Which of the Basic Assumptions of Modern Physics are Wrong? | Hacker News Reader

Which of the Basic Assumptions of Modern Physics are Wrong?

blogs.scientificamerican.com

28 pointscpeterso48 comments

I'm convinced that even if someone did prove that a basic assumption of modern physics is wrong, it would automatically be assumed in turn that the author is a crackpot, hence the work can be ignored. I'm convinced that the physics community isn't interested in the slightest in new ideas. Of course I'm automatically a crackpot (even beyond a conspiracy theorist) for even suggesting that.

As an example to how bad things have become in the realm of physics, it's safe to say that the vast majority of thinking adults believe that black holes exist, because so much major media has told them so. But when you look deeper you find that there's no definitive evidence. Sites like the Chandra X-Ray Observatory admit that, deep in their FAQ, but in words that many people can misconstrue as a technicality. When I point out in physics discussions that that there's no definitive evidence of black holes, I'm automatically labeled a crackpot, especially by the working physicists. One of my books suggests that this is a grant problem, as in black holes bring in a lot of grant money, so physicists must be careful to pretend that black holes are a definite reality in nature.

"By detecting very little energy from these black hole candidates, we have new proof that event horizons exist," said Michael Garcia of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, MA. "It's a bit odd to say we've discovered something by seeing almost nothing, but, in essence, this is what we have done."

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2001/as...

That makes the point you're replying to. "The most straightforward explanation for our observations is that these objects have event horizons and, therefore, are black holes." No, another even more straightforward explanation is that it's just an extremely dense object that's not a black hole. Even in Einstein's theory, an "almost black hole" suffices. Nothing mentioned in the article favors the former over the latter.

Without event horizon all the matter that spirals into it would emit a lot of EM radiation as it collides with the matter already there, converting kinetic energy into radiation. In this case they see matter spiraling in, but they don't see results of collision. So they conclude that no photons escape, and that's pretty much definition of event horizon.

No, if it was an "almost black hole" as predicted by general relativity, they wouldn't see EM radiation, due to gravitational time dilation. The "almost black hole" might emit a single photon only once every 100 years in our time.

I think the problem here is that you're conflating the absence of evidence with the evidence of absence. There's definitely no definitive evidence for the existence of black holes, but (as far as I know) we have no evidence that contradicts current models.

Science works by coming up with a nullifiable hypothesis, then seeing how it holds up as evidence is gathered. When you see contradictions, you adapt your model. I think you're missing the middle step, where you see contradictions.

Not to mention that "black hole" and "dark matter" are sort of place holder names that end up sticking.

These phenomena are also attempts to fix the old model because they didn't produce the correct predictions. Physicists are doing exactly what the OP would like them to do.

Paradigm shifts are also very hard. Your current models predict a lot of things very very accurately. Just look at all the stuff we've built. A new model has a lot to live up to if we want to use it.

We have logical evidence that contradicts current models, namely the black hole information loss paradox, a real paradox.

i thought that was resolved - there isn't any information loss. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole_information_paradox

There's no resolution in that link. It's still an open issue. All the proposed solutions raise other serious problems, as the link info notes.

I don't see that to be the case. Physicists have been giving their utmost to try to crack open the standard model and prove it wrong for decades. And the same is true elsewhere as well. We thought we had a pretty good grasp on the nature of the expansion of the Universe, but it turned out that the expansion is accelerating. That was a huge reformulation of cosmology. We thought we knew about planetary formation, but once we started finding exoplanets we discovered many of our assumptions were wrong.

As far as black holes, we have not 100% direct evidence of them, but we do have many independent and very strong lines of indirect evidence. For example, we can see stars in orbit around an incredibly massive object at the center of our galaxy (Sgr A*) that is not luminous. There are no models that make sense for anything that could be so massive and so dark. Black holes are the only theory which fits all the evidence we have, that's how science works.

Well, that's how physics works. Physics is stupefyingly strict about its methods. Most sciences don't put quite as much value into models. The problem is that in a desire to strictly follow the method, physicists have become complacent with regards to extraordinary claims. Sure, the universe is full of dark matter, connected by tiny strings, in between folded up dimensions, but gravity is leaking away into parallel universes, since that's what the model predicts (rather than it just being a mathematical anomaly arising from botched assumptions). It's comparable to an economic model that describes inflation as the work of invisible leprechauns who increase prices during the night. Sure, it might make accurate predictions, hell, it might even be true, but you should not put any value into it unless there is evidence that the universe actually works in the extraordinary way the model claims it does.

Biology has followed a much better path over the past century, and biologists are rapidly building up an extremely thorough understanding of how biological systems work without relying heavily on algebraic models. Physics fails to provide explanations for even the most basic physical phenomena like motion. It's effectively just assumed to exist as a law because some authoritative physicist said so and all other models rely on it.

Most of the understanding of biological systems that you're touting ultimately punt their hard questions back to the physicists, so you're really not any better off.

To put it differently, biology can't answer why paraplegics can't walk without first answering how people walk. You can't explain walking if you can't explain motion. Unless the biologists have been holding out on us, they don't have an explanation for motion that would satisfy us any more deeply than you do. Thus, if physicists can't explain something as basic as motion, then biologists can't explain something as simple as why paraplegics can't walk.

Sorry, I don't mean to be insulting, but I find this to be quite laughable. Firstly, neither string theory or "gravity leakage" or more than 4 dimensions of space-time are even remotely accepted theories in physics or cosmology. The theory of dark matter is supported by many hugely disparate lines of evidence. It's the only theory that makes sense given all the evidence.

As for the supposed superiority of biology, I offer up this essay that has resonated with me (especially Fig. 3 at the end): http://protein.bio.msu.ru/biokhimiya/contents/v69/pdf/bcm_14...

Biologists might be making great strides, but they have quite a long way to go.

> Firstly, neither string theory or "gravity leakage" or more than 4 dimensions of space-time are even remotely accepted theories in physics or cosmology.

So tell me please: Why are people like Brian Greene able to obtain the funding to make TV series like http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/physics/fabric-of-cosmos.html and get public speaking engagements like https://secure2.convio.net/ata/site/Ecommerce/3120701?VIEW_P..., when they should be getting the popular attention of a Usenet crackpot?

Are you implying that TV funding is tantamount to scientific authority? Are we to believe dragons and white walkers are accepted scientific fact along with mitochondrial eve being a cylon hybrid?

Don't be ridiculous.

Nice straw man!

And how many dragons and white walkers and Cylons are featured by Nova specials, the Discovery Channel, and get pop-sci articles written up in Scientific American?

Black holes are not the only theory which fits the evidence we have. Simply add 2M to the first 2 r's in the Schwarzschild metric (the equation used to confirm black holes), and you get a metric that fits all the evidence but doesn't predict black holes, hence doesn't raise the black hole information loss paradox, and so isn't incompatible with quantum mechanics that way. That's well known in the cosmological community, but ignored.

We have evidence of luminous matter falling into a black hole and disappearing. What more do you want? What possible other non-black-hole theory fits that evidence?

An "almost black hole" also predicted by Einstein's theory predicts the same observation, as an effect of gravitational time dilation. The non-black-hole theory that fits the evidence is the tweak you replied to. As I said, it fits all the evidence.

A scientific theory is a low-resolution picture of the truth.

Did you miss the whole FTL neutrino thing that happened not very long ago? Physics seems to be pretty open to new ideas to me. Even though that was ultimately shown to be an error, no crackpottery was ever suggested.

In all other sciences, if you find a model that predicts something as self-contradictory as a black hole or dark matter, you shrug, figure your assumptions are wrong, and start over. In physics you announce the splendiferous wonders of the universe.

Don't forget dark energy, also (like dark matter) invented to fit the observations. How many hundreds of $millions of taxpayer money will be spent searching for it? These inventions are keeping many scientists employed, it seems. If they went back to correct the mistakes (like any good software developer) there might be a mass layoff.

Just imagine the fame a researcher or a team would get should they explain dark matter by updating current theories (in a way that fits _all_other_explained_ observations). I don't think if anybody had a good idea they would care about mass layoffs.

But the people who'd review the idea would care about that, so they might refuse to review it as "too nutty". Plate tectonics might have fit into that category, although of course it did reach general acceptance when the evidence became overwhelming.

reference?

I'm convinced that even if someone did prove that a basic assumption of modern physics is wrong, it would automatically be assumed in turn that the author is a crackpot

Well, since 100% of "proofs" that the basic assumptions of modern physics are wrong over the last century have, in fact, come from crackpots it's a pretty good working assumption.

I'm convinced that the physics community isn't interested in the slightest in new ideas.

Uhh, nope, the physics community is extremely interested in new ideas. We sit around generating 'em all the time. We're not especially interested in outsiders who come to us with claims that they've proved some fundamental physics result, though, for the same reason that we're not particularly interested in Nigerian princes who email us offering us millions of dollars in return for assistance in moving money out of the country: those things just tend to have a ridiculously high failure rate.

If I weren't interested in new ideas, why the fuck would I be a physicist? For the chicks?

If ever someone bearing all the hallmarks of a crackpot does come up with a fundamental new advance in physics, though, I'm convinced that this will eventually bubble to the surface. No such luck for the real Nigerian prince though.

Sure. That's also true if you replace "black holes" by "zebras". Do zebras exist? I've never seen one! I mean, I have, but it could easily have been a carefully dyed horse.

I think the level of evidence for black holes is not quite as strong as the evidence for zebras, but I think it's reasonably congruent with the level of confidence among physicists that they exist.

"Well, since 100% of "proofs" that the basic assumptions of modern physics are wrong over the last century have, in fact, come from crackpots it's a pretty good working assumption."

Oh, please, which ones?

Maybe the crackpots that challenged the notion that light is a wave and never behaves as a particle

Or maybe the idiot that thought that massive objects can bend light.

And yes, Albert Einstein was considered an idiot and a crackpot. After all, he was just a patent office clerk.

"Uhh, nope, the physics community is extremely interested in new ideas". BS. No, the majority is not interested in that. They're interested in grants and the status quo

They only 'accept' the new ideas when the evidence is overwhelmingly in the favor of the new idea and they'll look like idiots if they don't accept it.

You may call it skepticism, but I call it cowardice. And it's very easy to hide behind the skepticism veil, but guess what, it doesn't bring a Nobel home.

They only 'accept' the new ideas when the evidence is overwhelmingly in the favor of the new idea

You say that like it's a bad thing.

There is a difference between saying "We don't know" and "this is wrong"

Without preponderance of evidence, the former would be more correct, but the latter is more prevalent.

It's very easy to reject things that need more research. Then IF it's researched more thoroughly and inconsistent with the theory THEN rejection is in order.

But instead, several research lines are rejected because of politics, 'playing it safe', etc

The real problem is testing 'theories merging'

There are several areas where relativity and quantum mechanics merged, for example, in the discovery and theory of antimatter

But most of the experiments of relativity were on 'big things' like planets, and quantum mechanics on 'small things'

And between them, the real mystery: gravity. General relativity knows a lot about what gravity does but not so much about where it comes from

Edit: fixed GR for SR

Be careful not to conflate special (SR) and general relativity (GR). SR has nothing to say about gravity, and, as you point out, has already been successfully merged with Quantum mechanics to form relativistic quantum field theory (Dirac's early versions of which led to the proposal of antimatter). It is GR that describes "what gravity does", and which is difficult to enmesh with quantum mechanics.

s/Special relativity/General relativity

Special relativity ignores gravity altogether, whereas general relativity sneaks gravity into the relativistic framework by equating it with curvature.

Both theories are, to me, frustratingly intangible. Like you said, we don't really know where gravity comes from. Really, we don't even have any sort of good intuitions for how to describe what it is. Stuff resists being shoved around. Stuff also attracts other stuff to itself. Einstein tells us these are both symptoms of stuff being curvature. It's all a bit too abstract for my taste (that is, I hope a more tangible/intuitive model will eventually win out). Field equations are predictive but not really descriptive. Is there a mechanism in there somewhere?

The problem with tangible/intuitive models is that our sense of what is tangible/intuitive is based primarily on our millions of years living in the Newtonian realm of the universe.

> Both theories are, to me, frustratingly intangible

Yes, and it is frustrating. However, like you, a lot of laymen assumes that these theories can be explained in terms of analogies with "everyday life" things. I recently watched all of Richard Feynmen's lectures (the easiest to understand is "the character of physical law" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Character_of_Physical_Law),and in it, he explained, quite well, what it means to have a mathematical law. It goes on to some detail explanation of what quantum chromodynamics is, and how photons' behaviour cannot possibly be analogous to anything you can experience at the macro scale.

I understand your frustration (since i feel the exact same) - why is it that we have advanced so much, and yet still have no idea what inertia really is? Or mass for that matter. We know how to predict things from using various mathematical laws, but i think we are no closer to understanding "the truth", than 100 years ago. Perhaps it is impossible.

or perhaps, in the next century, or the next millenium, humans will look back, and see today's physics being just as primative as what we would see the cavemen's theories of the world is.

Oops, true! I mixed GR and SR

I think it's fairly simple in that the overwhelming majority of people (including most physicists) haven't got an intuitive grasp of exactly how relativity works. This possibly includes Einstein.

It wouldn't surprise me one bit to find out that the basic assumptions are not flawed at all, but that whole piles of stuff is being assumed in proofs regarding expected consequences of these things which prove to be complete nonsense.

The other aspect of it is mathematics itself, which is probably not up to the task.

Pardon the silly question, but what is the actual meaning of "right" and "wrong" in physics?

I would expect a model which works in all possible conditions to be right, but clasical physics breaks when you reach the speed of light or atom level scales.

Also, my intuition tells me that there can't be two completly different models that are describing the same thing and both of them are right, but we have e.g. definition of light as EMV and as a stream of particles.

So it's enough for physical model to work only in specified conditions to be considered right, but "Basic Assumptions of Modern Physics" must be ultimately right (must work in all possible conditions)?

Wave-particle duality is nonsensical. It certainly makes a lot less sense than "there is an as-yet unknown kind of medium that supports the propagation of waves".

Somehow, I suspect that we are missing a dimension or two altogether and that will 'fix' most of our shortcomings in understanding the Universe.

Isn't that the running joke with string theorists -- if stuff doesn't work out, add another dimension.

Which of the Basic Assumptions of Modern Physics are Wrong?

As a Sci-Fi fan, "Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light" would be a nice one to be wrong

For what it's worth, it's not "Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light" so much as "Moving faster than light is a concept which makes no sense physically."

I'm sure this theory will be proven to be not entirely correct someday. As a corollary, I expect that e=mc^2 will also be slightly modified.

I don't know from what background you're making that statement but in general it's good for people to know that E=mc^2 only when the object is at rest, otherwise you must account for momentum. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass%E2%80%93energy_equivalence...

Your comment looks kind of greyed out. I may have accidentally downvoted you while trying to click on your name. Sorry 'bout that.

Unfortunately the universe doesn't care about what you'd like.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com