Yes, there's definitely some interesting fields that are making progress that are still in the purview of "physics". Materials science, or condensed matter physics, is doing a lot of fascinating work with quasiparticles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quasiparticle There's a number of fields you could call "quantum engineering" where physics and engineering work together on the cutting edge. Some of the output of that is why our TVs are so good.
There's a lot of work to be done on how big systems, where "big systems" can be as small as hundreds or even dozens of atoms, behave, where you can't "just" throw the whole wavefunction into a computer and crunch away on it.
It's particle physics that seems to be stuck in a rut. Fundamentally, they're starved for useful data. Until that is resolved, the science really isn't going anywhere. Since people on the internet frequently seem to operate on the silly theory that someone pointing out a problem has some sort of obligation to propose a solution, let me say outright I have no more clue how to resolve this than anyone else does, except to hope that some sort of other progress in other fields creates new opportunities for new experiments.
> It's particle physics that seems to be stuck in a rut.
You could look at the discovery of tetraquarks and pentaquarks, and high precision tests of the standard model though as a lot of progress.
What it hasn't done though is create some sexy upending of our current models of physics, we keep asking questions and mostly the responses coming back are in line with theories that we knew 40 years ago. But that's still a lot of experimental progress. There just isn't any useful theoretical physics progress. All the beyond-standard-model theories that might have been useful have been falsified, and the ones that remain can be made to predict anything and aren't useful. But we wouldn't know that if there hadn't been a lot of experimental progress. The LHC was an exceptionally useful experiment. It destroyed more dreams of physics theories than any single experiment ever before. Someone should go back and mark up all the published articles and preprints that were falsified by the LHC.
There hasn't been a total lack of progress by any means.
Unfortunately, "confirming the standard model again in some new way", while good science, also does nothing to get particle physics out of its rut.
I originally wrote "useful" science when I first wrote that sentence, but... it's debatable how useful it is, actually. People have been taught that measuring the utility of science is heresy, but I find that insane. It is completely possible to have science that isn't that useful, even to other science, let alone to any other purpose. Confirming the standard model yet harder isn't really useful. Of course, you have to run the experiments to confirm the standard model, in the hopes that maybe it won't, I'm saying the result of confirming the standard model is of debatable utility.
Everything in the universe on that site is eloquently and simply explained, including gravity as a shading effect (think an eclipse/water waves acting on an obstacle: https://www.thestudentroom.co.uk/attachment.php?attachmentid...) ie. When a large mass causing the shading effect (eg earth) absorbs energy waves acting on us it causing less energy to reach you from the earth's direction and that means energy from above us pushes us down to Earth. All the math checks out too.
Yes, the entire theory is based on the fact that aether exists, which has supposedly
been disproved, but what if that's incorrect and launched an entire wild goose chase of alternative physics (string theory, standard model) all based on a flawed assumption.
I think this reddit comment describes the situation beautifully:
Sometimes I am wondering what if there is theory which have been on right track but it's (false?) falsified and already forgotten. Sure theory could be incomplete or incorrect on some ways but would that right part be noticed? For example I think it's too easy to imagine world where relativity or quantum theory would be socially falsified and/or left without any attention.
Simple example experience I had when I was beginning of my physic studies (which I never finished) was when discussed with elder/smarter student about wheel friction. I was explaining that I had figured out that wheel spin actually matters when there is also side slip. [Total slip direction is dependent from spin speed.] But because he -knew- that wheel spin does not matter and he -knew- that he was better/smarter/etc. he was so focused to correct my mistake I was unable to convince him. How much this happens on higher stakes?
So if situation is that there has not been much progress for a long time I think it could be valuable also understand these failed theories and of course very importantly why they are falsified.
When I am working with hard problem I usually go this order:
1. Describe the problem.
2. Describe bunch of naive solutions.
3. Describe problems in those naive solutions.
4. "Describe problems in those problems": Why some of those problems do not hold water. Those can be workarounded, fixed or they actually are not really problem in this case or maybe some combination of naive solution properties gives working solution.
For some reason I cannot reply to your comment wizzwizz4.
We are talking about dynamic friction in it's simplest form. You can treat it as simple math problem too. Let's consider two extreme cases:
A: Side slip is 1m/s and wheel spin zero or very small.
B: Side slip is 1m/s and wheel spin extremely big, let's say 1000m/s.
I think we can agree that friction is always opposite to surface speed. If wheel spin is on x axis and side slip on y:
On A case friction is (0, 1).normalized() * friction-coefficiency => (0, friction-coefficiency)
On B case friction is (1000, 1).normalized() * friction-coefficiency => [approximately] (friction-coefficiency, 0)
On classroom teacher says that slip does not matter. What teacher actually means that slip does not effect into -magnitude- of friction but this is left behind because problem is presented in context of 1D. Tho in 1D slip still matters little bit because there is difference is slip 1m/s or -1m/s.
> I think we can agree that friction is always opposite to surface speed.
This isn't intuitively obvious to me. One explanation says "must be true", another explanation says "might be false". I'd want to run an experiment with a toy car on a polished surface. Unfortunately, I'm quite a way from the nearest place I could set up such an experiment.
In another words friction slows movement down and does not treat some direction on surface more preferable than others. Assuming regular surface this is pretty much definition of friction.
I am not sure how well I have explained stuff but if you are able to experimentally disprove this it's worth of paper.
My theory is that physics went down a parallel path that leads to a dead end. The fork was too far back and nobody is willing to backtrack enough. A part of this is that almost all of modern physics takes mathematical shortcuts of dubious validity because “modern” physics was developed in the era of pencil and paper.
With computer algebra systems and numerical methods new have available to us now a lot of old assumptions ought to be revisited.
Also some theories were ignored for political or even religious reasons. Or as you said, they couldn’t fix some basic issue at the time and just shelved the theory.
Some random examples:
The Many Worlds Interpretation is one of the least “popular” but the only sane and consistent theory of Quantum Mechanics.
One of Einstein’s last collaborations was Kaluza Klein theory which has many excellent features such as smoothly integrating EM and gravitational effects. The maths was too hard at the time so it languished.
Multiple time dimensions (a variant of MWI above) were all completely ignored because one paper “disproved” their feasibility. I read that paper and it only disproved a specific subset of theory space.
Did you run the experiment? I don't think wheel spin does matter when there's side slip. It matters when there would otherwise be static friction (e.g. if you're in a car with an ABS system), but I don't think it matters when it's just kinetic friction. (Of course, there are other kinds of friction, which might behave differently. I'm no friction expert. I imagine things get weird when water's involved, though.)
Honestly, I don't really care if they are cranks. The theory makes for a fun read, and they have a lot of interesting ideas.
Trying to identify where their theory is wrong is a fun exercise, at least for me. It also helps reinforce my existing physics knowledge when I see multiple perspectives, or alternative models of measurable phenomena.
The cool part about this theory is they have some pretty specific predictions, like the resting mass of the Neutrino (~2.2eV).
They also hypothesize that the Electron is made up of 10 Neutrinos arranged in a Tetrahedral pattern, and also hypothesize that the weak force can be explained via solar Neutrino bombardment. Which would theoretically be pretty easy to test, just test the radioactive decay of different materials in different Neutrino densities.
> Since people on the internet frequently seem to operate on the silly theory that someone pointing out a problem has some sort of obligation to propose a solution
The issue with Sabine is she tends to yell about anyone proposing any solution. CERN would like to build a bigger particle accelerator, but since it's not her favored variant of accelerator they are obviously lying to the public and wasting your tax payer dollars which could be spent instead on the (implied) guaranteed discoveries if people would just listen to her.
(note also that this is a false dichotomy: any realistic analysis any set of potentially competing projects would generally conclude they're unlikely to be in competition if they are in fact viable - we usually have plenty of money to do both things provided they're likely to pay off. But the under-developed, under-timelined thing is a lot easier to promise the world with, yet far more likely to wind up just as "clearly blown out it's budget!" as the project being built).
> CERN would like to build a bigger particle accelerator
Sabine has a point though. There isn't any specific thing thing that a larger accelerator is likely to yield a positive answer on. Unlike the current biggest, which was at least explicitly constructed to find the higgs.
And before you say dark matter, there's zero evidence that dark matter particles will be in any given mass range nor is there a solud model that predicts an interaction that will generate such a particle.
The topic of this video is that people are struggling to find new paths forward due to a lack of experimental data and a lack of results from theoretical approaches - which ultimately is contingent on finding some new experimental data they can predict.
So one way or another, it's quite likely you will need a larger accelerator. Moreover, logistically, not building that accelerator means you quite likely never have it - CERN's timelines go beyond 2050. The people who would be operating the next generation of accelerators haven't been born yet. If nobody is building anything, the knowledge and know how to do it is likely to be lost.
Like I said: it's a false dichotomy. It's one thing to frame the problem as "we should spend some money on these approaches which look promising". It's quite another to frame it as "those people are stealing all the money which should be spent on obviously correct alternative".
There is more then enough money to build everything, provided a solid case can be made for it - and not "we should do this" but "how we will do this". CERN tends to win bids because they're not delivering a concept, they're delivering a timeline and plan of exactly how they will get there.
> Moreover, logistically, not building that accelerator means you quite likely never have it
That's exactly wrong. Who knows if you wait a bit the underlying technologies might cause a step change in price to build and make it so the project actually might get completed. For example waxahatchie vs cern
There's a lot of work to be done on how big systems, where "big systems" can be as small as hundreds or even dozens of atoms, behave, where you can't "just" throw the whole wavefunction into a computer and crunch away on it.
It's particle physics that seems to be stuck in a rut. Fundamentally, they're starved for useful data. Until that is resolved, the science really isn't going anywhere. Since people on the internet frequently seem to operate on the silly theory that someone pointing out a problem has some sort of obligation to propose a solution, let me say outright I have no more clue how to resolve this than anyone else does, except to hope that some sort of other progress in other fields creates new opportunities for new experiments.