måndag 15 april 2024

Modern Physics vs Homeopathy

Modern physics appears as a form of homeopathy in reverse. A main idea of homeopathy is to obtain a major health effect from a very very diluted form of some substance, the smaller the better. The characteristic of modern physics, as rather the opposite, is identification of a very small effect from a very very large cause as in the following key examples  with increasing presence in later years (with year of Nobel Prize in Physics):

  • Theoretical and experimental discovery of very small deviation from Newton's mechanics in Einstein's mechanics. (no Prize)
  • Theoretical discovery of the Pauli Exclusion Principle impossible to verify experimentally. (1945)
  • Theoretical discovery of statistical interpretation of wave function impossible to verify experimentally. (1954)
  • Experimental discovery of Microwave Background. (1978)
  • Experimental discovery of very small fluctuation in temperature of Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation from Big Bang. (2006)
  • Theoretical discovery of broken symmetry predicting quarks impossible to verify experimentally. (2008)
  • Experimental discovery of accelerating expansion of the Universe from very weak data. (2011)
  • Experimental discovery of Higg's particle as origin of mass from very weak data. (2013)
  • Experimental discovery of very weak gravitational waves from collision of supernovae. (2017)
  • Theoretical discovery that black hole is a prediction of general relativity. (2020)
  • Theoretical discovery that global warming is a prediction of very little atmospheric CO2. (2021)
  • Theoretical discovery of string theory on very very small scales impossible to verify experimentally. (no Prize)
It may seem that all notable effects have already been discovered and so only very very small remain to be discovered. The difficulty of connecting a very small effect to a very large cause (or vice versa) is that a very precise theory is needed in order to build a very precise instrument for experimental verification. Without theory experiment has no objective. Finding a needle in a haystack may be simpler. In addition to experimental discoveries of some vanishingly small effect, we also see Prizes to discoveries of theories beyond experimental verification because effects are so small.  

When the Large Hadron Collider shows to be too small to find anything new of significance and public money for an even larger Super Collider cannot be harvested, physicists turn to use the whole Universe as test bench to find ever smaller effects. There are many things yet to be discovered on scales allowing detection, but this draws little interest from leading physicists focussed on what is infinitely large or infinitesimally small.  

We may compare with the evaluation by Napoleon of the work in his administration of the mathematician Laplace as expert on Infinitesimal Calculus: 
  • He wanted to bring the spirit of infinitesimals into administration.



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