I simply don't have the interest/attention span/fundamental grasp of the world of particle physics to make it interesting to me anymore. The world of modern day physics is littered with terms and ideas that no longer have any real basis in how the world I see behaves. Light is a wave - but it isn't. A particle and its anti-particle appear out of nowhere - then vanish. The stars produce particles that can go through miles of lead without interacting with anything - yet their presence is cruicial.

My basic problem with modern particle/quantum phyics is that it has lost its basis in fundamentals. Right now its all about bigger, better, more powerful. To me that indicates that fundamentally the principles behind it are fundamentally flawed OR.... that physicists desperately need to educate the general public on why what they do is important enough for us to spend money on. They have lost the ability to communicate their theories to people and in doing so demonstrate that perhaps their theories are in fact wrong.

Ultimately I think time will show that quantum mechanics was conceptually wrong.

So because you don't understand something or because it doesn't have anything to do with how you see the world it is "conceptually wrong"?

Doesn't mean I have to spend money on it does it? Until my tax dollars no longer fund ANY of their experiments it is their duty to satisfy taxpayers as to the validity of their work - yes??

I think that you misunderstand exactly what it going on. The reason that scientists are continuing to look at higher energies is that we've learned just about all we can learn at the energy levels that we're currently operating at. In order to improve the accuracy of any theory, it's limits must be tested. For instance, Newton's theory of Universal Gravitation appears to be completely accurate at the technology level that existed around Newton's time. Had we never looked at energy density extremes (and improved our timing such that we could accurately measure the orbit of Mercury) we wouldn't have discovered that his theory breaks down at certain energy densities and a new theory was needed.

The same is true for particle physicists. The Standard Model works perfectly up to the energy levels we can test at. However, it does not explain several key things that we wish to know about. It does not explain how things have mass, why matter dominates anti-matter, what dark energy is, or what dark matter is. If the answers to these questions are available in a particle accelerator, they must lie where we have not tested it. So, like the physicists of before we look where we have not looked before. What we may discover will be interesting regardless of what it is.

As much as I hate to say it, Quantum physics IS the most fundamental physics. It grieves me because general relativity is such a conceise and beautiful theory, but the end result is that the universe is quantum in nature. There are a variety of experiments that have proven this, including Bose-Einstein condensation which allows us to view microscopic effects macroscopically. The creation and anhilation of particle-antiparticle pairs in vacuum has been proven to exist beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Light is both a wave and a particle, just like everything else in the universe. The problem lies in our macroscopic way of thinking of things. We never see the duality of nature in our day-to-day life simply because the wavelength of anything heavier than an electron is impossibly small. This is very similar to the problems people have in comprehending the fact that time is not absolute since we never really experience realtivistic effects while on earth. (Though I must admit time does seem to slow down when waiting in line at the DMV.)

Neutrinos are important for many reasons, despite their weak interactions and low mass. For one thing, they partially bridge the gap between our observations of a nearly flat universe and the impossibility of this resulting from the amount of "visible" matter.

As for particle physicists communicating their theories to the public, that is pretty much impossible. It's not just a problem they have, it's a problem that physics itself has. Trying to explain a theory that is desribed in mathematical language that would frighten your average college graduate away to the common man is pretty much impossible. Heck, could you explain what your ID name is to someone who has only had algebra? I don't know that I could explain what an eigenvector is or why it is important without an extensive explanation of matrix algebra.

I would agree with you that eventually quantum-electro-dynamics (as quantum mechanics is really just the name for the very basic quantum theory studied at an undergraduate level) will be proven wrong eventually. Of course, this is going to be true of any scientific theory out there since none of them is 100% accurate. Obviously we will need a theory that describes gravity on a quantum level, which nothing we have really does. (String theory makes a run for it but the string theoriests have yet to convince me that they have a testable theory....) However, that theory will still have to encompass all the scientific measurements we have made thus far, including the uncertainity principle which you seem to dislike.

So, you're basically saying that you think scientists are wrong in chasing a theory that you called 'fundamental' (you said the entire Universe was quantum) because you feel it may be wrong. Not to question your expertise in this, but it seems redundant to say that we should stop researching something because it might be wrong.

Perhaps you're not proposing we stop researcing, but spend less money, or something along those lines. All in all, however, If you feel that the physicists are wrong, you should be rooting for them to spend mroe time and money researching it, because the more they do, the sooner they will discover they are wrong.

You seem to be frustrated with the idea of people looking to higher energies (or some metaphorical equivalent of that) because they have expended all the knowledge they could squeeze out of the lower levels. My problem is that you only seem this way because you are 'unsatisfied' with the idea of a quantum universe (god playing dice, anyone) and you just don't like it. So it's difficult, it doesn't make sense to the average guy, and you think it might be wrong.

Sounds like you haven't really said that much at all.

I think what you are reading, and the others are not is my utter frustration with the physics community's lack of grounding in their theories. Mind you I am a computer system architect, I'm used to dealing with research scientists, engineers, and even do engineering to a small extent.

Okay, I used the preview pane and went back and re-read your post. I was about to post a long discussion describing my opinion but after reading your post you addressed most of it already.

It's going to take some time getting used to the new Fray board.

Anyway, one small point. I believe that before I as a taxpayer would agree to fund science that it needs to sit down and figure out how to explain their theories to the general population. I think that is a priority far far above any research they are doing. It is more important that they secure the connection between them and poor slobs around them less science finds itself as a caste in our society. We do not want our society fracturing into a caste system - the science caste, the religion caste, the financial caste. That arrangement won't help anyone.

BTW: I have this one complaint about the new Fray - why the hell did Slate make posting form just slightly too small to fit the body of the post?

The problem is that the amount of education required to really explain how much of science actually works simply makes it impossible for the average tax-payer to understand. In fact, science has become so specialized that a person in one type of science, say a physicist, will not really be able to understand what is happening happening in another science, say chemistry. Not only that, but it's gotten so specialized that physicists who understand and study one aspect of physics won't understand exactly how another aspect of physics works. For instance, a condensed matter specialist probably knows nothing about cosmology.

So I don't think it's possible to educate the public in this manner. Doing so is like teaching a pig to sing, it wastes your time and annoys the pig. In spite of the popularity of Hawking and Brian Greene, even the section of the public that is sort of interested in physics generally does not even understand the very basics. (Of course, this is true in any field. I'm not attempting to say that physicists are special, simply that modern society is so specialized in every aspect that it really isn't possible to be a Renaissance man anymore.)

For example, I notice that you have not attempted to expain what your ID means in a manner that a person who has only passed algebra 1 will understand and appeciate. If I wanted to explain how something like General Relativity works, the person I am explaining it to must know what a tensor is at the very least. Certainly I could try the bowling balls on the sheet analogy, but that falls very short and it leaves quite a few misconceptions. Your first post is a perfect example of what happens when someone takes the fluff model explained to the general public and tries to examine it closely.

I am surprised that as a computer system architect you haven't worried about electron tunneling, which is a direct consequence of quantum and the uncertainty principle you seem to dislike.

Well don't read infer too much into who I am, take my arguments at face value and don't attach them to me. I'm not a simple person and I'm sure you aren't either. As a matter of fact though, I happen to know a lot of people in my field who share my opinions of research science.

As for your comment, perhaps I should explain it like this.

What you outlined illustrates my point nicely actually, it demonstrates the fundamental problem I see with advanced sciences in general - not just physics. I know quite a few scientists, engineers, and lab techs - none of them enjoy doing the one thing they have to do - communicate their ideas to the people who fund their projects. I learned a long time ago in my own field that communication of ideas is 70% of successful design. You can be the most brilliant person in the world, but if you can't communicate successfully you might as well shut the hell up. Scientists don't seem to feel obligated to do what is necessary to communicate.

Yes I know its a matter of lowering themselves to everyone else's level but it has to happen. Out of the thousands of physists out there, are you saying there isn't a single one that can take time from his/her busy schedule to explain it? And not to be too harsh, but I do find it in a general sense to be representative of the field as a whole, but relying on Hawkings to be the spokesman is a terrible idea.

I don't see how a theory's being too difficult to clearly express in non-specialized language implies its being false, but I do see how it implies its being un-interesting.

I think that you want to emphasize relevance over validity.

Is knowledge intrinsically valuable? Or is it just a means to improving our lives?

bitterpills:

Is knowledge intrinsically valuable? Or is it just a means to improving our lives?

This dicussion, while interesting, seems to veering into the metaphysical and philosophical rather than the scientific..

The poster I was replying to said: "The reason that scientists are continuing to look at higher energies is that we've learned just about all we can learn at the energy levels that we're currently operating at." My question was germane to that. To see why, consider the following: "The reason that I'm crawling around in the sewer is that I've learned all I can fishing around in toilets." I was wondering if having "learned just about all we can learn at the energy levels that we're currently operating at" this is really a "reason". Maybe knowledge is intrinsically valuable and its value increases relative to how fundamental it is. If that's the case, then I think we might have a genuine reason here; "might" because the value increase relative to fundamentalness will need to be commensurate with the cost of public funding for particle accelerators, which I think was a theme developed in the Slate article (further illustrating the germaness of these normative/philosophical considerations).

So, man is a curious beast? Is that your conclusion?

Knowledge is intrinsicially valuable.