Re: Physics wrong turns - nearly everything learned over the past 100 years is wrong
- From: "PD" <TheDraperFamily@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 7 Jul 2006 12:31:58 -0700
franklinhu@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
Where physics took a wrong turn
What is with the Alice in Wonderland state of physics? It may explain
the results of some experiments, but none of it makes any intuitive
sense. Furthermore, it seems that in the last 100 years, we have not
made any substantial progress. We are nowhere close to being able to
figure out some fundamental problems like what gravity is. Pretty much,
the same theories that were worked out 100 years ago are the still the
same ones being used today.
Now it could be that the apparent lack of progress is because we have
totally figured everything out and there is nothing more significant to
be learned. Or, physics has ground to a halt because it has taken some
really bad turns and we are at a dead end.
From what I have researched, I am finding that physics has indeed takensome really bad turns which have completely hindered any further
significant progress in the field. I'm not talking about some minor
error that requires a slight adjustment, I'm talking about 'Earth is
the center of the universe' type of wrong. In fact, I'd say that almost
everything that serious physists take as dogma over the past 100 years
is wrong. The only reason why it
succeeds as much as is does is because it is almost completely
backwards.
A few comments:
The forefront of physics has *always* been nonintuitive.
Nonintuitiveness is NOT a good measurement of failure in physics. A few
examples:
* Galilean and Newtonian dynamics was completely nonintuitive for a
hundred years or more following their development. The notion of
something continuing to move forever without a motivating force was
completely unintuitive.
* Joule's idea that heat is a form of *energy* and not a separate fluid
was completely nonintuitive for a hundred years or more.
* Faraday fields were a completely nonintuitive notion for a hundred
years or more following his development of the idea. How could empty
space contain a field with physical effects if it were not a real,
tangible fluid or material flux?
We accept these crazy ideas now, but only because we are accustomed to
it, and we've come to accept them because they work so well. Physicists
grow accustomed more quickly, but eventually even schoolchildren come
to take these crazy ideas as second nature and - gasp - suddenly
intuitive when they were not before. But the notions developed in the
last hundred years are still new to schoolchildren (though not to
physicists) and so they have not had the chance to become intuitive.
Part of the reason why the microscopic or the fast seems non-intuitive
is that it is indeed very different from the small chunk of the
universe that we can observe with our naked eye. However, that small
chunk is not at all representative of what nature does on the whole,
and we have no business insisting that it should. It's only been in the
last hundred years that our horizons have been broadened enough to see
how different the universe is from our little corner of it.
You are completely mistaken that the same ideas that were being worked
on 100 years ago are still the ones being worked on today, and that's
simply because you are not as well versed on what's being worked on
today as you could be. Quantum mechanics did not exist 100 years ago,
and yet it is responsible for the majority of our technology base
today. Quantum field theory (including QED, QCD, supersymmetry, string
theory) have all been developed in the last 60 years. We had no idea
there were more particles than protons and electrons a hundred years
ago, let alone what those were made of. Virtually nothing that you are
familiar with, including computers, televisions, MRI scanners, CD
players, grocery store bar codes, neutron therapy centers, pacemakers,
would have ever been developed using the science of 100 years ago. As
for stuff that has happened just in the last 40 years, consider W & Z
particles, the unification of electromagnetism with the weak
interaction, cosmological inflation, a solid theory of
superconductivity and practical superconductors, supersymmetry, string
theory, galactic black holes, quasars, pulsars, lasers, just to name a
few.
I don't why you think progress has stagnated recently. The progress in
physics in the last century completely dwarfs the progress made in
every preceding century combined, both in terms of the scope of our
understanding and the implementation of those advances in practical
devices.
If you're unhappy about the state of physics, it's because you know
pitifully little about it.
PD
.
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