Physics, particularly theoretical particle physics, is entering a new era characterized by the decline of speculative theories and a renewed emphasis on experimental validation, driven by public disillusionment and the lack of groundbreaking discoveries from high-energy colliders.
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Physics has reached the end of an era. This, somewhat annoyingly,
wasn’t my observation, it’s the title of a paper which recently appeared. But
every end is also a beginning. And so, it seems like a good topic for the first
video of the year. How has physics changed, and what might happen next?
The foundations of physics have been going through a big shift for a couple of years now,
but last year it’s become particularly obvious. All the big ideas for new physics that have
dominated in the past decades are dead. Supersymmetry, string theory, multiverses,
all the new particles and forces which they invented. It’s not like physicists have stopped
working on those entirely, but I think most of them now realize that this isn’t going anywhere.
The big driver behind this is, I think, you. You can see it on this channel,
you can see it on YouTube at large, you can see it in the popular science media:
People just aren’t having it anymore. I think that readers and watchers who are interested in science
have simply become tired because it’s always the same stupid story: Physicists say this or that is
evidence for a new something, and then you never hear anything about it again. This has happened
so often that these stories now just fall flat. And with that. They’re beginning to disappear.
This wild era of speculative nonsense has hugely damaged the reputation of
the entire field. It's basically why I’m here on YouTube, rather than in an office.
I’m too old-fashioned. I think that physics research should actually be good for something.
The era of wild speculation ultimately ended because the Large Hadron Collider
didn’t find anything new that doesn’t fit into the standard model of particle physics.
Physicists now no longer have an excuse to claim that there is anything new to
be discovered at higher energies, not until 12 more orders of magnitude in energy, at least.
The Chinese by the way have decided they won’t build a bigger particle collider. It’s a smart
move because the next bigger particle collider is likely to be the first to not discover anything
new. And that probably isn’t an achievement the Chinese are keen on. Remains to be seen whether
the Europeans are dumb enough to pour money into this. A few billionaires evidently are.
The authors of the new paper, a group of three philosophers,
put it this way “while the field of particle physics once thrived under the guidance of theory,
our analysis suggests that this era has given way to one where pioneering experimental research has
become more crucial.” Philosopher-speak for “maybe try measuring something”.
It’s rather ironic that on the one hand, this shift away from inventing theories
that never pan out is exactly what I’ve been hoping for. On the other hand, it’s causing
me a problem because it’s the topics that people usually most want me to talk about. This is why,
as you’ve probably noticed, I am talking more about experimental than theoretical physics,
tech developments, or related areas, where we actually see progress. However,
I also try to keep an eye on what goes on in the foundations because
it’s not as easy as saying everything is nonsense. Some people do really good work.
So the good news is that the craziest and speculative theories in the foundation
of physics are pretty much dead. The bad news is: I don’t think physicists learned
the lesson. I’m afraid just shifting their pseudoscientific theory production elsewhere,
away from high energy particle physics and towards astrophysics and cosmology,
where they now invent entire “dark sectors” to explain nothing in particular,
and the gr-qc arxiv has become a hellhole of modified gravities.
The other problem is that saying we need experimental guidance is not a
good strategy because we still need to decide which experiments to finance somehow. I think
that the entire reason we have this stagnation in the foundations of physics is that we’ve made
bad decisions about which experiments to do, focusing too much on going to higher energies.
I’ve been preaching for more than a decade now that physicists in the foundations should
currently focus on testing quantum gravity and the measurement problem in quantum mechanics at
low energies. And there are a few experiments on this now. But they are still few. There are
some experiments to test quantum gravity with massive objects in quantum superpositions. Or
to test whether Penrose’s gravitationally induced collapse is real. But all in all,
it's very little effort that goes into this.
If we took those 40 billion for the bigger collider and invested it in
experiments designed to solve these two problems,
I am sure we would see tangible progress with relevance for technological applications within
20 years. So if you have a few billion lying around, you know, give me a call.
Hello?
Hi Elon,
X-theory? Ok. Tell me more!
Uh huh...
No, that part is fine. It’s the marching band with the flamethrowers that concerns me.
No, I don’t want to upgrade my X-subscription.
Love you too, bye.
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the annual premium subscription with unlimited access. Thanks for watching. See you tomorrow.
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