I think most physicists would be thrilled if we discovered something genuinely new and fundamental that forced us to reevaluate all our existing models.
It’s not that bad... in fact, quite the opposite :-)
Whenever we peel back a layer to discover new physics, the old models are never lost, since the new models must necessarily reduce to those in more familiar situations!
Another factor is that as we learn more physics, as important as it might be to find answers, it is even more important to understand how our previous questions/notions might have been naive, and what might be better concepts with which to formulate our models. The variety of perspectives on the meaning of a “particle” merely illustrate that fact, applied to a naive word/concept that we’ve strung along for a long time.
I'm not a professional physicist but it would seem unlikely that one discovery would permanently wipe generations of fruitful knowledge and imagination which has passed the eyes of some of the most brilliant minds that ever walked the planet. Not to say that it can't happen, but it would be more likely that we are missing a component/relationship that we don't understand about our reality either because we don't have to the physical senses to detect it or the technology to measure it. I'd highly consider studying some physics even if you view yourself as a layman, it can geniunely be immense fun!
>"In classical physics, you have the particle/wave duality. Basically, one is the other, depending on frame of reference.
That particle wave duality (I've determined) is actually a particle/wave/field TRINITY.
That is, particles ARE waves (depending on how you look at them), waves are particles (depending on how you look at them), BUT ALSO waves are fields (depending on how you look at them), and fields are waves (depending on how you look at them), and fields are particles (depending on how you look at them) and particles are fields, again, "depending on how you look at them".
Google "Starlings". A single starling at rest is a particle, in motion, it's a wave, and many of them together moving in unision, that's a field.
Also (and this is the advanced lesson), you can have various degrees of recursion in this, for example, a whole field of starlings could be viewed as a single particle, then that could comprise multiple particles if teamed up with other fields of starlings, and then those things could move like wave.
Think nested particles/waves/fields -- inside of other particles/waves/fields.
Also, the smallest unit of space (to implement all of the others), DOESN'T NEED TO PHYSICALLY MOVE; that is, it only needs to state-change, like a pixel, if it were a magnet, it could change from a North Pole to South Pole (or possibly neutral), if charged, the charge could go from positive to negative and back, if a region of force, the force could push one way and then the reverse, etc., etc."
PDS: I don't know; but the author of that post sounds like a crackpot, and pretty delusional to me...
(Oh, wait a second... I'm the author of that post! <g>)
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[ 5.2 ms ] story [ 38.5 ms ] threadMuch of physics is just describing how our world behaves, not what our world is.
To me, It's depressing that all the physics we know could be thrown away with one discovery.
As a lay person, it seems useless to spend too much time learning what we currently know.
It's like becoming well-read on the latest theories of copernicus only to have Isaac Newton blow the whole thing up.
It's great if you're a physicist. It opens doors to new work.
But not so great if you just want to know what it is and how does it work.
It hasn't happened in a while, though.
Whenever we peel back a layer to discover new physics, the old models are never lost, since the new models must necessarily reduce to those in more familiar situations!
Another factor is that as we learn more physics, as important as it might be to find answers, it is even more important to understand how our previous questions/notions might have been naive, and what might be better concepts with which to formulate our models. The variety of perspectives on the meaning of a “particle” merely illustrate that fact, applied to a naive word/concept that we’ve strung along for a long time.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24131831
The author (somewhat of a crackpot!) writes:
>"In classical physics, you have the particle/wave duality. Basically, one is the other, depending on frame of reference.
That particle wave duality (I've determined) is actually a particle/wave/field TRINITY.
That is, particles ARE waves (depending on how you look at them), waves are particles (depending on how you look at them), BUT ALSO waves are fields (depending on how you look at them), and fields are waves (depending on how you look at them), and fields are particles (depending on how you look at them) and particles are fields, again, "depending on how you look at them".
Google "Starlings". A single starling at rest is a particle, in motion, it's a wave, and many of them together moving in unision, that's a field.
Also (and this is the advanced lesson), you can have various degrees of recursion in this, for example, a whole field of starlings could be viewed as a single particle, then that could comprise multiple particles if teamed up with other fields of starlings, and then those things could move like wave.
Think nested particles/waves/fields -- inside of other particles/waves/fields.
Also, the smallest unit of space (to implement all of the others), DOESN'T NEED TO PHYSICALLY MOVE; that is, it only needs to state-change, like a pixel, if it were a magnet, it could change from a North Pole to South Pole (or possibly neutral), if charged, the charge could go from positive to negative and back, if a region of force, the force could push one way and then the reverse, etc., etc."
PDS: I don't know; but the author of that post sounds like a crackpot, and pretty delusional to me...
(Oh, wait a second... I'm the author of that post! <g>)
(I resemble that remark! Doh! <g>)
Oh, physics grad school, never change.