Blacklisted

There has been no major breakthrough in physical theory for almost 100 years. This is 2021. The last breakthrough in physics was in 1926 by Erwin Schrodinger. Dr. Schrodinger rejected the Bohr model of the atom and stated simply that there could not be a physical model of the atom, only a mathematical one. The outcry against such a statement was swift and quite harsh. Einstein rushed to Schrodinger’s side, metaphorically speaking, but both Einstein and Schrodinger were shouted down pretty quickly. There has been an incredibly huge wave of confusion, to state it politely, that has washed over the discipline of the hard sciences ever since.

This is known as the crisis in physics. The final conclusion from the finest minds in the realm of knowledge claims that we live within an infinite number of universes in which there are an infinite number of events and each and every event has an infinite number of outcomes. This is a truly sad and pitiful end to physics.

How in the world did the last 100 years or so result in such a state of stagnation when the previous 100 was so progressive? Well, for one thing, there was the Second World War. People may think that war increases scientific discovery. True, we built an atomic bomb and improved many weapons. We invented and hyper-advanced computers and globalized the planet through the internet, but fundamental theoretical progress died. The bomb was known about, and some agreement regarding its use was arrived at, during the Solvay Conference in 1927. Ideas required for computers and the internet were put forward by Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace in the 1800s. The theoretical foundations for the modern miracle of science were in place over a hundred years ago. There has been nothing new since.

And yet the proliferation of articles published over the last 100 years has exploded. Journal publication is massive and yet contains nothing new. And small wonder. Any proposition regarding the use of normal, let us say, and rational scientific principles is not only given the boot, but proponents of such are blacklisted by the scientific publishing industry. People suggesting such are ridiculed, called crackpots, (an actual scientific term coined by Cornell University), lose their jobs as scientists and are simply cut off. There are a number of such cases. Halton Arp and the Burbidges come to mind.

The world of science is addicted to click bait and the absurd. The scientific community is awash with an army of straw men. We must take this in hand and deal with it. There are some pretty good scientists who are somewhat sane in their approach to presenting the world of science to the general public. Two who come to mind are Sabine Hossenfelder and Neil deGrasse Tyson. These two have garnered a huge following while maintaining some connection to sanity. Sabine does some major hand-waving regarding the General Theory of Relativity and has some pretty weird ideas regarding quantum mechanics but, overall, is accurate in quoting her sources. The ideas may be ludicrous, but we know where they are coming from. Neil is more conservative, yet is also in a similar vein as Sabine. I have huge respect for both of them; they are at the top of their game. And yet they are out of the reach of mere mortals and out of touch with reality.

Physics in in a crisis. I mention Sabine and Neil because they are both at the pinnacles of their respective fields. There are others; Paul Halpern and Sean Carroll should also be followed and listened to – not to believe what they say, but to understand the problem and crisis in physics. All base their statements on what they’ve been told rather than on what they have figured out for themselves. I also base a lot of stuff on what I have been told; but I also check the original data and work through the mathematical derivations. That makes a difference.

There is a way out of this mess. It involves looking at our assumptions. They are just assumptions and nothing more. Suppose the reason there has been no advance in the foundations of physics is because our assumptions are incorrect and if anyone questions these assumptions they become immediately blacklisted. We end up with more and more theoretical scaffolding to support a structure which has no “true” foundation: a structure without integrity.

The proposition is this: Let us re-examine our basic assumptions, reject them and assume the exact opposite and see what happens. Then let us see where that leads us.