The big idea: Why the laws of physics will never explain the universe : physics

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (2 children)

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

Only off by 54 orders of magnitude. That's pretty close in cosmology.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Hey, I ~~have~~ am 1 atom, how many ~~do you have~~ are you?

[+] whodoctor11 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

[deleted]

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don't think anything the author actually said in the article is too far removed from the current mindset of the average physicist. In fact, as far as I can tell none of the statements the author makes are particularly controversial, although I do find the title a bit click-baity, and the "animal" analogy a bit unwieldy. But if you insist on only listening to people who have made a "revolutionary breakthrough", feel free to read the article by Nobel laureate Phillip W Anderson that the author cites as support (and which makes a similar, although perhaps not identical point in a better way imo).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

paywalled

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

https://inters.org/files/more-is-different.pdf

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

tldr: physics is useless because chaos theory

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I think it's more nuanced though. It's more like theory helps us understand the underlying mechanisms of many phenomena, but the lack of precise measurements for initial conditions, together with the existence of chaos, makes robust long-term predictions out of reach.

I mean this idea is not new -- Poincare had similar opinions in the 19th century iirc. The only thing the author said differently is that the universe is like an animal, and only in the last paragraph offhandedly for that matter.

Physics