unfortunately, those in control don't want that to happen
Thanks, Josef. Sadly, I think your research experience is quite common.
My thinking. The is no straight line, the curves bends and flattens out. We're banging into walls now.
I concur and in fact in every field the low hanging fruits hv been picked and ground out. In Org Chem, there are no simple mols to make anymore...
I've been a Mathematica user for ~ 15 years. I'm actually using it right now as I work on my new research. It's an incredibly flexible tool, extremely useful. Like a smart notebook where you can do pretty much anything.
I would never have thought that Clint Eastwood has such deep understanding of physics 😀
Make my day.
That s Clint Westwood
@@patpat5135 You mean Clint Wedgwood.
He doesn't. Neither does whoever this is in the video. It's so shallow your toenails wouldn't get wet.
Totally agree. I've tried the academic route in physics, had some success as well, but then left. Academics are guardians of received wisdom. They dare not rock the boat. I have more intellectual freedom in my own company than I ever had in the academy. I believe that innovation has to come from the fringes by definition. I still work with Universities but am frustrated by their inflexibility, lethargy, unwillingness, and lack of courage to try break the mold, even at a simple level. Even to whisper a new idea is to be labelled at heretic. This is a generalized cultural problem in academia from the cutting edge to the coal face of research.
That's good to hear. I'm glad I'm not the only one to think this! Congratulations on your escape from academia: I'm sure you're achieving far more with your own company than you could have done if you hadn't made that leap!
Coincidentally, 1973 was also when John A. Wheeler (along with former students Misner and Thorne) published "Graviration", which summed up Wheeler's 20 years of taking a deep dive into Einstein's General Relativity.
coincidentally, 1973 is the year i was born so there's that.
@@nchinthlol, same with me although I can’t think of how it affects the field of physics😂
@@nchinthSo you're the reason we've been stalled in physics this entire time? IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT?!
It has been my question to professional academics since I was very young - how come all the fundamental discoveries in most of the science were made by amateurs who did not study their subjects through properly organized institutions, but in modern times the access to scientific equipment is so heavily guarded by professional academics who never discover anything new? I guess all the interesting news hides from those with secure positions. It is up to amateurs and outsiders to discover and bring all the news to light. One must be uncomfortable and uneducated to see the light. Academia is rather a keeper of what has already been found, not a discoverer. It is a museum of science, not a lab.
Not only that. Do not expect any progress if 70% of your time you need to write research proposals and play politics to get funds.
Institution is something established (look at the etymology) rather than something "new". Its purpose is maintenance and continuity rather than revolutions and discoveries.
Academia there is to disguise the truth and keep the knowledge from people.
The Wright brothers being a case in point.
You're smoking a crack pipe. Newton was entirely interwoven with the academic establishment. Copernicus was man about town in many professions. Faraday did the vast majority of his important work in a professional laboratory. Even Einstein wouldn't have gone as far as he did without advice from Poincare and Minkowski. Oliver Heaviside was truly a man alone outside the system. He cleaned up Maxwell's mathematics, and came up with a nice result of his own, the telegrapher's equations, but this was hardly fundamental. Maxwell, Kelvin, Rutherford, the Curies were all insiders. Lavoisier attended a top Parisian school, starting at age 11. There are scads of amateurs in mathematics, hardly so many in physics. Gibbs entered Yale at age 15. Boltzmann had an elite education. Joule was uneducated, if you exclude his being tutored by John Dalton as a young child, and later working alongside Kelvin. Bohr entered Latin school at age seven. Dirac had relatively humble beginnings, but was always in a good school. Schrödinger's father was a chemistry professor. Oppenheimer skipped a bunch of grades before entering Harvard relatively young. Are you thinking the Bernoulli family? They outclassed many mathematics faculties sitting around in their living room. Shame they never spoke to each other.
I have noticed the same thing but not only in physics but including chemistry and math. Look at the college text books now and they look the same as 60 years ago. I think we have reached a roadblock in knowledge and I don't see it changing in the near future. It will take breakthroughs in engineering to have the tools to peer into new discoveries.
AI will cause another spurt in new fundamental discoveries in the next 100 years. We have already reached the limit of the human brain. That is my educated guess.
Despite the self-serving propaganda, put out by the physicists, breakthroughs typically come from engineers, who invent technology that was declared "impossible" because it "violates" the "laws" of physics. You'd think that physicists would learn some humility, but you'd be wrong.
@@starguy2718 We need more people like Nikola Tesla.
not just ONE roadblock. MANY of them. Our evolution is being stifled and artificially reduced & slowed down.
@@KRAFTWERK2K6most underated comment on this post
I graduated in 1969 with a BS in physics. In my junior year in a class called theoretical mechanics, the professor made one thing clear. To be a physicist one must stop thinking with springs and balls bouncing off each other. One must stop visualizing events in a three space. One must view the universe with mathematics alone.
Is this why we can’t make progress? Over the years I have realized that math describes things just like English. Both can describe things that exist or don’t exist. Essentially they describe what we observe. Like observing the sun goes around the earth. The point is that simply describing what is observed doesn’t cut it. Often the observation is described but some little anomaly is ignored because the math describing it is so elegant. I don’t trust the math and I m sorry, I don’t understand what you mean by computational physics.
When I was eleven I read ABC of Relativity by Bertram Russell. I have pondered this all of my life. In 1999 I developed a model explaining why the speed of light is constant. I went through the trouble of learning LATEX and developed a paper explaining the concept. I submitted it to the American Physical Society. I got a letter back telling me I was silly.
I understand that there many kooks out there with grandiose TOE concepts.
Is that the problem?
I have submitted papers here and there. Some have supported me but added that anyone that counted had their sacred cows. While I appreciate the general thrust of this video, I am disappointed that you focus on Wolfram. I fear that will just keep us where we are today.
I believe if the community knew why the speed of light is constant, you will see your explosion in physics.
Yes, mathematics has been extraordinarily successful as a language for describing the universe for the last few hundred years, but it's not the only possible language.
Computation is an alternative language. By computation, I mean executing discrete instructions to model the universe; in mathematics, on the other hand, we solve continuous equations to model the universe. In Wolfram model, for example, the computation is applying rules to evolve the hypergraph.
@@lasttheory Well, you are not getting my message. It is not the last theory. I have gone far beyond Wolfram thinking. Mr. Wolfram is still using old physics concepts. While he is on the right track there much more. I call it Quantum Matrix Field Theory. Mr. Wolfram is just becoming aware of the 3D matrix that is space. However, I am nobody so I will crawl under my rock and let you carry on. Have a nice day.
@@alschneider5420 Are you familiar with Chronon Field Theory?
the constant is it's the rate of induction in the aether which is ''infinitely' dense and frictionless... but it can still vary in velocity from the doppler effect i think lol...
dayton miller proved the aether as Mickelson-morley didn't account for drift as dayton showed...
Is mathematics a dead end? Lots of interesting and beautiful shops and stores on the road in. It all appears very nice and inviting. But then you run out of road and have to go back. All the stores are still there on the way out, but you eventually get back to where you started and have to try another route.
The big progress seems to be in materials science, which of course uses physics and chemistry. I'm sure not all of it leads to practical applications but it must be easier to get to a tangible goal.
Metamaterials, for instance.
When will Graphene become commercial available.
We have been waiting for +20 years for those solid state batteries and tougher than steel material.
Very interesting and insightful. Subscribed! Thank you so much for the video.
Thanks, I appreciate that!
Thanks so much for your insights. I received my undergraduate degree in physics from a large US university in 1970. Although I learned a lot of math and science during those years, my interest had always been in classical physics, which has served the world well as the basis for engineering and technology used in our everyday lives. We used to refer to our modern physics and quantum mechanics courses as "science fiction". We would come out of class with the information we needed to pass the tests; but most of us found the knowledge to be esoteric, with little value in the real world environment. Which is why nearly all us, who were physics majors stopped at that level, went into traditional engineering positions, and never pursued advanced degrees. The only ones who seemed to do that sort of work were university-types who would likely spend their entire careers working with, or refining, one or two equations. There was plenty of work to do, but very little of it would appear to lead to any new theories of huge money. Then, suddenly, the likes of Hawking came along; and they appeared to sell their own brand of science fiction, which was loaded with theories without a lot of good science behind it. And a lot of them made pretty good livings doing that. Unfortunately, I believe we are now seeing the consequences of that approach. Theories are great; but when they are based on satisfying an audience, they are also rather empty and easily dismissed - just my 2 cents worth.
I'm sorry but the "science fiction" comprised of quantum mechanics is the very foundation of the modern world. Not a single mobile or computer chip is possible with quantum mechanics, and that is literally the very tip of the iceberg.
You dismissing those subjects as science fiction tells me all I need, esp when the standard model is the most well tested scientific model humanity has ever produced.
@@uhbayhue No, although most real-world applications can survive just fine using classical mechanics; theories, based on limited data to reach broad and unifying conclusions are rightly subject to further questioning and modification.
I agree there has been little progress in physics, that string theory is very likely a dead end, and that Wolfram's new framework looks very promising.
I will also be astonished if dark matter turns out *not* to be another dead end. I also think AI is likely to be a highly useful tool for exploring some theoretical paths, as well as in mining patterns out of the otherwise impossibly vast data sets of astronomy and particle physics experiments, as well as being very well aligned to make progress on theories in computational physics.
I think another benefit of computational physics is that it doesn't require infinity to exist in any real sense.
You want to know what made me think a God is possible and maybe even necessary? The old axiom, "If something exists now, then something has always existed." There is an infinity, the past is infinite, because if at any time there was nothing, not anything, there would still be nothing. So I became agnostic.
Yes, it'll be interesting to see how AI can make a contribution here.
Isn't Infinity a preferred thing I mean does anyone think that Infinity is not real
@@DavidWestwater-vq6qy I for one, but I'm in good company. If you think about it, infinity makes no sense except as a purely mathematical construct. Even then, it tends to cause paradoxes (inconsistencies) in any math that includes it. E.g. Goedel's Incompleteness theorem can be said to result from allowing infinities.
@@DavidWestwater-vq6qy It's interesting to think that infinity actually exists, but we have no evidence that infinity exists in nature at all.
People cannot even comprehend infinity. That's because it is a mathematical concept, not a reality concept. It shows up a lot in mathematics, but we have no examples of it in reality.
I totally agree with "Something paralyzing happens when pursuit becomes profession". One must focus on the task, not the reward. Also string theory seems to be a dead end indeed.
Same thing is said in Geeta
@@maypriy2834 ok
I would counter argue the reward could be the motivation if the pursuit of the reward and the reward itself are selfless endeavors.
@@sonicmastersword8080 yes the reward is motivation. But in this case the reward, ie money, is independent of the task, ie physics. You can't do physics with money as your main goal/
thank you. even so i am far from this field, one think i know is that the right incentives can make the differents and the last results in any field, so your explanation is make sense to me.
After the start of Monetarism and extensive Money printing in the 60-70s, many STEM majors had switched from physics to finance industry, later to be followed by the current switch from physics to IT sector.
Yes, I suspect you're right, that has been a factor.
Luckily us engineers have done a smash bang job of coming up with consumer goodies since 1973. The HP-35 calculator was the marvel of the time. NiCd batteries, ugh. $395, nearly two semesters tuition to the University of California. Slide rule, 20 bucks.
I got the Texas Instruments one for considerably less. I'm also a bio/engineer and worked in aerospace for most of my career.
Amen!
When one puts garbage into a *calculator* , he gets garbage out.
When one puts garbage into a *human brain* , it gets transformed into something useful.
Just a note. Lord Kelvin was not born into the aristocracy, though the family was comfortably off. His dad was a successful engineer and academic.
Yes, thanks, you're right: Kelvin wasn't super-rich. Still, not having to work for a living really helps make time for independent science!
If I can add my two cents: 1- Is unreasonable to expect the same pace all the time in science. The revolutions happen once in a blue moon. 2 - Rabbit holes like string theory and the kokamimie 11 dimensions, that can't be tested or proved, only delay the progress. 3 - Maybe we are in a blind alley like the Aztecs that didn't developed industry because they lack cargo animals. 3 - The scales in physics are outside the current technology. 4 - Events like multiverse would take time scales that outside the human experience.
Ergo, grab your british knickers, the slump can be long and boring.
These are some good points. I agree with most of what you say. I tend to think, though, that advances in technology follow advances in theory, e.g. nuclear technology didn't happen until we had theories of fission and fusion. So I'm optimistic that we _can_ make progress with fundamental theory even before we have the technology even to gather the experimental data to _test_ our theories.
Remember that theory is the word of one root with the word theater
I don't think we have a shortage in the production of new theoretical mathematical models.
What we have is a lack of technical means to test them.
More and more we "test" hypotheses within computer simulations.
Run on models that are just that, simulations of how the universe works based on our incomplete theoretical models.
Einstein's theories were validated by astronomical observation within 5 years of him proposing test conditions, courtesy of a convenient eclipse.
We are STILL waiting on some way of actually testing Hawking Radiation.
It has been 5 DECADES!
There's your slowdown right there...
@@NullHand Some models like mine take pure binarism and produce gravity in a way here's what gets derived: 1) our visual field with details like nose, cheeks, arms, etc. 2) "avg" skeletons, hugely detailed. Now tell me this ain't smth. No mathematical inconsistencies. Codes and visualizations are present. I share these with the world, no one cares. Switching to other areas then (physicists aren't ready for computer science)
@@NullHand Yes, what happens out in the cosmos is difficult to measure, for sure. It may be that direct evidence of discrete space, for example, might come from the collapse of stars into black holes. Measuring the radiation and particle emissions from these events is hard, especially for particles like neutrinos. But it's _possible,_ and as long as there's a possibility, there's a hope that we'll not only get new theories of physics, but also the evidence we need to prove or disprove these theories. I'm optimistic!
Ha, very good thank you. Having started but not finished a supersymmetry phd in 1981, also looking at lattice theories, then used Mathematica, I think you may have hit the nail on the head here!
One thing you didn't mention is the idea dumb though it is that all research has to be focused toward application,what is it good for. The University has to get funding for research, so they cozy up to corporations. That is not the ideal arrangement for pure research for it's own sake.
Yes, that's always a problem. Pure research in science has always produced the goods, but it takes far too long for most corporations or even governments to want to fund it.
Well done, excellent video. Let’s hope that more senior academics will start to support Stephan Wolfram’s computational theory’s and give him the credit that he deserves. I guess in the end they may have to😊
Thanks! And yes, if this approach proves fruitful, academia will certainly catch up with it in the end.
No, women hate men's superiority in STEM, so they will continue to make studying math an inferiority.
They will validate and focus his work with indifference and constant attacks.
@@scene2much Stephen Wolframs theory isn't a successful theoory to begin with. If a theory manages to explain observation and successfully manages to predict, then no matter how bizzare, people will accept it. Wolfram's theory lacks this merit.
But, kindly note thay, in the last two decades, there's tremendous Progress in experimental physics. And science is about knowing reality. Not making interesting theories.
He's been ignoring calling me by name while basing his whole Metamathematics on my idea he actually praised as one of the most interesting ideas he met in a decade. That of everything out of relations of nothing else but ordinals of universal computational time. He's focused on integrating all sorts of academic tools while ignoring actual evidences of the effects of formulas I've introduced to him, and it's not about them being any erroneous, they're absolutely 100% correct.
About the Computation/Physics connection, i would advice you to look into Linear Logic and other resource sensitive formal logics (including Computability Logic), plus the idea of logic = type theory and proof = computation, which enables us to go into Linear Type Theory for computations that consume old information rather than just produce new information (information = resources).
However, the Geometric aspect of Physics will never be superseded by the Logical/Computational aspect, rather they complement each other.
My passion died to become an engineer...after my 12th grade due to financial crisis in 2002..and I went on to study business management obtaining a master degree...which is of no use what I do for my living now...nothing but a medical sales person...and my son is 10 year old and I'm trying to find out whether he holds a same interest in physics...and im waiting for his interests and bringing him good books for his future ..now I'm at 40 I still love physics but how to continue my passion....and now computers and books confuses me even for small things...
Love from India 🇮🇳 ♥️..
Having a choice in 1973 to study physics or Medicine at university I chose the later. Now retired I have a lot of time to study. I have repeatedly found myself back in 1973. Science has made very little impact on society and life in the last 50 years. No breakthroughs in physics, no cheap nuclear power, no new drugs of note. The overuse of natural resources we knew would run out in 50 years are running out. MIT on a primitive computer calculated that our industrial society would collapse by 2030 is happening. I then realized that advanced education has been simply the study of made up words that describe something that may or may not happen in real life. Academics defend their special made up word, teach it and write books about it. If things change just adjust the meaning of their special word. 50 years of words.
In reading your narrative, we are about the same age. The Moon landing was the ultimate top of the pile for 'us' about that age, or became part of the war machine. My very smart friends and I pursued Physics, Mathematics, and Engineering. Physicsit became a part time community college instructor, another a Gov't Manager (spook), the Matematician became real estate manager using his Critical Skills, one engineering entered the oil business but became a pilot, and the other engineer committed suicide. A lot true talent had to find that $, and like you, found out that much of those pressuring them to conform was outright BS! Outside those jobs, one co-developed the compound bow, another advanced isotope technique to find sea based oil fields, one may have advanced MRI technology, and the last was testing carbon filter material for a better Nasa LEO cooling equipment (the suicide). I think you made the right choice. My one friend who went medical became a long time inhaltion therepists and had a great damn life with 5 kids, and whose job was never in jeapordy. I wish we all could have hidden somewhere and pursued 'science'; that damn $ and lack of being independent. Einstein ended up in a perfect environment. As you know, Newton found a way to lock himself away to get the science/math to pour out of him. Peace!
No new drugs of note? I would disagree. People in 1973 (or 1983) would have severe consequences because of gastric ulcers. They would quickly die of myeloid leukemia. They would have a life expectancy of less than 5 years with most breast cancers. They would have hard-to-manage hypertension leading to much greater rates of heart failure. They would undergo much riskier anaesthesia. I could go on.
@@pm3302 As do physics, biology and science in general. It was the OP that said "Science has made very little impact on society and life in the last 50 years. No breakthroughs in physics, no cheap nuclear power, no new drugs of note."
I totally disagree with most of the statement - although it is true that we still don't have cheap or clean nuclear power, and that while physics has progressed (superconductivity, gravitational waves etc.) it has done so not in the same "fundamental" way that it did the period from 1890 to 1970.
Thanks much for sharing your thoughts. I really think this is the case in many different academic disciplinary silos.
Yes, thanks, this does seem to be a problem in academia across a really wide range of fields.
Thanks for this viewpoint and opinion. I chose to go into a really applied physics area and work to help others by working in medical physics. I really liked seeing how my training in physics, mathematics and computer science had real applications to detect, diagnose and treat diseases. Now that I am retired, I can go back to finding out what the universe is made of and, as a child, see if I can address the question I asked when I was 5 or 6 “are people made of atoms too?”. I really like the accessibility of Wolfram Physics and the intellectual stimulation of getting back into Mathematical and doing that level of coding again.
Ah, that's interesting to hear more about your background, Sean. I think that was a wise decision to go into applied physics; medical physics, in particular, has proved extremely fruitful over the decades!
Very interesting man
Excellent question! The lack of complete understanding influences this unfortunate reality. For me, it's essential to understand the fundamentals of Quantum Mechanics and overcome some of the weird thoughts, so physics can move forward. Many desire this but are unwilling to change their initial thoughts; assertive math can be understood with a different premise than Copenhagen's interpretation. There is a short Amazon book titled "Can Relativity and Quantum mechanics go together?" A fresh approach to both core theories joins them with a reasonable hypothesis. From the idea that the tangible universe is composed of the coexistence of "Stuff in a media", it proposes that the stuff is the elementary particle of the standard model and the media is the quantum 3D space. A wavy space that oscillates between 3D and its 4th dimension, by this wave and particle coexistence, this quantum universe seems quite reasonable... An excellent proposition that worth reading it... Regards
Keep up the good work, great videos 🤗😘✌️
Thanks Frederik!
That was a very interesting insight. Thank you!
Thanks, I appreciate it!
The Standard Model was fairly complete by the mid 1980s. The Higgs boson was detected at the LHC in 2012. And that's about it - nothing major has happened in fundamental physics since then. All BSM (beyond the standard model) hypotheses have come up short. Strings, supersymmetry, axions, etc - none of these have been detected. Why? Because they don't exist. But the real problem is at the very core of every research university - the obsession with getting grant money. I was a graduate student in physics when I had the realization that what REALLY mattered was getting grants - I saw professors spending more time writing grant proposals than doing actual research. A friend of mine, an oceanography professor, told me flat out that tenure depended on how much money one could bring in. At that point, I decided I really didn't want to go down that road. Yes, I got my PhD, but I went to a teaching college instead of a research university. Honestly, researchers scrambling for the next big grant reminds me of drug addicts looking for the next fix. All the thousands of papers on the arxiv are just there to get grant money - most of them are at best minor results and at worst complete garbage. Well, I've said my peace.
Yes, seems like this is what always happens when people's livelihoods start to depend on an institution: it stops being about what it's supposed to be about, in this case science, and starts being about securing those livelihoods. Thanks for the comment, and sorry to hear that this was your experience.
'They told me I had no future' and 'I saw there was no future' strike me as "if only I did not injure my knee."
A similar case can be made for academic finance. The last fundamental breakthrough was 1972 with the Black-Scholes option pricing model. In 1976 the Arbitrage Pricing Theory looked promising but it never got popular traction. The binomial option pricing model of 1978-79 is sometimes thought as the last big breakthrough. Anything since then has been incremental or realted to new technology and new financial instruments rather than new insight.
Interesting... finance is not an academic subject I know much about!
"Econophysics" seems to me to be using the same equations I was using in my PhD in the 1970s to solve electron transport problems. Perhaps I should have gone into finance and made a ton of money before the financial crash! (Fantasy alert: alternative history scenarios are usually nonsense. 🙃 )
I'd say it somewhat differently: in order to make progress, especially in a sad paradigm of stagnation, one has to think "outside the box"... and Academia is a box that makes mental boxes... that are probably unreal, mental traps.
Said that, and even if I like the intriguing propositions and alleged advances of Wolfram's fresh approach, I do feel that, as you say, his mind has also been shapen by something, in his case computer science. That's fine because it is at least a different and refreshing way of thinking and should at least get other people (in his team or outside it) thinking with different POVs and thus improving at least somewhat.
Nevertheless I must say that I did find an obvious flaw in his claims, specifically in the claim of time being an emerging property of his model: what he means is not time as such but a type of time ("synchronicity" I call it). he other type of time ("sequentiality" or "iteration") is implicit on the very foundations of his model and cannot thus emerge from it. It may still mean that there are two types of time: one fundamental and another emergent but it's an important distinction and different than claiming than time as such is emergent.
Thanks for the comment! And yes, I agree, time is complicated in the Wolfram model. I'd really like to get into these two types of time in future videos, but I need to dig deeper into how Stephen Wolfram conceives of the second type of time before I do.
@@lasttheory TY, I look forward to it. I just discovered your channel but if you're more or less able to explain Wolfram's model (or other issues in physics) in an accessible manner, as you seem to do, you got a new follower. I tried to follow more directly Wolfram in the past but he and team are clearly above my layman's capabilities.
I was just about to graduate from high school in '73. I can BARELY remember back to then.
Yes! The 'molding of the mind problem' with learning the fundamentals of an adapting and changing field of science aka 'rigidity vs flexibility of the mind.'
I realized this problem early on while learning physics and quickly understood that I would have to remain fluid with my development, evolution and understanding of the fundamentals of physics as I learned them.
This is the greatest challenge along with balancing the conflicting viewpoints that many professors and PhDs hold on any topic in physics.
You have to remain malleable and open to a multitude of perspectives and hold close only the perspectives that resonate with you while remaining open to the distal ideas that could potentially play a role later.
These are challenges that I did not expect to find but, I do find them invigorating because of the mental gymnastics and stimulation it provides.
Yes! If you have any tips on how to remain open-minded, let us all know your gymnastic tricks!
@@lasttheory Sure. Not a lot of people or scientists talk about the points that you made on the subject of openness because it's mostly restricted to the domain of psychology.
So the first idea is to understand, which most may already know, is that openness is a personality trait and one of the "Big 5 personality traits" aka the 5-factor model that psychologists use to define personality.
Personality traits are malleable to a certain degree. This is the characteristic that can be utilized for greater intuitive, cognitive and analytical ability and outcomes.
This is important to know because you're basically conditioning your mind to hold many possible definitions in it for each term that may hold a variety of definitions.
The approach is as simple as programming your own mind to know that "this idea is not set in stone," and then you fill that foundational thought related to the term that you are working with, with the different sets of definitions.
So when you recall the term you will also recall all the associated definitions and their potential relationships to anything that you might be analyzing.
Its a lot like sifting through a Rolodex, except, it wont feel as natural at first and so there will be a lot of conscious intent put into the behavior until it starts to feel more natural. Even after it begins to be a natural behavior, you will sense the weight of the added information that you are juggling in your mind.
This is the part where it can feel the most laborious and tiring. But, when you practice this enough, your mental muscle becomes stronger over time and the task becomes easier too.
What you want to do is "make friends" with the idea that being open to changing your mind in the future will be highly advantageous to you. And so you'll want to do an exercise where you find all the reasons why it will be highly advantageous to do so. This will train the mind in a direction that nets better results. You'll need to reinforce this training at times when you notice its losing its effect. So ironically, you'll need to also train yourself to remain open to "retraining yourself." I do this as often as needed because I know the benefit of doing so.
What I also like to do create visual compartments in the mind to help expand my working memory area.
So in a sense I have multiple working memory chalk boards that I've are created for short term use.
Once Ive carefully loaded the information onto a mental work space, I can then set it aside and create a new work space that I can then use to compare and analyze related workspaces.
Theres a lot of careful "reminding" that happens regarding what is loaded onto a workspace when analysis is happening so that the time spent analyzing isnt wasted.
Since I took the time to carefully load the workspace it can be recalled via long term memory and all relevant information will be there if Im careful with reloading and checking for all relevant information that was there before.
For me these individual workspaces resemble sets of puzzle pieces that can fit together. And thats exactly how I treat them. I try to make connections between workspaces just like clusters of finished puzzle pieces of a larger puzzle.
Having your mind space ordered this way removes much of the confusion, frustration, and irritation that ultimately taxes your tolerance for ambiguity. The lower ones IQ, the faster they become intolerant and less interested in solving complex problems.
I designed this type of systematic approach for myself to get around the "intolerance to ambiguity problem."
In doing so, this also reduces the amount of "negative emotion" involved which will reduce tolerance and thus keeps your mind active in the abstract analytical mind space for longer periods of time.
More positive time spent on a set of problems = faster results.
This allows me to be tremendously more rigorous than before.
I see similar approaches taken with people who are good at remembering long numbers or sets of words.
They create many mental workspaces each with its own visual image attached to the thing that they want to remember for easier recall using association.
Probably less than a decade ago, my eyes would have crossed doing some of the associative/comparative analysis that I regularly do now.
So this has been helpful in allowing me to toggle through many sets of ideas and stay open without getting lost, confused and mentally tiring, too quickly.
Planck:
“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.”
Yes, there's a true statement, sadly!
Also, publications, citation, struggle to make an impact, truly impacts the progress. Doing physics for the sake of physics, is often brought to exposure these days. It is not to undermine the great work that still happens today, but somehow a big thing has gone missing.
Do you know the root cause of all this ? I know. I am really horrified by it.
Might humbly suggest that the door to advancing knowledge in Physics was opened in 1979 - 1981 with the publication of the two volumes entitled Synergetics 1 & 2 by Fuller. These shift the whole basis of physics onto a ‘honeycomb’ interpretive basis. In essence this is done by the replacement of purely cubic mensuration by cubeoctahedral mensuration - or - what is the same thing - replacing 90° as the co-ordinate mean of nature by a coordinate mean of 90° & 60° in combination - an astronomically different state of affairs! (p.s. volume 2 contains the elucidating photographic plates and the vital index applying to both volumes.)
The peculiar thing about the cubeoctahedral articulation of ‘All Space’ is that it works as 3D (like cubic mensuration) to nearly the most reduced point but then becomes 4D with necessary devolvement of consideration upon the unique behaviour of the photon-quantum-tetrahedron. The reason for this being that the internal angles of a tetrahedron are all 60° and also because the tetrahedron is the only polyhedron whose vertex is not opposed by a symmetrically placed opposite vertex but by a ‘hedron’ or space/window. All vertices of the tetrahedron may thus pass through and involute the form but in a way that will/can never show up in a 3D model of space - hence the assumption of unpredictability. Suspect that this is what has bamboozled all the ‘quantum-gentlemen’!
I think it's important to note that just because something is a profession doesn't mean it can't be open or creative. The influence of tacking human's survival to an activity certainly restrains it in various ways. The same thing occurs with art and I think it's a deeply personal and emotional process that begets a watering down of things either for profit or survival. Still, it isn't obvious to me that this is a guarantee in all settings.
Now, in the context of education this is seemingly certain. Formal education is so stagnant and sclerotic it causes everything it touches to become somewhat fetid. The hyper bureaucratization of anything tends to ruin it and school is no different. I mean you said it all when you pointed out how boring and dry (see horrible) the lectures were.
I study mathematics and I see the same thing. However in the case of mathematics it's totally different and math isn't really stagnant like physics. But in the US we STRUGGLE with mathematics and fail miserably at teaching it because the system we use to teach it so broken and rigid. We employ people who have no interest in teaching math they just have a math degree because they were good at it and hated English. Anyway, I digress. Great video!
"Paid by the universities to make progress in Physics" - Is that part of the problem? A lot of the great breakthroughs of the first half of the twentieth century (in fundamental physics as distinct from technology - that is in thought) were made by loners (Einstein, Schroedinger, Planck, Dirac) or by very small groups (The Curies, Rutherford's group). "Paid to make progress in Physics" often means "Paid to work in large international associations and pump out publications before the competition gets there". This working atmosphere may be trammeling fundamental thought, which is ultimately individual work, even when undertaken in cooperation with others.
Prime example: hokum on nuclear fusion research.
Yes, I agree, this does seem to be part of the problem.
This sadistic way of doing science has really run its course and we may put into question what the future role be of universities.
I don't know why there has been no progress in physics since 1973. I do know that it's not my fault, and I take great comfort from this knowledge.
Thanks for this video, I quite enjoyed it. I have noted and wondered about this apparent stall in great discoveries, and right on the edge of the computer age too. I had put it down to perhaps people getting pigeon holed into ever more specified areas of physics. The early 20th century physicists held a vast sum of all known-at-the-time physics in their minds, and perhaps looked more broadly at the discipline than today's physicists. But your explanation makes good sense. And I hope you're right that the brakes are about to come off. It seems that JWST in particular is shaking the dust out of some carpets.
Yes, I like your take on this, and I agree that observations of what's happening out there in the universe on a large scale could really make a difference in the near future. Thanks for watching!
* Theoretical Physics
Higgs Boson, detection of gravitational waves, first image of a black hole. I'll never forget the day my Physics III (I imagine that course covers more or less the same material at most universities) professor ran into class looking like a kid on Christmas morning and announced to us that Einstein's theory had been confirmed and that we'd detected gravitational waves. It was an exciting time to be a young man studying maths and science. In the grand scheme of things this has been an exciting decade. The thing with theory is that you're kind of throwing paint at the wall, and it may seem for years like nothing is happening, until something finally sticks and there is a breakthrough, the insights of which provide fertile ground for even more insights. We shall see! Although, I know some physicists have raised the alarm about the way funding is done retarding the development of theory and shoehorning most researchers into a theory (or, rather, a mathematically beautiful... conjecture? It's difficult to even call it a hypothesis when it makes no experimental predictions) which may or may not bear fruit.
Thanks for your thoughtful comment, Colin. Yes, I'm referring to fundamental theoretical physics, rather than to experimental physics or astronomical observations. These developments are, indeed, incredible! It's just telling that they're all confirmations of theoretical progress made _before_ 1973... more than 50 years ago!
I’ve noticed that a lot of physicists are hanging out with philosophers, it’s a good break from the mathematics
That's not not because physicists fell out of love with maths, but because they lack new ideas. As soon as comes new Galileo or Newton, they will dump philosophers as they did it
before. 🤓
@@asimbliskovac9720
Uh, Galileo wasn't exactly renowned for his *social skills* .
Newton, however, was a remarkably approachable and avuncular teacher! Indeed, people today forget that both *Calculus* , and the *Principia* at first had a certain mysticism behind them.
They way that he saw it, there was no "myth" or "science," but rather "supernatural philosophy" and "natural philosophy," respectively.
Once we accounted for 'most of the stuff', some people were just left to find gaps. Maybe even encouraged.
What do you think about electric universe, plasma cosmology theory? A new path for physics?
I have a question about the Ruliad. If it’s runs all possible rules, does that mean that for each rule it runs, it’s also running the negation of that rule?
Good question! As you suggest, for every rule, there's another rule that can reverse its effect. But things get complicated when you consider that there are multiple possible places in the universe where each rule - and its reverse - can be applied. There are many different ways of choosing between these places, such that the application of the reverse rule might not simply reverse the application of the rule. Much more on this to come on this channel...
@@lasttheory I suppose I’m still a bit confused. My understanding of the “rule” to be run would include the specific locations where it would be applied. For instance, one rule might be “For each edge between two nodes, delete that edge, then create two new nodes for each node connected by that edge, each connected by and edge.” Any rule that references any particular set of circumstances in which the rule would apply would also be contradicted by its specific negation-a rule that pertains to those exact set of circumstances. That’s what’s implied by “all possible rules” isn’t it? Looking forward to more content. Very interesting topic!
@@mattparadisi7016 Your understanding is correct. If you apply your rule, creating two new edges for every edge, you can imagine a reverse rule that takes two edges and reduces them to a single edge.
The complication, in this case, is that you have to choose _which_ two edges to reduce to a single edge. For example, suppose you started with edges A & B and applied your rule, giving edges C & D from edge A and edges E & F from edge B. If you applied the reverse rule, it could turn edges C & D back into edge A and edges E & F back into edge B. But it could also do something slightly different: turn edges C & E into a single edge and edges D & F into a single edge, leaving two edges that might be _different_ from the original edges A & B.
It's hard to describe this subtle different without an animation - I'll have to create one some time! - but I hope that gives you some idea of the kinds of complication that can arise.
Thanks for the comment, it really helps me understand what I need to explain in future!
@@lasttheory I understand your explanation (you did a great job without a visual aid!), but as an example, wouldn’t the Ruliad also be “running” a simultaneous rule that said, for example, “For each edge between two nodes, delete that edge.” As compared to the previous rule we were discussing, it would seem that this rule would “conflict” and I’m having a hard time understanding how the universe could accomplish anything if for every rule that could be run, there is a corresponding rule that says to either not perform that rule, or perform some other contradictory rule.
@@mattparadisi7016 Yes, I think you have that right. The crucial word is "conflict". We don't know how to deal with such conflicts in the Wolfram model. Maybe there's a simple resolution of those conflicts... we just don't know.
I thought it was common knowledge nowadays that most academics know that applied computational algorithms has superseded applied mathematics. I believe that progress in physics will come from biology and cosmology where the former will reveal how molecular machines interact with the quantum vacuum, and the latter will reveal how the vacuum and the Higgs field interacts with whatever it is outside our universe. But this will take place over centuries IMO.
Interesting, I think the way we educated children at a young age from the 1960s had a negative affect!
Ah, interesting... say more about that!
@@lasttheory The most logical explanation is that the mathematics of quantum mechanics represents the physics of ‘time’ itself relative to the atoms of the periodic table. With classical physics representing processes over a ‘period of time’, as in Newton’s differential equations. Light photon ∆E=hf energy is continuously transforming potential energy into the kinetic Eₖ=½mv² energy of matter, in the form of electrons. Kinetic energy is the energy of what is actually ‘happening’. The dynamic geometry of this process forms an uncertain ∆×∆pᵪ≥h/4π probabilistic future continuously unfolding relative to the electron probability cloud of the atoms and the wavelength of the light. The wave particle duality of light and matter (electrons) is forming a blank canvas that we interact with relative to the energy and momentum of our actions. This forms a constant of action in space and time that we see mathematically as the Planck constant h/2π.
What a great video and I suddenly recognized you, I used to work in the same office room as you at LWKs in the mid-90s for a year. This isn't my real name and it's just like a hobby account on social media. I remember you worked nights because of all the noise in the office (sorry, I tried to talk only when required !). I remember you left after a year that I was there and then you went to a polar research station or something and we never heard of you again ! Sadly the company closed circa 1999-2000. You always seemed like a clever chap working on mass disk storage controllers couldn't maintain your interest to keep on working there I guess.
Wow, yes, that's me!
Thanks for bringing back the Lightworks days. It was a great place to work, with interesting technical challenges back in those early days of video editing.
But yes, I was looking for something more, and spent the couple of years after Lightworks writing my first book and doing meteorological work in Antarctica.
Thanks for recognizing me! Feel free to reach out at lasttheory.com/contact if you'd like to reveal your secret identity!
It is about energy. Electrons, protons, etc. a few Mev. experiments can be done on a tabletop. Tev requires whole countries.
I can't help but remember what John Steinbeck said, "People like you to be something, preferably what they are."
This is a very interesting topic.
I think it is really the story of the accrued collective understanding of humanity. The process of understanding more is underway right now but we won’t see how until later since the problems are difficult. The video makes a good point that the education system hasn’t been the source of revolutionary ideas but it seems likely that the investments we are making now are still advancing our collective understanding and that at some point the small steps we’re taking will make a more revolutionary discovery possible.
Yes, I hope you're right, the small advances now (especially observations) will pave the way for bigger advances in future.
I had the same issue trying to find a thesis subject. The profs were not interested in my ideas and sent me off to see someone else. They only suggested things that they were interested in.
Right, that's interesting... this problem is real!
Well said. Successful creativity seems to require the shackles removed and the freedom to dream. Would Wiles have cracked Fermat had he been working officially on university time? Hunger to succeed against all odds also helps. The starving artist phenomenon possibly applies equally to physics, and by extension, to any creative field.
Yes, well said, you too. This has happened to me in my working life, too: I'm so constrained on company time that the only way to innovate is on my own time.
Considering how big the endowments at the prestigious universities are, you'd think they'd be willing to set aside a bit of $ to throw at the fringe to see what turns up.
Yes, I really like that idea! Sadly, it's not the way academia works.
Ironically, it's the search of answers and solutions in the context of a lack of money that is more likely to uncover answers and new understanding of the world and its inner workings.
@@edfort5704 Right, interesting. Constraints do often yield incredible results, and there's no constraint like a money constraint!
I guess time will tell, but I don't expect many significant advances in the next centuries. We've been declining in intelligence since the late 19th century and it seems we dropped below a critical mass in the mid 20th century. Most every field of pure research has stagnated since then and though there have been limited advances in engineering (mostly in continuing to refine the manufacturing process of semiconductors), it's mostly based on past innovation. I suspect the reason universities are the way they are today is because this is the only environment in which the vast majority of professors can maintain any competitive advantage. For not only is intelligence declining, but the expansion of the universities starting in the 60's substantially lowered the bar since so many more professors were needed.
I hope I'm wrong about all this, but I doubt it. The future does not at all look bright.
One possibility is that if they could discover the genetic factors that produce intelligence, then
it might be possible to improve the general intelligence of the human population.
I think part of the reason is World Wars One and Two killed off a lot of brilliant people. Couchgrouch
The only real universities are Oxford, Cambridge, Sorbonne, Harvard, Yale and Australian national university. The rest are high school extension programs.
@@ranjithpowell6791 Is it your understanding of history that all the
great scientists of the past only
attended the creme de la creme
universities?
@@guitarista666 That's one of those pie in the sky technologies that I doubt we're still capable enough to develop to any real level of usefulness and, even if we did, it would be exceedingly expensive and only used by a small fraction of the world's population, it's not going to stem the general decline in intelligence.
being in IT, i have no technical background in Physics but i love it and i love youtube documentaries, String Theory, a very shiny exciting theory, when i came across it i was finding interesting documentaries all around, BUT then i realize it's not moving forward with new discoveries, it's still on drawing boards of exceptional scientist but it's not making any real progress or discoveries. Well this is so true that when science goes in hands of professionals then it's not going to make any REAL progress and this is not just physics but every field of life where professionals have taken over who are more interested in career and salary then the real performance and this happens in last 50 years. We are producing thousands of PHDs but where they all go ? scientific exploration is not a profession but a passion and urge to learn and if that is overtaken by professional then you will have great careers and presentations but no real progress. I think after having tools like quantum computers with AI, i expect a lot of exciting discoveries coming up in next 50 years
Yes, that's well put, thanks for the comment! As you say, progress could accelerate very quickly with computers and AI, which will allow people to explore physics outside of academia.
The problem with String Theory is not that it postulates higher dimensions of space and matter with various branes and whatnot (there are surprising real grounds for this), but that it is so extremely theoretical, it has become divorced from evidential experimentation, which is really the lifeblood of Physics!
In that regards Parapsychology, Energy Healing, Occultism and Magic might be more useful to Physics, despite these practices being full of inexact (and misunderstood, often literally!) allegorical language, serious superstitions, confirmation bias, problems with repeatability, and obstacles of accounting for all possible relevant factors shaping the outcome of the experiment.
The challenge is to simultaneously ignore all ridicule by the ignorant masses (including academic scientists!) for performing "fringe" research of "unreal delusions", AND keep your scientific honesty and integrity INTERNALLY, as well as in relations with openminded enough peers.
good stuff . .thanks for this ..
Thanks Dan! I confess there was a lot of waiting for construction noise to die down between each snippet of the recording!
The observation of the CMB temperature anisotropies (predicted by inflation), the observation of the Higgs boson, the observation of gravitational waves, the Maldacena anti-de Sitter/CFT correspondence. It is progress even if nothing as grandiose as the discovery of QM, special and general relativity, the construction of QFT and the Standard Model. One of my thesis advisors used to say that he could not count the number of young physicists sacrificed at the altar of String Theory 🙂.
I think Weinstain puts it nicely
Right on. Thanks for sharing.
Physics used to be experimental, and as such the physicist would be in more or less (according to their skills) intimate contact with Nature on a daily basis: there was a great source of perpetual marvel, and a continued perception of the profound aestethics that permeates the Universe. Advanced theory was sort of accessory and descriptive, and was set forth by a handful of geniuses, who were as fully able to perceive this aesthetics as they were good at expressing it (see for example Lagrangian Mechanics and Maxwell's equations). Then QM came, and then Relativity, all within five years.
As to the first one, it could take advantage of several decades of experiments (mainly precision spectroscopy in all of its nuances, and scattering), which were motivated by very practical needs (understanding how a lamp worked, for example). Such experiments were superbly accurate and reproducible, so that any theorizations were extremely well grounded in the experiment.
Relativity stemmed from a certified impossibility (the very accurate "failed" Michelson-Morley experiment), and an in-depth (and deeply physical, not mathematical) discussion of concepts such as time, space, and communications between reference frames. It had strong philosophical roots, and also got confirmed by experiments (not only astrophysics ones, mind you: you can observe relativistic effects in an electron microscope when doing metallurgy caracterizations, by accelerating the electron beam a bit too much, and then forgetting about it. It happened to me.).
The sense of harmony and order that was experienced by the experimental physicists again found ready translations into novel, attractive formal objects written on paper. It was a while after that that many people went ballistic, and started to believe that Physics could be done by just manipulating formulas.
While formalism got more and more complicated, the lack of really novel and unequivocal experimental knowledge had the effect of drying the very source of those formulas, whose charming beauty was so admired and coveted. Novel fundamental experimental knowledge being lacking, theoreticians started to delve into details in order to find an occasion to shine in the formalization business; but many of them were formalizing trifles, really.
The fun was gone, too: theoreticians should be reminded that Isaac Newton himself used to sit considerable time on a chair outside his house, doing nothing but blowing soap bubbles and admiring their colors (here's were the roots of spectroscopy lie, he knew that that was very well-spent time. God only knows how he did).
Now students needed to devote an increasing amount of time to learning formalities (many of which are not worth the paper they are written on), and less and less time to paying attention to experiments. Actually, in some courses, experiment was - in actual fact - reviled. Newly hatched physicists now had little time to pay attention to the suggestions of Nature, while quite ordinary people in academia wanted just two things: a fine career, and a formula to their name in textbooks. The lack of art in their works jumps at you as soon as you try to read them: behind formulas, you can hide a lot, and the more complicated they are, the better they serve the purpose.
Yesterday, in order to test the working of a Hall probe, I needed to quickly find out which of the poles of an unmarked neodymium magnet was the North one, so I had it floating on a piece of styrofoam in water. In that precise moment, this act made me - once more - the last one of an endless string of men who had done the same thing throughout history, all of them marvelling at the consequences (try it, if you haven't already).
Left to its own devices, the magnet quickly aligned itself (and its styrofoam basis) with the Earth's local magnetic field; so suddenly, and so forcefully, I was surprised, my hand and fingers all the while communicating to me the feeling of the restoring torque. I'm quite old, so doing that was very natural to me, but nowaday's kids off-the-college that happen in my Lab can't think of such a thing any more: they are genuinely amazed, as they should, but have no clue as to the magnitude of the forces involved. And they do not appear to have much fun.
They know many formulas, though.
I agree that high-energy physics is a dead end. I'm not that impressed by Wolfram's speculations; I don't see them grounded in any physics. What excites me is work in quantum foundations, such as nonlocality and entanglement. Follow the weirdness.
I like your idea of following the weirdness! You're right that the Wolfram model is not grounded in physics, but General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics _can_ be derived from the hypergraph, so this bottom-up approach _does_ seem promising. And it's not difficult to imagine how non-locality / entanglement could arise from the hypergraph, too.
@@paulthomas963 Yes, thanks Paul, it would be a shame to lose the weirdness!
Perhaps there is a hard upper limit to what the universe will "allow" us to understand. At some point, further scientific and technological progress will come to an end. People like to dream of fantastic futures with substantially more advanced science and technology; what if we are nearing the end of all possible progress? EDIT: subscribed.
Thanks William. I agree, it's possible that we'll never know everything there is to know in physics. For example, it might be that there are many possible theories of what happens at a small scale, each of which precisely reproduces everything we're able to observe, making it impossible to judge between them.
it's not the universe which puts limits on how much we can understand.. it's our own methodologies, our languages, our intuitive capabilities, and our critical thinking processes which collectively contributes to our own creative potential to derive new forms of understanding out of that.
@@env0x Yes, well stated, thanks.
Excellent analysis. A concise reasoning why there aren't seemingly any progress in physics. No students are willing to go against the grain and say dark energy or dark matter is wrong...and suggest and work on an alternative.
Thanks, and yes, it's so hard for students who are trying to do well in academia to go against the grain, as you say.
These observations are so general that they apply to any academic field. Thomas Kuhn explored the dynamics of change in his famous book. So this video implies that progress is generally impossible, except that in some fields it actually happens.
Yes, there's certainly something of Thomas Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions in what I say. But neither Kuhn nor I are saying that progress is impossible, merely that it happens in certain ways, and that academia not being set up to allow it to happen in those ways, it often comes from _outside_ academia.
With every new discovery that gets us closer to "the truth" (if there even is a "truth"), calculations become more complex and theories stray further from what we can observe. With that in mind, one would expect physics to stagnate at some point. In some cases, in the "old" days, it was technology that led to a new theory and not the other way around (the first "recent" example that comes to my mind is the observation of Cepheids which later led to a better understanding of our universe).
P.S. English isn't my first language, sorry in advance for any grammar mistakes or if my words sound approximate. Thank You.
Yes, I agree, it's no surprise that physics advances suddenly at some points and slowly at others. I really hope that we're approaching a point where it'll advance suddenly again!
Not all theories. As a matter of fact, if you study the whole corpus of research papers of recent years you'll see that the quality improves so radically! Indeed, some simplification of matter is starting to happen
Amazing and honest! Thank you, we need people like you!
Your observation can be seen in many areas of human endeavor including the Arts, Music, and even Sport. The possibility of financial reward narrows people's focus to proven pathways of success through established systems of monetization.
Excellent video. As I understand it, tenure was supposed to protect academic freedom. However, tenure at best only affects employment, not the ability to publish. Even tenured professors have to be careful because reputable journals seek to maintain their reputation. They do not have to publish anything they don't want to. Unfortunately, it appears they want to publish progress within the existing paradigms, not disruptive of them. (If you can shoot me down on this and show me an exception, I would greatly appreciate it.)
Peer review is highly cooperative, at least compared to the patent system. When applying for a patent, the innovation does not have to please anyone and does not have to fit into any preexisting paradigm. It just has to be new and non-obvious. The grant of a patent is not discretionary; it is a court-enforceable right. This means pioneering (paradigm-breaking) inventions are the easiest to patent, and they also get the broadest protection.
Almost all disciplines of science and technology have been advanced by both peer review and patents. Theoretical physics is a glaring exception because for policy reasons nobody can patent a law of nature. While I agree with the intent of that policy, it has had the unintended consequence of leaving progress in theory to the mercy of peer review alone.
Peer review controls funding too. In 2007, the National Science Board, in its Congressional oversite capacity over NSF, pointed out that transformative research proposals tend to not do well in peer review because (among other reasons) they threaten existing paradigms. NSB suggested that NSF create programs to fund transformative research proposals without sending them out for peer review. So NSF responded well with much rhetoric about transformative research and created new programs such as EAGER. Unfortunately, the program directors are "peers" too. I looked at some of the proposals that received funding under these new programs. They seemed quite mundane.
Someone with a different is treated as if guilty of heresy against doctrine, and instantly sentenced to live without funding and without meaningful publicity. I know some philanthropists have set up foundations to help, even looking only at NSF-rejected proposals. But they of course want to be careful with their money, so they hire experts to administer their programs. These experts then make their own rules which tend to not recreate the circumstances under which the early scientists made their discoveries.
I would love to be shot down by anyone who can point out specific exceptions.
The problem is, there are maybe ten people who could revolutionize physics if given a chance. But there is also a hundred thousand well-meaning people who would merribly chase down yet another dead end going nowhere, if given a chance. And there is no way of telling who is who in advance.
Hello, very good video, highlighting what is wrong with physics and cosmology.
I am an outsider, a 73 year old inventor, with patents granted. I believe that the bigest problem preventing advancement in physics and cosmology, is as you say, but also the abandonment of ' Logic ', and manipulated mathematics derived to prove things that are inpossible. Two clasic exaamples ' The Big Bang and Cosmic Inflation Theory ', and the standard model's explanation of the ' Electron '.
The standard model's description of the atom, is a joke, when you consider the ever increasing number of so-called new particles, that have supposedly been discovered following collider collisions, with no explanations as to how or where they fit into the atom, or how their electrical characteristics affect the overal charge of the atom.
The only thing that can be said regarding these particles, is that they are various sized pieces of atomic matter broken off of am atom, as a result of smashing atomic matter together. Would you call a complete handel of a cup a new particle, if it were the result of smashing hundreds of cups together?.
For over a year now, I have been trying to get two hypotheses I have compiled, looked at by the accademic community. One is a radical logical alternative to quantum mechanics, and the other is a logical alternative to the big bang. I have contacted over 100 professors, with no reply.
I would be happy to make available, a copy of my latest drafts, in an email, if you were interested. Kind regards,
Tony Marsh. UK.
I couldn't agree with you more. The entire field of subatomic particle collisions (and the standard model) is as absurd as smashing two cars together and studying the debris to learn what cars are made of. No wonder we keep getting new particles and fields and theories everytime particle physicists run one of their fancy collider experiments and if something doesn't add up, just shrug it off as supersymmetry and ask for more funds to research the anti-particle. It's a grift.
"All the problems in physics and cosmology are an artifact of our one dimensional model of time."
- Gavin Wince
Bingo.
Wince is an obvious crackpot.
Time has no dimensions. That's one of the problems with theoretical physics
What do we know about time. Nothing.
Do we actually know why progress in some areas of physics has slowed? Or are there just many different possible explanations?
The wave of advancements in science and tech starts at the breakthroughs in physics.
At one point tech development will stop and so the most of science's, if nothing more happens in physics.
Yeah. I agree. Tech has still a long path to improve with our current models of the universe. So the tech will begin to stagnate at some point then science will kick off again.
Interesting talk. Thank you.
I am not a physicist but I sometimes take an interest. I thought that we had had no major physics events for nearly a century! We have all seen those photographs of almost every famous physicist you can think of all at the same meetings but all that was at the start of the last century. Oh to have been a fly on the wall.
I am stuck on "God does not play dice." I think so, too! All this quantum stuff has the ring of "Emperor's New Clothes" to me. It's as if they want to make it confusing so that only the initiated will understand and then, when they have learnt the words, it does not help them make any progress. Over simplification, I know. Occam's Razor needs a good stropping if you ask me.
I've noticed the same thing particularly with quantum superposition. Schrodinger's cat being both dead and alive until observed is an explanation that only works in semantics. Schrodinger himself created that example to illustrate the absurdity of quantum blurriness (God playing dice) but particle physicists intentionally misinterpret and obfuscate his intended meaning to the point where the entire theory no longer makes any sense even to insiders but they'll be damned to admit they don't understand what the hell they're saying. Quantum physics has turned into a frat with a bunch of smug gatekeepers.
Well, there has been much of progress in physics since 1973, no doubt. In high temperature superconductivity, for example, but in in quantum information issues too. As to S. Wolfram's computational theory, this might eventually be pretty efficient in case that there maybe is no analytic formula of everything (as along our hypothetical line of reasoning, nature described by Julia sets and their connectedness loci, Hausdorff dim of fractal outlines being constituent of a kind of deeper "2nd thermodynamics" in a low-D complex dynamics /iterative scenario). Arguing that a theory unable to yield the Standard Model in IR is BS gets its sums wrong, if there is a viable path to tackle the residual 95% of universe's energy budget still unexplained...
That's not the same type of theoretical work.
How could we know for sure why physics progress has slowed and would a tested explanation lead to more progress?
These are great questions, thanks Jeremy.
To take your second question first: wouldn't that be a wonderful thing, to _try_ different approaches to physics and _test_ which produces the most progress?
Unfortunately, that's _not_ what's happening. The strictures of academia have served to stifle different ways of doing things, rather than encourage them to see which ones work.
Peer review, in particular, has served to ossify science. Take a look at my video _Peer review is suffocating science_ th-cam.com/video/oF-2QJHy53M/w-d-xo.html for more on this.
And your first question: it's really not possible to _measure_ progress in physics, so the idea that it has slowed is just a hunch.
Moreover, physics has always progressed in sudden leaps forward, with periods of consolidation in between. So maybe we're just in one of those times of slow progress?
But I think it's a good hunch. I don't think there's any excuse for lack of theoretical progress. After all, the number of _people_ in physics has exploded, the amount of _data_ they have to work with has exploded (e.g. in the era of space telescopes), the _tools_ they have to work with have exploded (e.g. in the era of powerful computers).
Technology has leapt forward in the last 50 years, so why not physics?
@@lasttheory thanks for your reply.
There is an additional factor that compounds the problem you discuss: centralized funding of science. Without diversity in funding sources it is difficult to have diversity in the sorts of research projects that get funded.
Yes, I completely agree. The whole enterprise has become a bit of a monolith.
No serious scientist would call his favourite theory the last one. This might be the most fundamental scientific breakthrough of our time... or it might not. Yeah, probably not. Wolfram's theory cannot reproduce the standard model yet which means it falls short of string theory, even if you consider the latter's progress in geometrizing other QFTs to be irrelevant. If the point of this video is to encourage more millionaires to do physics in their spare time then that's fine. But the dearth of progress is explained by experiments hitting a technology ceiling. This is what explained the gap between Newton and Maxwell as well.
Yes, technology ceilings are real, I agree. The explosion of computing power in the last few decades, though, looks very much like our breaking through a technology ceiling, and I'm optimistic it'll give us a revolution in science.
_The Last Theory,_ by the way, is an aspirational title. I don't think Wolfram Physics is the _last_ theory; indeed, I don't think it's a theory at all, it's a framework for formulating theories. I do think it's an extremely promising approach to finding the last theory, though.
Thanks for the thoughtful comment!
Yeah, probably not.
Crystals and the Future of Physics by Philippe Le Corbeiller
Scientific American
Vol. 188, No. 1 (January 1953), pp. 50-57 (8 pages)
“The Final Theory: Rethinking Our Scientific Legacy “, Mark McCutcheon for proper physics.
In 1971, when the Gold Standard was abandoned, the private sector took control of the public economy. A few years later, it is possible that the private sector also took control of public research. So we can imagine that physics continued to make progress, but all under patents and non disclosure agreements.
You can add Special Access Programs to that.
I think this is a very valid argument. I can perfectly well understand how the institutionalisation of physics has caused the whole thing to stall. Very well set out, and evidentially corroborated.
Thanks, Derek, I appreciate it!
what was the last progresss made in 1973 ?
Good question! The Standard Model of elementary particles was worked out between 1970-73. That, for sure, was major progress. Thanks for the question, Rupert!
The physicists at universities aren't being paid to just do original research- they're being paid to teach physics. Some will do original research and that's fine- but I should think their main function is to teach the subject, no?
Different universities handle this balance in different ways. It's an odd combination of skills: we expect our researchers to be good teachers, and vice versa, which isn't always the case! I wonder if we'd do better to separate the two roles?
Edwin Jaynes commented on this matter in his retirement speech many years ago (bayes.wustl.edu/etj/articles/backward.look.pdf). The dispute at U.S. Universities between researchers funded by the military-industrial establishment and professors was quite hot in the 1960's and the 1970's.
"In my opinion, the University science teaching profession is an
honorable and socially necessary one; and no good teacher needs to apologize if he does not also turn out volumes of research. Indeed, the quality of our education today determines
the quality of our research tomorrow." - Edwin T. Jaynes, A Backward Look to the Future
"As a professor of 35 years, I always knew that I didn't care much about undergraduates. I hoped maybe someone else did. The reason I didn't care about them is pretty much the same reason that most professors at research universities don't care about them. It's not our/their job. No, really. It isn't." - Dr. Roger Schank, PhD.
www.rogerschank.com/from-professor-to-business-owner-why
"Outsiders to academics think that faculty at elite research institutions are teachers. If I say I am a professor to someone, they usually ask what do you teach?"
"But that is a silly question. Professors at elite universities spend a very small part of their lives teaching. (It was three hours a week every other semester for me.)" - Dr. Roger Schank
www.rogerschank.com/online-college-good-idea-is-it-the-beginning-of-the-end
Thanks for the episode! Oxford does look like a dull place, with midges )) Do you share my view that Eastern philosophy (Zen) has been pointing to this nature of reality all along?
I'm not sure... how do you think Eastern philosophy relates to this model of physics?
@@lasttheory Zen Buddhism teachings claim that the world arose from nothing, is an illusion and exists only here and now. Kind of like a hypergraph.
@@lasttheory Philosophy without science is poetry, science without philosophy is just technology.
I concur. Also, I think that computation is a part of mathematics, well ... maybe it relates to mathematics like engineering relates to physics.
Yes ,sir you are damn right in today physics is dead
Means i hate this conventional way of things
Want to grow new seeds
Want to Create new dimension of thinking, questioning question
To unveil the real bueaty of physics
Which now a days locked only in classroom, lectures and universities
This all things kind of stuck
I think the Higgs Boson was demonstrated just a tiny bit after 1973
Respectfully, that didn't really change physics at all. The Higgs was already in the Standard Model 50+ years before it's detection.
The Higgs Boson is bad science fiction so it doesn't count.
Video games came out.
That's funny! Actually, it might not be so far from the truth... maybe people like me who _could_ have gone into physics went into hardware and software instead?
Hey! Dr Mossmann in Half-Life 2 was doing some real research into dark energy and entanglement. Too bad GabeN decided not to pursue what she was on about with that mysterious ship stuck in the ice...Aperture science and all that...sigh :)
2:07 I heard it too!
. and modern physists have the aid of supercomputers, which makes it more remarkable there hasn't been new major advances in theory.