
Has Physics Gotten Something Really Important Really Wrong? - danielam
http://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2016/06/28/483805061/has-physics-gotten-something-really-important-really-wrong
======
Animats
This is Smolin, making his usual, and valid, criticisms of modern physics.
Smolin's basic complaint is that there is no experimental evidence for string
theory. The math is pretty, and a whole generation of physicists have worked
on it, but nothing is experimentally testable. Everything is too small or at
too high an energy level. A practical implication is that it doesn't lead to
any technology.

Smolin also doesn't like many-worlds, because it talks about unreachable
regions. This he considers too speculative. There's a basic problem in quantum
mechanics, which leads to Schroedinger's Cat, the Copenhagen Interpretation,
and, in the end, many-worlds.[1]

Physics has been stuck on this problem for almost a century now. Philosophy
won't help.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_interpretation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_interpretation)

~~~
dogma1138
Which is exactly why people still work on things like Bohmian Mechanics/Pilot
Wave theory[0, 1].

[0][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Broglie%E2%80%93Bohm_theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Broglie%E2%80%93Bohm_theory)
[1][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilot_wave](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pilot_wave)

There's a lot of really strange stuff going on with QM and ST, even tho Brian
Greene works primarily on ST he did somewhat coined the concept of the "giant
leap" that to some extent theoretical physics has run off way too far from
anything that can be proven using experimentation.

>Physics has been stuck on this problem for almost a century now. Philosophy
won't help.

Philosophy does help, infact it might be the only thing that would help in
it's essence philosophy is about how you approach and solve problems, and more
importantly how you think about them. It might need be that we do need a major
philosophical change in the world of theoretical physics and start thinking
about QM and the universe in general in completely different matter.

There is a lot of natural bias that pushes your thinking into a very
predictable path and this plagues theoretical physics just like any other
field if not more. The bleeding edge of theoretical physics, especially in the
past 60-70 years has really shifted towards almost the metaphysical regardless
of how much elegant math there is behind it.

~~~
neltnerb
What is this idea that making the math prettier or more elegant is not
important? That's like saying a new algorithm isn't important; new math or
models make problems potentially tractable that aren't now.

All of our math is an attempt to represent things or ideas. The most important
thing I learned in my physics education was how to read math as a metaphor for
putting together things I understand into a picture of a thing I don't
understand. But I don't think anyone serious thinks that their math is "true",
such an assertion just makes no sense. The point of it is to find new ways to
approach the evidence to see if it gives some different metaphor that wasn't
obvious before.

I don't know enough modern physics to have an opinion on whether this is the
case for cosmology or string theory, but I do know that in recent history just
formulating a problem slightly differently can suddenly make the solution fit
in the same framework as a known simpler problem. Not unlike things I read all
the time about algorithm research at all, right?

Teaching and understanding models is predicated highly on metaphor, it's much
easier to explain for instance that MRI works via a quantum effect that has
the same math as a harmonic oscillator than it is to just... dive in. The
model isn't the universe, but humans live by metaphor and so the model is
important.

Which is perhaps not the point you were trying to make; I don't know enough
modern physics to know whether a critique of these new areas as purely
fantastical is justified, but it's also pretty fantastical to think of a
particle in a box as if it were like a weight on a spring. Who am I to say
that something about this approach can't make a currently intractable,
approximate, or computational impossible problem solvable with time?

~~~
d13
The danger with math is that it can prove its own truths based on its own
internal rules, so there's a temptation to believe that whatever you can
describe mathematically describes something that actually exists in the real
world. But until you've tested it experimentally, you don't know whether
you're describing a total fantasy world, like The Lord of the Rings, or
something actually real, but boring, like an apple. Just because you've proven
with mathematical certainly the existence of hobbits doesn't mean you'll
actually find any.

~~~
Tyr42
> The danger with math is that it can prove its own truths based on its own
> internal rules...

Actually, there's a theorem about that ;) Godel's Incompleteness theorem.

I would describe the problem more like: The new model matches the old model in
almost everything (because we've observed a lot). But the math works out quite
nicely if itty bitty particles behave this way when exploded at super high
temperatures. We have a hard time watching those particles explode, so it's
not really tested. Either way it works out, it's not really going to matter
for anyone who doesn't explode tiny particles.

~~~
Cybiote
I believe you've misconstrued d13's intended meaning. In short, what they said
is something can be mathematically consistent without being physically
realistic. GIT is not really pertinent here.

~~~
throwwit
Gabriel's Horn is probably more appropriate:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel's_Horn](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gabriel's_Horn)

------
Xcelerate
I don't think the problem is string theory _per se_ — I think the problem is
that we're running up on the bounds of what we can test experimentally, and
further progress is going to require some really cleverly designed experiments
that can probe Planck scale events. Although the greatest physicists
throughout history have for the most part been theoreticians, it may be the
case that in the future, the greatest physicists will be experimentalists
because of the extraordinary amount of creativity needed to design novel
experiments that can probe the most obscure corners of reality.

String theory isn't pseudoscience, because it does make testable, falsifiable
predictions. In fact, it makes the same predictions that quantum field theory
does for the phenomena that we are currently capable of testing (and arguably
using a more elegant framework than QFT provides). The problem is that the
predictions that string theory makes _beyond_ QFT are currently way outside
the realm of experimental assessment. This doesn't make the predictions false
— if that's the way the universe really is, we just may be incapable of
knowing that for a long time. There are a few hints that at least some of the
predictions of string theory may be incorrect — we have yet to find any
evidence of supersymmetry, and many physicists thought the LHC would turn up
at least _some_ evidence of this if it existed.

Regardless, I think people get too hung up on buzz-phrases like "is time
real?" or "are we in a multiverse?". A lot of these are what I consider
irrelevant to science, as the goal of science is to make accurate predictions
about the future. If there is another universe out there, it is _by
definition_ unreachable from our current universe, so it makes no difference
to science whatsoever. Likewise, what is or isn't "real" has no bearing on how
accurately one can compute the evolution of some system's state through time.

~~~
nilkn
> String theory isn't pseudoscience, because it does make testable,
> falsifiable predictions.

I feel like it's also worth pointing out that string theory is also a possible
solution to an extremely difficult mathematical problem. You don't fully get
an appreciation for this when reading popular accounts. You don't realize that
string theory is not just mumbo-jumbo about strings that someone made up but
rather that the extraordinarily sophisticated math behind it actually works
out, something that can't be said for the vast, vast majority of attempts at
resolving the issues that string theory does resolve.

The difficulty of this problem is such that even coming up with possible
solutions is itself a Herculean feat (witness the fact that Edward Witten, who
proposed M theory, was awarded a Fields medal). This is ultimately why string
theory has ever been taken seriously. None of this means string theory is
correct, of course.

~~~
naasking
> resolving the issues that string theory does resolve.

Is there a list of such issues somewhere?

------
mstank
As a layman, one thing I don't understand is why we suppose there has to be
dark matter and energy in the universe.

I understand that dark matter is used to explain gravitational irregularities
when observing galaxies. However, saying 'there is x amount of unobservable
stuff there' in order to make our calculations correct seems like lazy
science.

Are there any theories that don't include dark matter or energy? Can gravity
function differently depending on its location (space or time) in the
universe?

~~~
Manishearth
> However, saying 'there is x amount of unobservable stuff there' in order to
> make our calculations correct seems like lazy science.

That's not how this works.

Dark matter and energy are placeholders for anything that can explain the
discrepancy. The most likely explanation for dark matter is just undiscovered
particles, but changing the physics of it to make the calculations come out
right is also something that people do.

There's not really a difference between the two either. Post-QFT the concept
of a particle is much blurrier than before, and "changing the physics" might
just involve introducing a new background field that behaves differently in
different places based on its concentration. In essence, you have introduced a
new particle.

Please note that while it feels like lazy science, coming up with alternate
theories that have the same success and rigor as QFT is very hard. Its not
that they are hanging up their pencils and declaring premature victory. It is
that literally the best description of physics out there to date doesn't
explain this, and within that description yet-to-be-observed particles is its
best bet. They are working on better explanations, but Rome wasn't built in a
day.

~~~
iaw
"The most likely explanation for dark matter is just undiscovered particles"
<\--- all valid points but I'd argue that dark matter may actually be strictly
the result of yet-to-be-understood underlying fields. e.g. dark matter may not
have any particles itself but could be the gravitational of spacetime in a
sense

Just a nit.

~~~
johncolanduoni
Unless the field is not quantized, this is not a distinction. Electrons,
protons, etc. are a fields as well.

~~~
iaw
The fields that results in the Casimir effect are non-quantized, correct?

~~~
johncolanduoni
On the contrary, Casimir forces only arise because the field is quantized.

------
jaggederest
So as per usual with headlines in the form of a question, the answer from the
article appears to be no. It might be more accurate to title it "Physicist and
Philosopher question the empirical underpinnings of physics". There's not
really anything here to disprove anything from the current standard models.

~~~
iaw
The word "empirical" implies that there's some evidence to back up the claims
in the work on string theory and the multiverse. A more apt summary may be
"Physicist and Philosopher point out lack of empirical underpinnings for
esoteric branches of physics"

------
empath75
That we aren't capable of experiments that distinguish between various forms
of string theories doesn't negate the fact that string theories are _already
compatible_ with all the experiments we've already done and are likely to be
done in the near future. This is no small achievement. There is no other
framework that is even in contention right now.

Perhaps when we have some alternative theory that survives that basic hurdle,
we can discuss whether we're wasting time pursuing string theory rather than
some other idea.

~~~
jcranmer
Supersymmetry is one (although it's not really a competitor to string theory,
more an orthogonal theory).

One of the complaints on string theory, as I understand it, is that it ends up
being too general: it sort of implies that just about any phenomenon could be
plausible, which makes it really hard to falsify. It's not so much that it's
made predictions that turned out to be true, but rather that it can be
accommodated to fit prior experiments. From a Bayesian perspective, we haven't
received any evidence of its truth, only evidence of nontruth of other
theories.

~~~
nilkn
I'm not a theoretical physicist, but my understanding is that supersymmetry is
in fact a _prediction_ of many versions of string theory. So it's definitely
not orthogonal at all. It's a fundamental part of superstring theory.

------
ianbicking
If you disregard aesthetics, what are the questions we're trying to answer in
physics, particularly those that involve observable phenomena? I get that
string theory replicates the predictions of the theories that preceded it, the
critique I'd infer is that it doesn't offer any practical advantages over the
previous theories, it doesn't predict anything new that we can observe, and it
does not make any problems more tractable (I think the opposite? Ie most
problems are far more intractable using string theory)

It seems like there's some lack of imagination here, like physics is "done",
there's nothing more to answer, it's all just up to other sciences to answer
the rest of the (many) questions about why the world is what it is and how it
works. A reset of approaches is interesting, but it still needs to be in
service of something, doesn't it?

~~~
burke
> what are the questions we're trying to answer in physics, particularly those
> that involve observable phenomena?

(disclaimer: I am not a physicist, etc.)

Between GR and QM, we can explain most observable phenomena, but it's
intuitively obvious that both are emergent properties of some deeper law.

I don't suspect frontier physics is ever really studied with an eye to
application. Those tend to follow, but the bleeding edge of physics is usually
advanced just out of intellectual curiosity, to try to understand the
universe.

In this sense, String Theory is just an attempt the unify General Relativity
with Quantum Mechanics. The fact that it's not apparently testable is
unfortunate,

We can have pedantic arguments about whether that's "Real Science", since
science by definition requires testable hypotheses, but at the end of the day,
I don't think it's crazy to pursue a model to encompass QM and GR, even if it
can't be called "Science".

~~~
ianbicking
> I don't suspect frontier physics is ever really studied with an eye to
> application.

Previously they did have experimental results they were trying to understand.
There might be follow up experiments to confirm, but there were already
experimental tensions.

> I don't think it's crazy to pursue a model to encompass QM and GR, even if
> it can't be called "Science".

I'm not so concerned about whether something is science, it just seems like
vanity to pursue unification that provides no insight into the complex world
around us.

~~~
smallnamespace
If calling it science bothers you, then call it mathematics instead.

It's obvious to everyone involved that GM and QM, both the best physically
verified theories at their respective energies, are deeply incompatible with
one another.

Unfortunately, physical situations where we can see them disagreeing are
outside of our reach at the moment. You're suggesting the entire physics
community just give up theorizing until we can plausibly reach unification
energies, even if that's a thousand years from now?

> it just seems like vanity to pursue unification that provides no insight
> into the complex world around us

Pure theory has a funny habit of finding applications in the most unexpected
places.

Anyway, if it's an interesting problem, and people want to spend their time
thinking about it, who are we to tell them to stop?

------
auggierose
They should take their own medicine. How would one test those three
assumptions they make?

As for Mathematics being selectively real, I agree with that totally.
Mathematics is just a language we use to describe models and their properties
in a most rigorous way. That's all. Can we find a model of the universe from
which we can derive all its properties? Unlikely (see Gödel), if so the model
would have to be pretty "primitive" and thus too large for comprehension. But
so what, we can find great models for certain aspects of reality, and I don't
see a limit for how far this can be taken to get better and better models for
more and more areas of reality.

------
jokoon
Logical and structured thinking is good tool when doing physics, because a
precise model can be used as a language and communicated and taught, since
it's simple.

But those models are correct only in what they describe, they don't completely
describe nature. They are just that, models. Every time science has
progressed, it's either an "exception to the rule", or a re-understanding of
an incomplete theory.

I'm not a scientist, but I vividly remember how a physics professor warned us
about the laws he was teaching. Those laws work well, use them, but never
pretend that they're universal and that they will be for the next 20 or 100
years.

You can see this problem in quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics is being very
hard on philosophy and certainty in general. Up to a point, using models might
be a limit to physics.

~~~
cmplxconjugate
I am a physicist and one thing that you realise, as you develop as a
scientist, is the fact that the perception that "physics describes everything
perfectly" is not true. When you start out, lets say as an undergraduate, you
feel the pressure to be "correct". You struggle to find the correct answers or
construct them. The breakthrough comes when you realise that we use
mathematics as a tool to extract answers; we do our best to make the best
educated guess we can and interpret the results.

A great example would be with something like density functional theory (DFT),
where we make extremely crude approximations for exchange and correlation
functionals. By understanding the limits of our model we can use this
information to improve the results; as Feynman said: "The first job of a
theoretical physicist is to prove yourself wrong as fast as possible".

I'm not sure I agree with your last statement:

>Up to a point, using models might be a limit to physics.

I argue that this is the most important thing to physics. The moment you start
to leave a model, you allow for subjective speculation. I argue that this has
no place in physics and is the prime reason that physics has broken away from
philosophy.

~~~
jokoon
> you allow for subjective speculation

Don't you need to speculate at one moment or another to improves physics?

Of course you can only do that once you studied physics a lot, but if you want
to be creative in physics, don't you have to "speculate" that work with the
data?

------
erikb
And yet, that's all the point of theoretical science. To think in ways even if
they are not provable at this time. And then experimental scientists come
along, look at the theories and then think about how to experiment on them.
That's how it works. And I think if they want to disprove any of this they
need to show that this system is broken. I need to google but I'm sure
everybody can remember hearing a few times in their life that there were
scientists like Einstein who had ideas that could not be proven in their life
time but could be proven now with modern computers and now we know they were
true. We admire that and we need that. And that's the thesis they need to
fight if they want to convince me of theoretical science being wrong or bad.

~~~
dschiptsov
Nope. The point of science is to follow scientific method, which is, contrary
to the popular opinion, not about piling up meaningless abstractions cemented
by dogmas and wishful thinking, but throwing every possible _objection_ to the
hypothesis, finding controversions and inconsistencies with other aspects of
reality, and only when it stands nevertheless, that hypothesis could be
accepted as a current approximation to the truth.

This "science" is as bad pile of nonsense as Hegelian "philosophy".

------
tvural
Shallow criticisms of string theory usually miss how difficult it is to come
up with physical theories that don't lead to some kind of contradiction. For
this reason, lots of new physics has been discovered by looking at
mathematical constraints first and experiments second. The math of string
theory is pretty, but more importantly it works out, and this alone makes
string theory worthy of some attention. If it's getting too much attention,
that's probably more a sign that there are very few interesting research
directions left in physics than that all the physicists are deluding
themselves.

------
joslin01
Genuine confusion here -- how can you assert time is real?

From my limited understanding, time is merely the measurement of change. A
comet goes from point A to B, and like a screen flickering, it is in a
discrete point in space every step along the way. It is time that is
introduced when asking ourselves, "how long did it take?" or "when was it at
X?" but how can it be woven into the fabric of the universe? If we take
reality to be right here, right now, it doesn't seem to exist but rather is a
human invention to help us map change.

~~~
Koshkin
Thing to understand is that time is not a measurement, time is what we measure
- as a phenomenon that has independent existence as part of the physical
reality. More accurately (and perhaps more confusingly), time should be
thought of as one of the aspects (components) of the 4-dimensional
"spacetime", where spatial dimensions are, in fact, inseparable from the
temporal dimension - so that the results of measurements of each component
individually end up being dependent on the frame of reference.

------
vortico
This was a pretty useless article with no real information or details to
counter existing theories. I know the layman usually isn't interested in the
details, but you can't just write about _nothing_. Are there consistent
theories with those three features? What are features of existing models of
cosmology which will have to be changed if the three features are assumed? The
reader will never know.

------
davesque
To me, it's all a matter of the empirical data and the math that attempts to
model that data. Those two sides of science have continually bootstrapped each
other to the point we've arrived at today.

Quoted from the book in the article:

"Our mathematical inventions offer us no shortcut to timeless truth... They
never replace the work of scientific discovery and of imagination. The
effectiveness of mathematics in natural science is reasonable because it is
limited and relative."

I'm not sure what the authors mean by this. Are we to ultimately abandon our
attempts at a consistent, logical explanation of what we see? If so, that's
when we revert to un-scientific and, essentially, religious ways of thinking.
I'd argue that the pursuit of a mathematical explanation of observations _is_
the work of scientific imagination. Mathematics is merely the most reliable
way we've devised of communicating what we imagine to other people. And
sometimes the math, itself, sings to you and that drives advances in
understanding that are totally valid.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
Smolin wrote a paper on the "reasonable effectiveness" of mathematics in
science.
[http://arxiv.org/pdf/1506.03733v1.pdf](http://arxiv.org/pdf/1506.03733v1.pdf)

~~~
davesque
Thanks for this. Very interesting.

------
tim333
While I agree with Smolin that much physics has moved away from experimental
observation, especially string theory, I think the three numbered points in
the article are wrong.

My take - the only way the universe could have got here from nothing as it
were is if it's basically maths and seems real to us. I mean what does basic
particle behavior look like - a bunch of maths and not much else, and what
exist without needing creating - mathematical patterns and relations and
nothing else. Hence from observation it's probably all maths.

Hence:

1) There is only one universe. - Nah probably all mathematically possible
universes seem real to their occupants.

2) Time is real. - Sorta but more like how time exists in a DVD of a movie. Or
as some guy wrote "...for us physicists believe the separation between past,
present, and future is only an illusion, although a convincing one."

3) Mathematics is selectively real. - Nah it's real.

------
DrNuke
Problem with philosophy is that it views all anthropocentric. On the other
hand, we are beyond anthropocentrism in modern physics in the sense that
sensorial / bodily experience (our way to interact with the outer world)
doesn't help any more and thinking / mind abstraction (our special way to
represent the outer world) is unprovable because technologies and tools are
not there yet. More than philosophy, it is literature to stand up when we need
a change of paradigm, in particular science fiction: minds trying to carve
skewed views of the universe starting from non-mainstream philosophy. Suffice
to say, it will be many more misses than hits but gold is there.

~~~
spacehome
I didn't understand any of that.

~~~
DrNuke
It's literature before philosophy and physics.

------
RivieraKid
I'm quite surprised that there's not a consensus about the philosophical
framing of physics (metaphysics).

The way I see it:

\- Consciousness (perceptions, feelings, thought) is the only thing that
really exists.

\- There are patterns in what we perceive, for example, when we drop a rock,
we _see_ it falls and _hear_ the impact.

\- So we develop models to describe patterns in our consciousness. Physics is
just a description of those patterns. So the physical world doesn't really
exist, it's just an idea in our minds.

~~~
psyc
This is called Idealism. I wouldn't go so far as to say I "believe in it", but
I often think its implications should be explored much more. Unfortunately,
hardly anyone takes it "seriously" enough.

~~~
ci5er
They don't seem to take anti-materialistic monism seriously either! :-)

It's hard to get tenure these days if you ever mention solipsism, the direct
conclusion of Descartes' cogito (which he never seemed to quite get to
himself) or solipsism seriously. Individually or in some creative combo move.
I don't know if that's because people think that Kant has been beat up enough
that they don't want to be seen standing near his stinking corpse, or thinking
about it just makes some people feel 'icky' or what.

Which is too bad, because I find that Johnson's (to Berkeley) "I refute it
thus!" to be more of a hissy fit than a satisfying response. IDK. Maybe I'd
just like someone to use more words? :-)

------
abpavel
In other news: 1\. Time Gravitates! Physicists discover stable wormhole
configuration by accounting the effect of gravity on time! and then 2\. First
wormhole to another universe successfully created! The final experimental
proof of multiverse theory, which grants us access to all 10^500 universes,
and any place in our own corner of the world" and then 3\. Now in portable
format, just for $299!

Stop being impatient!

------
jnefbebyby
I read this book a couple of years ago. About 1/3 (Smolin's) of it is really
interesting. The main point about the primacy of Time is that traditional
models of physics have an implicit time dimension for the laws, in additional
the the time dimension of spacetime. Smolin suggests that the the laws of
Physics are dynamical, evolving as a function of the state of the system.

------
lossolo
Hm i wonder why someone thought there is some invisible, unobservable dark
matter instead connecting gravitational waves with super massive black holes
in center of every galactic. It seems for me like a lot better answer to
question what is keeping galaxies together if observable mass is not enough.

~~~
goodcanadian
I found it a bit hard to understand before I actually took the course in
university, but I'll try to explain simply:

You can infer the mass that is interior to an orbit by measuring the speed at
which an object is orbiting. By measuring the redshift and blueshift, we can
get speeds of different parts of the galaxy. It turns out that we can account
for more-or-less all of the mass near the centre of galaxies, but as we get
further out, orbital velocities seem to be higher than they should be implying
more mass is there than we can actually see.

In other words, we can tell that the missing mass is not at the centre of the
galaxy, but rather spread throughout it.

~~~
lossolo
I see, it makes sense now, thank you for very clear explanation.

------
HillaryBriss
> ... reification of mathematics can lead physicists into dangerous territory
> where mathematical "beauty" and "elegance" get substituted for real
> information about the real world.

If it can happen in physics, it can happen anywhere -- maybe even your
neighborhood.

------
garyclarke27
I agree with much of the sentiment such as string theory and multi universes
are nonsense. Yes math is just an abstraction tool, with mutually understood/
agreed rules , the rules and representations are not exactly true in the real
world, users just agree them to assist with communication between users and
over time. Time is Not Real, it's an abstraction / quantification of change,
but yes change is I think real i.e. the universe is always changing. However
his statement- Our ability to map out the history of the universe back to a
fraction of an instant after its inception is a triumph - ruined it for me -
an absurd statement for a scientist - we have no idea how the universe started
we are only guessing it's history, the big bang theory is just a theory,
probably no more real than Lord of the Rings.

~~~
Tyr42
Sounds like you haven't seen much of the evidence for big bang theory. I'm
going to call your attention to the COBE mission.

[http://science.nasa.gov/missions/cobe/](http://science.nasa.gov/missions/cobe/)

This took the predictions from the big bang theory about a small hot dense
universe, and measured the cosmic background radiation, and it matched
perfectly.

The idea is that when the universe was young, it was so hot that all the
matter was in a plasma cloud, and that photons (and other EM radiation)
couldn't travel very far at all before being absorbed and re-emitted in a
random direction. Then, the universe expanded and cooled enough that the cloud
became transparent. But there were still those photons (etc) that now just
kept going in all directions. Some of them happen to be arriving from all
directions no matter where you are (unless you're on the rim of the universe
or something). That's the cosmic background radiation.

And we measured it, and it matched so well with the predicted numbers it was
astounding.

This is also the graph that shows up on the "Science, it works bitches!" xkcd
shirt.

[https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/54:_Science](https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/54:_Science)

------
andrewclunn
Was expecting pseudo science based on the click-baity title. Instead got a
take down of the pseudo science infecting cosmology. Nice.

------
lolc
I like how they see cosmologists as historians. Observe and describe the past,
speculate, and muse about the future :-)

------
nsuser
Nice clickbait title..

------
dschiptsov
Yes, by producing disconnected from reality abstractions.

------
rwmj
That's nice. Have any falsifiable claims been made?

~~~
RivieraKid
Some claims don't have to be falsifiable to be true. For example, some people
say that solipsism is not falsifiable - I don't see what's wrong with that.

------
jwatte
You know what's cool? If they can reach better prediction, faster, with that
approach, it will strengthen. If they can't, they will be a footnote. At
least, if the scientific method is alive and well.

~~~
Manishearth
The scientific method has been "on hold" in theoretical physics for a while;
because our experimental technology just can't cope up with it. This is one of
the main criticisms of string theory, for example.

------
perseusprime11
This is like Fermat's last theorem. A whole lot of smart mathematicians spent
their time solving this theorem instead of finding better things to solve that
can benefit humanity.

------
andrewflnr
"We're tired of the un-proven assumptions underlying modern physics. Here's
some un-proven assumptions to get us back on track."

What? How is this helping?

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dc2
I very proudly have not clicked the link, because it so such wild click bait,
that it would be against my integrity.

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peterburkimsher
Betteridge's law of headlines:

"Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered by the word no."

Has the Hacker News upvote system gotten something really important really
wrong?

------
sova
define event

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therestisgone
Clickbait of the year.

Yessss, keep feeding me more of those delicious downvotes.

~~~
dang
We've banned this account for violating the HN guidelines.

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tamana
NPR is not immune to betteridge's. Physics isn't "wrong" about string theory.
String theory is a currently untestable theory, a mathematical model, and
that's fine but minimally useful.

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mbfg
> There is only one universe
    
    
        ok, except what else just has 1 of them
    

> Time is real
    
    
        ask a photon that

~~~
Manishearth
The whole "time is real" part of the article read like meaningless drivel to
me. I have no idea what they were trying to communicate.

~~~
mindcrime
As far as that goes, we arguably don't even know what time _is_.

~~~
Manishearth
That can be said of just about anything in physics.

~~~
mindcrime
Good point!

