https://cosmosmagazine.com/science/physics/whos-killing-physics/

"The renowned German author, theoretical physicist and Research Fellow at the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies thinks she’s found the root of evil: quantum mechanics.

***

"For much of the past century, scientific advances led to technological progress that furthered science, which in return led to more technological progress, and so on. It was a virtuous cycle that rapidly raised our standard of living. But in the foundations of physics, this virtuous cycle broke in the mid 1980s. Since then, we have been in a phase of stagnation.

"This stagnation has befallen not only cosmology but also the rest of the foundations of physics: quantum gravity, particle physics, and quantum foundations. You have certainly noticed this yourself: popular science articles that cover these areas just regurgitate the same topics.

***

"Nowadays, headlines covering the foundations of physics won’t tell you about new discoveries, but merely what “might be” or “could be”. The phrase “physicists say” is all too frequently followed by speculations about multiverses, non-existent particles, or fifth forces that we have no evidence of. Sometimes I’m embarrassed to be associated with this discipline.

"But the worst part is that most of my colleagues think this situation perfectly okay.

***

"...in the foundations of physics – those areas concerned with the most fundamental laws of nature: particle physics, quantum foundations, quantum gravity, and cosmology – theory-development has decoupled from experimental test. And in the absence of reality checks, pointless speculation became accepted norm.

"Let me be clear: it’s not that experiments have stopped in the foundations of physics. It’s just that – one after the other – experiments have confirmed theories we already had half a century ago and ruled out any ideas put forward after that. The confirmation that neutrinos have masses, that gravitational waves are real, and the detection of the Higgs are recent examples of remarkable experimental achievements in the foundations of physics. But the predictions of these phenomena all date back to before the 1970s.

"The misgivings that philosophers had about quantum mechanics, it turned out, weren’t entirely irrelevant after all. If physicists hadn’t been so dismissive of philosophy, they might have seen that sooner.

"This makes me worry it’s only a matter of time until experimental progress stalls in other areas of physics, too. That’s because for much of the history of physics, better observations led to a better understanding of natural laws, which led to better technologies, which led to better observations and so on. This virtuous cycle broke in the middle of the past century when foundational research hit the wall.

"The progress we currently see in the non-foundational areas of physics is largely due to more computing power and miniaturisation well into the quantum regime – all progress driven by those foundational breakthroughs from the beginning of the 20th century. There is still much potential in pushing this trend further, but if we don’t make new discoveries in the foundations soon, this progress will eventually stagnate, too. And that won’t only affect physics, it’ll affect all of society.

***

"Physicists have declared we’re close to a final “theory of everything” since the 1970s, but widely acknowledged that this success would be largely cosmetic – like the cherry topping the tart, aesthetically pleasing but not of high nutritious value. That’s because they believe the currently open questions, once answered, won’t be useful for technological applications anyway. Quantum gravity and dark matter, which have attracted most of the attention, are far too feeble phenomena to be good for every-day gadgets.

***

"In hindsight, physicists should have focused on the problem in front of their eyes, the one they’ve seen in myriad experiments: the measurement problem of quantum mechanics.

***

"At last, it seems the “shut up and calculate” doctrine, which has dominated quantum mechanics for half a century, is losing its grip on the community. And this is why I am more optimistic today that we will finally make progress in the foundations of physics than I was 10 years ago."

Comment: We've been here before with Ruth Kastner. ( dhw, 2013-08-16, 17:00) We feeble humans cannot figure out what God did.


> DAVID: I've investigated Rounders and that is obviously where baseball came from, not cricket as I've been taught. Thank you.
> 
> dhw: My pleasure. Alas, even teachers are fallible.-Shows us that one cannot trust what one is taught early in life. When in doubt read and research. I unwittingly accepted Darwin at face value until I started reading about his ideas seriously. Surprise! Full of holes.-But to be fair so are the ideas religions have about the mind of God as a personal God.


> DHW: One possible (and strikingly similar) source is the game of rounders, which is still very popular over here among little girls.
> 
> DAVID: Must be very obscure. Never heard of it. Is it considered for the Olympics?
> 
> 
> dhw: There are more things in heaven and earth, Dr Turell, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. And there aren't any Olympics for little girls.-This website is meant for learning. I've been to the baseball museum in Cooperstown, N.Y. where Abner Doubleday is reputed to have invented baseball. No mention of Rounders. I've investigated Rounders and that is obviously where baseball came from, not cricket as I've been taught. Thank you.


> dhw: One possible (and strikingly similar) source is the game of rounders, which is still very popular over here among little girls.-Must be very obscure. Never heard of it. Is it considered for the Olympics?


> dhw: So that's why you assume all your foreign visitors know which direction to look in before they cross the road? Anyway, until you learn how to play cricket, I'm afraid you will always be in Division Two of the Thinking World.-We evolved baseball from it, which gave us a much more intellectual sport. It adds so much more strategy to contemplate and plan.


> Dhw: Could it be because Americans think there's only way to look at things (i.e. theirs), whereas we British realize there are at least two? Only asking.-Our colony may have been spawned by Britain but as we became independent we left you guys very far behind because our thinking was so open and inventive.

DAVID: In New York there are no signs telling you in which direction to look at the curb as in London. Why is that?
> 
> dhw: Could it be because Americans think there's only way to look at things (i.e. their own), whereas we British realize there are at least two? Only asking.-The word for left in Latin is sinister. Any correlation? And I am very left-handed.

dhw: Hey ho, the trouble with being in the middle of the road is that you can get run over from both directions.-In New York there are no signs telling you in which direction to look at the curb as in London. Why is that?

David I'm sure I couldn't follow it. Do you think there has been a series of singular universes like this one, and if there were do they vary, or are they all the same?-George: This discussion falls right into the area of our current discourse. What do you think of his presentation?:-https://medium.com/starts-with-a-bang/ask-ethan-73-the-multiverse-and-you-46c9e3c493e2-"What we find is that the Universe is most consistent with being spatially flat, with being uniform over a volume that's much greater than the volume of the piece of the Universe observable to us, and therefore probably containing more Universe that's very similar to our own for hundreds of billions of light years in all directions, beyond what we can see.-"But theoretically, what we learn is even more tantalizing. You see, we can extrapolate the Big Bang backwards to an arbitrarily hot, dense, expanding state, and what we find is that it didn't get infinitely hot and dense early on, but rather that?—?above some energy and before some very early time?—?there was a phase that preceded the Big Bang, and set it up.-.......
"The singularity theorem tells us that an inflationary state is past-timelike-incomplete, and hence, most probably did not last a truly infinite amount of time, but rather arose some distant-but-finite point in the past. There are a huge number of Universes out there?—?possibly with different laws than our own and possibly not?—?but there are not enough of them to give us alternate versions of ourselves; the number of possible outcomes grows too rapidly compared to the rate that the number of possible Universes grows."-And lots more


> George: In Woodin's lecture he surprisingly tries to get round this by introducing the Multiverse concept! But ultimately he concludes this doesn't work either. 
> 
> I must admit I skipped a lot of the end section of his lecture, but at the end he admits that everything is back at square one.
> 
> This is why I don't place any credence in theories of the universe that involve infinite regression in time.-I'm sure I couldn't follow it. Do you think there has been a series of singular universes like this one, and if there were do they vary, or are they all the same?


> George: I consider Time to be just as much a part of the universe as Space and matter and energy. dhw believes in an absolute Time within which the universe exists or comes into existence. I maintain that this concept is nonsensical. Postulating earlier universes (or phases of the universe as I would prefer to say) does not get rid of the problem of the origin of Time, it just puts it back further. Putting it back to an infinite regression with no origin is what I would characterise as "occult" thinking.-I agree with you. Note my entry at 18:51 today, concerning theories about time
> 
> George: This is the old "faith in chance" nonsense again! We've argued this before at length, so I'm reluctant to go over it all again.-Obviously, I don't think chance events can produce the evolution we observe.