Lost in math by sabine hossenfelder6/11/2023 ![]() ![]() Theories today are generating hypotheses which may never be experimentally accessible, on current technology they require accelerators the size of galaxies and and Jupiter sized detectors. Gravitational waves, first observed in 2016, were predicted by Einstein 100 years previously. The Higgs boson found at CERN in 2012 was predicted in the early sixties, some 50 years previously. The problem in fundamental physics is that theory is running well ahead of what can be experimentally confirmed. ![]() This background does mean that I’ve talked to actually string theorists about string theory, and been intrigued that when you asked them where the extra (20 or so) dimensions the theory requires were the fall back answer was always “curled up very small” – they were unable to express it differently. Experimental soft matter physicists, like myself, were at the bottom of the pile. I stopped being an academic physicist nearly twenty years ago but even at that time there was a definite feeling that some area of physics felt themselves superior to others. My background is actually in a different part of physics, the physics of squishy things like plastics, proteins and plants. Lost in Math by Sabine Hossenfelder is a journey through modern fundamental physics and how it has lost its way over the last few years in a quest for beauty rather than relevance. It is physics for my next read, although my background is in physics and chemistry I don’t read much physics. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |