

Fermilab may have data to explain how matter beat antimatter - joe_bleau
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/18/science/space/18cosmos.html?ref=science

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1053r
I think that in many ways, physics today is in a similar place to where it was
before relativity and QM; it's almost entirely explained, which just a few
nagging anomalies around the edges. Today we have QM and relativity, which
contradict each other but are very complete, and just a couple nagging issues
of matter vs. antimatter and how gravity, inertia, time, and subatomic
particles interact. Back then they had a couple issues with the speed of light
and a couple other minor details, and famous physicists were quoted publicly
as saying that a grand theory of everything was just around the corner. And
then along came Michelson and Morley and Einstein and Planck and Heisenberg
and blew our understanding of the universe wide open.

Sadly, since we've explored domains with sane timescales and mass / energy
levels pretty thoroughly, it's unlikely that new physics will result in anti-
gravity hovercars or vacuum energy devices or starships or time machines any
time soon. But it might make something we haven't thought of yet, like
understanding of time dialation and the speed of light gave us GPS!

~~~
hartror
I disagree, there aren't just a couple of nagging issues there are a myriad of
issues of which this list
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsolved_problems_in_ph...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsolved_problems_in_physics))
just covers the most publicised ones. You ask any specialist in any field if
they feel they are running out of problems to tackle and they will just laugh
at you. Any discovery we make tomorrow is just going to create more questions
than answers.

Though I do agree with your implication that we can't guess what the
technologies the study of our universe will bring about, which is the greatest
reason for funding basic research
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_research>).

