Re:Have You Ever Tried to Sell a Diamond? (1982)
by WiseWeasel on Wednesday September 19, 2012 @12:38AM
(#4542109)
I meant until a particular theory in theoretical physics is found practical, or at least verifiable, it's more fantasy than reality as far as most people are concerned. I never meant to imply that the entire field of theoretical physics is impractical or irrelevant, or that it hasn't yielded any results. At that point, I might expect the physics to fall less in the domain of the theoretical however, and more in applied.
Simple example that many people use day-to-day is relativity and GPS (eg http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/~pogge/Ast162/Unit5/gps.... <- that's just the first likely looking Google result for GPS+relativity, feel free to look for yourself).
I guess things like transistors, fibre optics, nuclear power, and lasers are so far removed from everyday life that theoretical physics simply has no application to reality. /sarcasm