You don't need to reply to this following rant!! I think the problem in our physics is that we're addicted to elegance and simplicity in our theories, we expect and look for symmetries and invariances, we expect the universe to be everywhere isotropic in its governing laws and the laws themselves not change over time. Too much beauty, too much finely crafted causal mechanism. What if causality itself breaks down in localities at the macro scale? What if time is not uniform in non-relativistic contexts? I think we should introduce a more flexible, elastic, pragmatic "what works" physics, with less predictive powers. But that's not going to be an easy sell within the profession! It will be interesting to turn sixth generation specialist AIs on cosmology and see what kind of physics they come up with! Will it be extreme simplicity? I wouldn't bet on it!
Physicists like elegance and simplicity ! But it can easily lead us astray. We think the Ancient Greeks were rather silly for believing perfect shapes lay behind reality, but think its fine when modern physicists use the same kind of elegance of come up with things like string theory and supersymmetry... The cosmos is certainly messier than we think, and we are certainly missing much of it, and it is rather arrogant to think we have already uncovered most of its secrets. AI will be interesting. We have a lot of data from particle accelerators and telescopes, of which we've really only studied a fraction. AI could soon reveal a whole load of unexpected things we can't easily explain.
Yes, that's something physicists have definitely considered! The main issues seems to be that neutrinos travel fast, close to the speed of light, and so they don't form the kind of dark matter structures we think exist. There is a so far hypothetical type of neutrino called the sterile neutrino, however, which would not interact with matter at all apart from through gravity. Theory says this particle would act a lot like dark matter does - but so far we haven't found any solid evidence the sterile neutrino actually exists. Still, I'd bet when we do find new physics, neutrinos will have something to do with it.
Great issue 👍👍👍. Unfortunate that ESA, NASA, and just about everyone else except JAXA are having equipment problems. I hope I'm still alive when they figure out a cost-effective way to deal with Jupiterian radiation levels.
You don't need to reply to this following rant!! I think the problem in our physics is that we're addicted to elegance and simplicity in our theories, we expect and look for symmetries and invariances, we expect the universe to be everywhere isotropic in its governing laws and the laws themselves not change over time. Too much beauty, too much finely crafted causal mechanism. What if causality itself breaks down in localities at the macro scale? What if time is not uniform in non-relativistic contexts? I think we should introduce a more flexible, elastic, pragmatic "what works" physics, with less predictive powers. But that's not going to be an easy sell within the profession! It will be interesting to turn sixth generation specialist AIs on cosmology and see what kind of physics they come up with! Will it be extreme simplicity? I wouldn't bet on it!
Physicists like elegance and simplicity ! But it can easily lead us astray. We think the Ancient Greeks were rather silly for believing perfect shapes lay behind reality, but think its fine when modern physicists use the same kind of elegance of come up with things like string theory and supersymmetry... The cosmos is certainly messier than we think, and we are certainly missing much of it, and it is rather arrogant to think we have already uncovered most of its secrets. AI will be interesting. We have a lot of data from particle accelerators and telescopes, of which we've really only studied a fraction. AI could soon reveal a whole load of unexpected things we can't easily explain.
Neutrinos..I understand they are not non-zero mass. If so, given the inconceivable number of them, might they account for the so-called "dark matter"
Yes, that's something physicists have definitely considered! The main issues seems to be that neutrinos travel fast, close to the speed of light, and so they don't form the kind of dark matter structures we think exist. There is a so far hypothetical type of neutrino called the sterile neutrino, however, which would not interact with matter at all apart from through gravity. Theory says this particle would act a lot like dark matter does - but so far we haven't found any solid evidence the sterile neutrino actually exists. Still, I'd bet when we do find new physics, neutrinos will have something to do with it.
Great issue 👍👍👍. Unfortunate that ESA, NASA, and just about everyone else except JAXA are having equipment problems. I hope I'm still alive when they figure out a cost-effective way to deal with Jupiterian radiation levels.