Has Physics Lost Its Way?

Re:Has Physics Lost Its Way? by SkyMarshal on Thursday March 19, 2020 @02:33PM (#22630269)

IANAP but my understanding is we've reached a point where it's very difficult to test anything in physics. Eg, we've picked all the low-hanging fruit and everything left is something that requires large expenditures to test (more powerful particle colliders, etc).

Is there some alternative direction available where testing and verification are easier and cheaper?

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Re:Has Physics Lost Its Way? by 609venezia on Thursday March 19, 2020 @07:02PM (#22632696)

>Is there some alternative direction available where testing and verification are easier and cheaper?

A plurality of physicists now work in condensed matter. See e.g.

https://physicstoday.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/PT.3.4110

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Re:Has Physics Lost Its Way? by adamc on Thursday March 19, 2020 @05:02PM (#22631707)

This is the right question, although I don't know if there is a happy answer. If we need ever more expensive experiments to learn anything, progress is going to become very slow.

Maybe that's why there is so much math; math is cheap. And there is always the hope of coming up with something testable.

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