Interesting analysis from my favorite severe no nonsense physics youtuber gal (who also used to randomly post vids of her doing cover songs to peoples' general confusion lol).
Good bit at the end speculating on the material economic basis for this (useless) way of doing science. People make careers on this fluff that amounts to nothing.
Jesus. Look, I can accept that because we haven't found the necessary violations with the currently accessible energy scales that you could make the argument that the money is better spent on other research rather than making the SuperDuper Superconducting Super Collider to make the experiments at this point. But we know that we can't bridge General relativity, QFT, and Cosmology with currently existing theories. And so we need extra mechanism (which in the language used for layman explanations means new particles) or some much more dramatic rewriting of High Energy Physics. This is just :bait: for other physicists because we know that there are advances and new theories (likely involving new particles), but the only argument in good faith, other than funding priorities with other fields of study, is for a cosmology guided exploration, which has been a fixture of the field of saying "well Black Holes, Quasars, Stars, etc. provide more extreme environments than our colliders, so observing them would be better than waiting for the next two generations of colliders." The good faith argument is to argue for more focus on other violations, cosmological/Astrophysical observations, etc. that could be tested with these theories than just saying "well when we have PeV scale collider then we might be able to test my theory".
Also, we are searching for particles we don't really believe exist thing, isn't so much that the field that lost its way, but as I said, we know our current theories can't be the end of it, but the only thing we got after decades of searching for these particles are only after much failures and modifications the only one that fits within current frameworks, the Higgs Boson. So, after years of searching for where our models come up empty and not finding it, most people aren't delusional enough to say "well I am different, the particle I am searching for is going to be the one that exists in the way the previous 50 didn't".
i think her best point is the one about ambulance chasing or the other one about how these particles are being mathed-up just because rather than to solve any problems like the higgs or some of the other ones.
i wouldn't really look to theoretical physics grants for where to scrape up money, we could just give fewer weapons to nazis and come up with the cash for all the social programs we want and still have plenty for speculative physics.
Well, as I was saying, this is one of those trade offs of this needing a resolution, while the attempts are becoming more extreme, to where I would say other directions of funding could be seriously argued, since previous methods of trying to solve these contradictions fail, it is only the most arrogant that would say that "I have pierced the vale and seen the solution where the previous more compelling and simple explanations failed." It is kind of the opposite of ambulance chasing, you know there is a solution needing to be found, but the need to push on this front necessitates picking specific theories.
The theoretical physics grants aren't what is being directly argued. It is more of the lack and legitimate question-ability of the experimental side that is saying to theoretical physicists to back down and that their work is not worthwhile, because you need to have the ability to test theories for them to contribute to science.
Counterpoint: :anprim-pat:
We do know this?
Yeah, on extremely small scales we get weird results, General Relativity isn't really compatible with current quantum mechanics, and we would need new particles, at least if not modifications, to handle inflation and components of Big Bang cosmology.
Edit: I forgot to mention Dark Matter and Dark Energy would likely require two new particles, if not a more fundamental change in our understanding of these theories.
She has a blog post for common retorts to her criticism of modern theoretical particle physics, and a list of problems that would probably yield fruitful results rather than what she dubbed "pseudo problems" of the last 50 years that have yielded nothing but very ephemeral headlines in science mags.
She has a list of problems that would probably yield better results and a better understanding of nature, for example quantum gravity (which she admits may not have a quantizing solution), even the measurement problem which is usually relegated to philosophy could lead to better results.