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Comment by andrewl | Hacker News Reader

She says:

"And please spare me the complaints that I supposedly do not have anything better to suggest, because that is a false accusation. I have said many times that looking at the history of physics teaches us that resolving inconsistencies has been a reliable path to breakthroughs, so that’s what we should focus on. I may be on the wrong track with this, of course. But for all I can tell at this moment in history I am the only physicist who has at least come up with an idea for what to do."

I'm no physicist, so I can't have a (useful) opinion, but she does offer at least a broad suggestion of what to do.

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But isn't that exactly what was done, e.g. in supersymmetry? The Standard Model could not explain dark matter etc., so physicists tried to come up with a new theory potentially explaining it. Yes it's based on math, on beautiful math, but isn't it always the case in physics? How did Newton create his laws? By using math. How did Einstein create his theories? By using math. It's math, math, math. So create your math theories, explain nature and then use Occam's razor to find the simplest. Maybe I'm just getting this all wrong but I don't get her point.

Quantum mechanics is an example. We know how to use QM. It is an amazing theory. But physicists aren't probing QM anymore. Well most aren't. It does such a good job spitting out answers, we don't ask why. There is a lot to be explored there but academia tells people to avoid it. They say don't look at the man behind the curtain. QM is equations that gives good answers but we don't really know why.

Something Deeply Hidden is a good book on the subject(as a non physicist).

Of course I am just a layman who likes to read books about these subjects but I honestly don't know shit. Just what I read.

>> But physicists aren't probing QM anymore

Physicists are probing the heck out of every theory. However, QM has proven to be _extremely_ reliable, even some 'Gedankenexperimente' by Einstein trying to make it look wrong turned out to be true ('geisterhafte Spukwirkung').

>> There is a lot to be explored there but academia tells people to avoid it.

I don't think so. I mean just look at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) which probes fundamental forces which are... guess what... based on quantum field theory which itself is based on quantum mechanics.

By probing, I mean looking beyond predictions, the underlying nature of it. The equations of QM give us great results but it is very much an oracle type situation. We ask a question and we get a good answer. But why? Theoretical physicists are told not to look behind the equations and figure more out. Why is it this way?

Let me be frank I am getting way outside my true understanding and parotting what I have read. But if QM the way it is because it fits the many worlds theory? Are we missing another piece to explain it? If you take the simplest version of QM that can solve the problems, you are stuck with many worlds.

These are important areas that colliders aren't going to answer but physicists push new physicists to avoid.

There are other theories but require dressing up the base QM math to eliminate many worlds.

Very few are doing work in this area

I'm sure physicists already put a lot of effort in trying to derive Schrödinger's equation, the basis of QM, out of a simpler theory. It's not easy and would for sure deserve a nobel price. There is no consortium hindering anyone from persuing this.

I received hundred of downvotes just asking questions here (like "Why we have right hand rule for current? What must be changed in properties of Nature to make it left hand rule?"). It's sad that I need to use throwaway accounts to talk about physics.

Try not to be discouraged, it's okay to talk about physics. But try to use the right language for it - mathematics. In online forums, physical ideas or questions are often described in words, which is subject to so much imagination that it can be considered philosophy, but not physics. It's almost pointless to talk without mathematical support. Words are words and have no special meaning. In the example above: A better question would be: Why is classical electrodynamics described by Maxwell's equations? Is there a more fundamental theory behind it? Reason: The 'right-hand rule' is not a rule, not a theorem. It can be derived.

So what need to be changed in properties of Nature to switch EM with Right Hand Rule into EM with Left Hand Rule? Can you explain this using a formula?

Where we can expect to see EM with LHR? Can we see it in our Laniakea? Or at opposite side of Shapley Attractor - Dipole Repeller? Or at perpendicular one? Do we have void between RHR and LHR? Can we cross it?

What is nature of EM? Is it because of nonlinear trajectory of motion of our galaxy from Dipole Repeller to Shapley Attractor? Or it because of non-linear motion of our galaxy within Laniakea? Or something else?

I can't take you seriously anymore.

You are not alone - nobody can. I'm struggling to find just anybody to talk about these problems.

How photons are formed? IMHO, FTL speed is required to form a photon.

How photons are consumed? Can we make a macro model for this?

Can we cool/condensate/warm up vacuum? How this will affect speed of light?

What will see if we will zoom in to zoom level below Planck scale?

How long photon can travel? 100B years? 100T years? What will happen at EOL? Where lost energy is going?

Good video on this topic:

What does the future hold for particle physics?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Go2TaEUQpF

Not really. Supersymmetry doesn't provide a theoretical explanation for any physical observations we can't explain with current models. Instead, it arises from a desire to... "beautify" the math of the Standard Model. (My first instinct is to write "simplify", but I'm not sure it's an actual simplification.

One of the things that Sabine has pointed out with respect to supersymmetry is that, for the last two particle accelerators, physicists have been arguing that they'll be able to find the supersymmetric particles to expand the model. And when they've failed to find any evidence for such particles, they've twice said "okay, it's not fatal to our theory, but we'll find them in the next one for sure." Every potentially predictive phenomenon arising from supersymmetry has failed to be found, and the response has been to merely twist the knobs so that these phenomena will happen just out of reach of current technology.

The real risk here is that we are so wedded to particular ideas that we refuse to give up on them, even when they have given us absolutely nothing in terms of extra (validated) predictive value, no matter how much we try to squeeze it out of them.

>> Supersymmetry doesn't provide a theoretical explanation for any physical observations we can't explain with current models.

Yes it does. It has dark matter candidates. The Standard Model does not have any.

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