Three Elephants in Modern Physics

Modern theoretical physicists busy at work handling the crisis.

There are three elephants in the crisis room of modern physics:

1. special relativity
2. 2nd law of thermodynamics
3. foundations of quantum mechanics 

which since many years are no longer discussed in the physics community, not because they have since long been resolved, but because they remain open problems with no progress for 100 years. 

Only crackpot amateur physicists still debate these problems on fringe sites like John Chappell Natural Philosophy Society. Accordingly these topics are longer part of core theoretical physics education, since questions from students cannot be answered. This may seem strange, but it has come to be an agreement within the physics community to live with. Discussion closed. Research submitted to leading journals on these topics will be rejected, without refereeing.

Is it possible to understand why no progress has been made? Why is there a crisis?

As concerns special relativity the reason is that it is not a theory about real physics, but a theory about perceived observer perceptions of "events" identical to space-time coordinates without physical meaning. This makes special relativity to a game following some ad hoc rules without clear physics pretending to describe a world, which shows to be very very strange. Unless of course you realise that it is just a game and not science, but then nothing to teach at a university.  

As concerns topics 2 and 3 the reason is the introduction of statistical mechanics by Boltzmann followed by Planck as last rescue when deterministic physics seemed to fail. Again the trouble is that statistical mechanics is physics in the eyes of observers as probabilities of collections of physical events without cause-effect, rather than specific real events with cause-effect. Like special relativity this makes statistical mechanics into a game according to some ad hoc rules without physical meaning. 

In all three cases the observer is given a new key role as if the world depends on observation and cannot as in classical deterministic physics, itself go ahead without. This makes discussion complicated since there is no longer any common ground to all observers, and so eventually discussion dies. Nothing more to say. Everybody agrees that that there is nothing to disagree about. Everything in order. 

Schrödinger as the inventor of the Schrödinger equation for the Hydrogen atom with one electron as a deterministic classical continuum mechanical model, was appalled by Born's statistical interpretation of the multi-dimensional generalisation of his equation to atoms with several electrons defying physical meaning, and so gave up and turned to more fruitful pastures like the physics of living organisms.

But the elephants are there even if you pretend that they are not, and that is not a very healthy climate for scientific progress. You find my attempts to help out on this blog.