Interesting developments! I'd love to see new physics be uncovered. It seems there has been little evolution into real, new physical understandings in several decades. No massive developments really since the 40's and 50's. Or maybe I am just naively uneducated!
Most of what we call the Standard Model was worked out by the 70s, since then there has been some small progress but nothing really ground breaking. There's a solid argument made by others (see Sabine Hossenfelder for example) that particle physics has stagnated in the past few decades and its clear there's no obvious way to break out of that right now.
I would hazard a guess that we wasted a decade or more with the regnancy and stranglehold of string theory (hope I'm not offending anyone) in the departments and grant monies. So many bright young talents shunted into a dead end! I do concede that some interesting mathematics came out if it, and Hossenfelder is bang on when she says we wrongly pursue mathematical beauty, simplicity and symmetry. The universe is likely anisotropic and in its fundamental physics more like a bouillibaisse or mulligatawny than a platonic solid or crystal! We just happen to reside in a fairly small region with its own physics of a much larger construct that is very likely far older and larger than local physics postulates!
String theory is indeed very platonic - in that it values elegance over everything else. It is the wrong direction to go as far as I'm concerned. Elegance and simplicity have their place, but its a mistake to pursue them in the search of truth.
Agreed, it does seem to be difficult to break out of now. I am very far from connected to this world and hardly understand it, but from news reporting and various superficial level books I've read, it doesn't seem obvious where the next steps go. String theory, as Michael touched on, seems like a possible way but has really had no concrete supporting evidence ever developed. Outside of that, there is no other obvious way forward that I've heard of!
I'm very skeptical about string theory. I have it in mind to write a longer article on it one day, but really there's not much in the way of useful science that has emerged from it (so far). I think a real problem with fundamental physics is that we've reached a point where its hard to build experiments that probe the big questions. Many of them relate to gravity, but we really need access to a black hole or neutron star to really probe that!
Anomalous kaon decay rates- As much as I love the Standard Model, I would like a new physics revolution based on the discovery of new fundamental forces. I wrote a short Sci-fi story of a future civilization only a few hundred years from now where human/AI consortium had, over the interval centuries, discovered seventeen new fundamental forces to add to the four we know today. Our technology had correspondingly increased tremendously. As for kaon decay rates, we should probably wait for more testing to come in-. we don't want to get our hopes high and predict an X17 particle!
Bernard's Star- Neat-o and this discovery of planet(s) is well verified. I vote for robotic exploration!
Which brings us to Voyager- I feel so sad our adventurous kid is running out of energy. The brave little machine is almost like a family member. I wish our technology was better and we had a craft that could maintain
a tremendous acceleration and carry out to it, new plutonium spheres to replace the old ones. Yes, I am a sentimentalist.
Rings around the earth. Perhaps we did lose an old one (explaining the equatorial bombardment). But why would an incoming asteroid decide to break up in near earth proximity rather than come in like the Chicxulub meteor or break up on atmospheric entry like the one that scored the American eastern seaboard? In any case we're certsinly building a new ring with all our orbiting space junk!
Regarding the asteroid breakup, the paper is rather weak on details. They focus more on the pattern of asteroid impacts rather than on the orbital mechanics that would be required. Theoretically it seems plausible that an asteroid breakup and ring might happen, but the question definitely deserves some modelling and proper analysis.
Interesting developments! I'd love to see new physics be uncovered. It seems there has been little evolution into real, new physical understandings in several decades. No massive developments really since the 40's and 50's. Or maybe I am just naively uneducated!
Most of what we call the Standard Model was worked out by the 70s, since then there has been some small progress but nothing really ground breaking. There's a solid argument made by others (see Sabine Hossenfelder for example) that particle physics has stagnated in the past few decades and its clear there's no obvious way to break out of that right now.
I would hazard a guess that we wasted a decade or more with the regnancy and stranglehold of string theory (hope I'm not offending anyone) in the departments and grant monies. So many bright young talents shunted into a dead end! I do concede that some interesting mathematics came out if it, and Hossenfelder is bang on when she says we wrongly pursue mathematical beauty, simplicity and symmetry. The universe is likely anisotropic and in its fundamental physics more like a bouillibaisse or mulligatawny than a platonic solid or crystal! We just happen to reside in a fairly small region with its own physics of a much larger construct that is very likely far older and larger than local physics postulates!
platonic solid or crystal!
String theory is indeed very platonic - in that it values elegance over everything else. It is the wrong direction to go as far as I'm concerned. Elegance and simplicity have their place, but its a mistake to pursue them in the search of truth.
Agreed, it does seem to be difficult to break out of now. I am very far from connected to this world and hardly understand it, but from news reporting and various superficial level books I've read, it doesn't seem obvious where the next steps go. String theory, as Michael touched on, seems like a possible way but has really had no concrete supporting evidence ever developed. Outside of that, there is no other obvious way forward that I've heard of!
I'm very skeptical about string theory. I have it in mind to write a longer article on it one day, but really there's not much in the way of useful science that has emerged from it (so far). I think a real problem with fundamental physics is that we've reached a point where its hard to build experiments that probe the big questions. Many of them relate to gravity, but we really need access to a black hole or neutron star to really probe that!
Good point; experiments to get to deeper questions are extremely expensive and or massive-scale and really difficult to do.
Though I would love to be more educated about other possible pathways people are considering!
Excellent issue.
Anomalous kaon decay rates- As much as I love the Standard Model, I would like a new physics revolution based on the discovery of new fundamental forces. I wrote a short Sci-fi story of a future civilization only a few hundred years from now where human/AI consortium had, over the interval centuries, discovered seventeen new fundamental forces to add to the four we know today. Our technology had correspondingly increased tremendously. As for kaon decay rates, we should probably wait for more testing to come in-. we don't want to get our hopes high and predict an X17 particle!
Bernard's Star- Neat-o and this discovery of planet(s) is well verified. I vote for robotic exploration!
Which brings us to Voyager- I feel so sad our adventurous kid is running out of energy. The brave little machine is almost like a family member. I wish our technology was better and we had a craft that could maintain
a tremendous acceleration and carry out to it, new plutonium spheres to replace the old ones. Yes, I am a sentimentalist.
Rings around the earth. Perhaps we did lose an old one (explaining the equatorial bombardment). But why would an incoming asteroid decide to break up in near earth proximity rather than come in like the Chicxulub meteor or break up on atmospheric entry like the one that scored the American eastern seaboard? In any case we're certsinly building a new ring with all our orbiting space junk!
Regarding the asteroid breakup, the paper is rather weak on details. They focus more on the pattern of asteroid impacts rather than on the orbital mechanics that would be required. Theoretically it seems plausible that an asteroid breakup and ring might happen, but the question definitely deserves some modelling and proper analysis.