Comment by mabbo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mabbo | Hacker News Reader

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Quantum Physics and General Relativity make different predictions in specific circumstances which are beyond our ability to test to figure out which one is wrong. They can't both be perfectly correct. But in every test we can make, both seem to model reality really well.

The best place to look for new data where we might find reality disagreeing with either model is in the extreme parts of the universe, like black holes. If there was even a hint in this photo that General Relativity wasn't perfectly accurate, we might be able to take the discrepancy and build a new model that solves the disagreement.

Whoever does that gets a Nobel Prize and has their name as immortalized as "Einstein".

Relatedly, before general relativity, people already knew something was wrong with Newton's theory of gravity from observing the orbit of Mercury, which didn't follow the theory accurately. At that time Mercury, being so close to the Sun, was an extreme condition that showed the flaws in the theory.

The fact that general relativity continues to hold up to every observation we can make is remarkable.

I'd be willing to bet that the discrepancy is something that we generally consider invariant but in reality should be a ratio between two things that are very large, but get bigger or smaller at _slightly_ different rates depending on the scale or distances you're working with.

Granted, I only ever got as far as E&M physics in college so I could be way off here but that scenario has turned up so many times in history.

Could it happen that the universe simply never provides us with the required evidence? Eg if there's an anomaly but only when something that never happens happens. Like a large enough mass/charge/etc or some flavor of unlikely coincidental occurrence, like an eclipse is a bit of a coincidence.

I've heard it said as "The universe is under no obligation to make sense to us". It's possible that the events where the two theories diverge will always be out of reach for us to observe.

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