How do people explore new ideas in physics?

[adam_snyder]

One of the biggest things I'm noticing about the physics community is that there are some serious barriers to entry. As a software engineer, i'm used to a much different style of community. Anyone can create and post open source code, and if it works well it gets adopted. People are generally interested in new ideas and are excited to try them out.

The exact opposite seems to be true in physics. I've tried a few times in different places to get feedback/discussion on the physics work I've done, and every time my posts get deleted and I get attacked for not being published in a peer reviewed journal. Reddit was the worst. I've reached out to people to try to get endorsed on arxiv, but that hasn't been working out either.

My paper isn't some crazy theory, it's a pure math refactoring of general relativity that reproduces the exact same results with different pedagogical understanding and has some real computational benefits. I hesitate to get into to much details for fear of being warned for self promotion.

Does anyone have any advice? Are there any physics communities that people know of that are more open to outsiders? I get that people are probably just tired of crackpots, but when people reject new things without even considering or looking at what they are, potential opportunities are lost. This seems like a major tragedy, especially for somthing as important as understanding the nature of reality itself.

 

[russ_watters]

One of the biggest things I'm noticing about the physics community is that there are some serious barriers to entry.

There's really no way around the fact that the barrier to entry (being educated in physics) is required for practical reasons. There's near zero chance that someone who isn't fully educated and up to date in the subject has anything meaningful to contribute. It would be like a non-doctor suggesting a new surgical technique. At best they'd be ignored by the medical community.

 

[.Scott]

In most cases, it's a LOT easier to test software than Physics.
If you have a better way to run a general relativity model, you don't need an endorsement, you need a collaborator - someone in the Physics community that needs to model space/time as part of their research.
If they can make good use of your work, you might be able to co-author something.

But .. I'll be interested in hearing other responses - since I am also an "outsider" - and a SW Engineer.

 

[fresh_42]

The noise-to-signal ratio is extremely high these days, where anyone can publish anything, for example, on academia.edu. Peer review is one of the ways to separate the wheat from the chaff. How should anybody know whether a read is reasonable or a waste of time?

Modern physics is highly specialized, and each branch has its own language. I recently looked up the details about an earthquake. It included technical information about its physical tensor and moments. I didn't understand a word. So if already an easily available information on the internet requires technical knowledge, how much more does a complex issue in a complex subfield of physics?

I'm not familiar with what physicists are usually confronted by laymen, only the nonsense I occasionally see here. However, I see the nonsense offered in mathematics. And you would think that mathematics is even easier: either something is false or it is true. No way. I can tell from pure sight whether it at least appears to be worth a closer look or not. People still think they have found an easy proof of a theorem with a highly sophisticated proof, only because they understood the statement. I even have a name for them: trisectionists, referring to the (provenly impossible) task of dividing an arbitrary angle into three equal parts by using straightedge and compass.

And physics is probably similar. It is, meanwhile, highly sophisticated, and you need to learn specific languages only to be able to discuss it on a scientific level. And people capable of speaking such a language are normally those who have access to scientific journals, or even arxiv.org.

 

[adam_snyder]

There's really no way around the fact that the barrier to entry (being educated in physics) is required for practical reasons. There's near zero chance that someone who isn't fully educated and up to date in the subject has anything meaningful to contribute. It would be like a non-doctor suggesting a new surgical technique. At best they'd be ignored by the medical community.

This is exactly the attitude I'm talking about. There is a "holier than thou" vibe. The idea that someone couldn't possibly have taught themselves is just objectively wrong. Some of the most important contributions in the history of physics came from people that were outsiders.

Michael Faraday had almost no formal mathematical education, worked as a bookbinder's apprentice. Self taught from books he was binding.

Einstein was a patent clerk, not in academia.

Oliver Heaviside was self taught, worked as a telegraph operator.

The patent clerk who revolutionized physics might not get past today's gatekeepers.

 

[.Scott]

My paper ... , it's a pure math refactoring of general relativity that reproduces the exact same results ... and has some real computational benefits. I hesitate to get into to much details for fear of being warned for self promotion.

Since you're a SW Engineer talking about "real computational benefits", I take that to mean reduced computer processor times.

So, don't get into full details. But do you have a specific case-in-point where you can compare processor time when computed the old way vs. processor time when computer your new way? Have you implemented that comparison, run it, and tabulated the results.

If so, I think a short summary of that would be of interest to this community. Like one paragraph on what physics problem you have chosen, another on the old way of coding a solution, another on your method, and finally a table showing the metrics - accuracy of results, processor times, and perhaps lines of code.

 

[Ibix]

There is a barrier to entry with computer code: does it compile/run and do what you claim in at least a couple of simple test cases. If you can't pass that barrier you'll be ignored.

The difference with physics is that someone else typically can't offload that basic validation of your idea on to a machine. That's why there are tests like peer review, which is basically "did you manage to convince someone your idea was at least half worthwhile". Unfortunately, as @fresh_42 has just noted, people who claim to be able to revolutionise physics are ten a penny so it's very hard to get a professional to look at an idea from a random - they know the odds of anything worthwhile coming from it are next to nothing.

Einstein was a patent clerk, not in academia.

Einstein had a doctorate under Lorentz, one of the foremost physicists of the day, and a solid publication record.

 

[PeroK]

One of the biggest things I'm noticing about the physics community is that there are some serious barriers to entry. As a software engineer, i'm used to a much different style of community. Anyone can create and post open source code, and if it works well it gets adopted. People are generally interested in new ideas and are excited to try them out.

There's no comparison between software development and the development of fundamental physical theories. The software you are posting, I imagine, is limited in scope. Anyone who is competent and motivated can develop software to do this or that.

Professional physics researchers, by and large, are working on a specific problem. Like predicting the gravitational wave pattern for a neutron star collision etc. They are generally not revolutionising physics or unifying GR with quantum mechanics or proving relativity wrong or any of that stuff. But, all the software engineers who post here (and there is no small number of them) are doing precisely that: they have a theory of everything that they've cooked up in less time than they would take to write a software system.

The exact opposite seems to be true in physics. I've tried a few times in different places to get feedback/discussion on the physics work I've done, and every time my posts get deleted and I get attacked for not being published in a peer reviewed journal. Reddit was the worst. I've reached out to people to try to get endorsed on arxiv, but that hasn't been working out either.

See above. We deleted about twenty crackpot threads a week on here. I alone report at least one a day!

My paper isn't some crazy theory, it's a pure math refactoring of general relativity that reproduces the exact same results with different pedagogical understanding and has some real computational benefits. I hesitate to get into to much details for fear of being warned for self promotion.

It's hard to believe that someone who isn't working extremely hard as a professional physicist or mathematician is going to produce something of genuine use or merit. As above, anyone can write a new piece of software, but producing a new, useful mathematical theorem or other advancement is a much greater task.

The forum has recently been discussing genuine new interpretations of QM (a thermal and a stochastic interpretation). These papers are accessible only to those with advanced knowledge and specialism.

Does anyone have any advice? Are there any physics communities that people know of that are more open to outsiders? I get that people are probably just tired of crackpots, but when people reject new things without even considering or looking at what they are, potential opportunities are lost. This seems like a major tragedy, especially for somthing as important as understanding the nature of reality itself.

There are seminars and conferences, but I'd be surprised if an amateur could follow much of the material. It's just too advanced.

Mathematics is worse. You can read a popular-science book about Andrew Wiles and Fermat's last theorem, but there are literally a handful of mathematicians around the world that can seriously assess the proof for correctness.

Mathematics and physics is a different ballgame from software development.

 

[pinball1970]

One of the biggest things I'm noticing about the physics community is that there are some serious barriers to entry. As a software engineer, i'm used to a much different style of community. Anyone can create and post open source code, and if it works well it gets adopted. People are generally interested in new ideas and are excited to try them out.

The exact opposite seems to be true in physics. I've tried a few times in different places to get feedback/discussion on the physics work I've done, and every time my posts get deleted and I get attacked for not being published in a peer reviewed journal. Reddit was the worst. I've reached out to people to try to get endorsed on arxiv, but that hasn't been working out either.

My paper isn't some crazy theory, it's a pure math refactoring of general relativity that reproduces the exact same results with different pedagogical understanding and has some real computational benefits. I hesitate to get into to much details for fear of being warned for self promotion.

Does anyone have any advice? Are there any physics communities that people know of that are more open to outsiders? I get that people are probably just tired of crackpots, but when people reject new things without even considering or looking at what they are, potential opportunities are lost. This seems like a major tragedy, especially for somthing as important as understanding the nature of reality itself.

I like the way you have framed this, you could be a crack pot but you are an articulate crack pot if your are!
PF is very well policed on personal theory people as they tend to be bad posters 99 times out of a hundred.
This keeps the noise to signal ratio low.
As @russ_watters said it will be extremely unlikely you have a theory or just a hypothesis that is correct, novel or relevant.
Physicists do this for a living, they teach it, they experiment, they explore new ideas every day.
Having said that, you made a decent post so, do you know any faculty guys?
Anyone with a physics UG or higher? At your uni?
Talk it through with them?
Im always bugging my science guys from uni with stuff.
I am not a scientist or physicist, so if I had an idea and wrote it up, I would probably think about submitting it to a journal.
One that is not on Beals list.
One author, not associated with a uni, no previous however might just get binned.
@fresh_42 what you think?

 

[russ_watters]

This is exactly the attitude I'm talking about. There is a "holier than thou" vibe.

It's not a "holier than thou attitude", it's a true reality.

The idea that someone couldn't possibly have taught themselves is just objectively wrong.

That's not what I said. I said "near zero". It's certainly possible (not exactly zero) but it is so low as to be a waste of physicists' time searching through thousands of bad papers looking for a good one that may not exist.

Some of the most important contributions in the history of physics came from people that were outsiders.

That's a myth, particularly regarding Einstein. He was a PhD, and it's kinda mind-blowing that you didn't know that.

Also note that when your only real example (Heaviside) is 100 years old, you're just proving how rare it is. And much before that, physics was pretty immature, incomplete and simple. So Faraday didn't have much to learn.

 

[PeroK]

This is exactly the attitude I'm talking about. There is a "holier than thou" vibe. The idea that someone couldn't possibly have taught themselves is just objectively wrong. Some of the most important contributions in the history of physics came from people that were outsiders.

Michael Faraday had almost no formal mathematical education, worked as a bookbinder's apprentice. Self taught from books he was binding.

Einstein was a patent clerk, not in academia.

Oliver Heaviside was self taught, worked as a telegraph operator.

The patent clerk who revolutionized physics might not get past today's gatekeepers.

And George Green was a miller from Nottingham who did ground-breaking work in mathematical physics in the early 1800's. That was 1800, and this is 2025. The amount of physics and mathematics that has been developed in the past 225 years is enormous. The work and theorems of that time are now part of the undergraduate syllabus. Groundbreaking experiments today are multi-million dollar extravagences. Gone are the days when you can look through a telescope and find a new planet. The amount of cosmological data is vast.

Re Einstein, quite the opposite is true. He had to take a job as a patent clerk because no paid university posts were available. Today, he would probably get a post-doctorate position. Academia has opened up to people like Einstein, who were not from wealthier backgrounds and needed a salary. It was the social conditions in those days that restricted academia to those with independent wealth.

 

[martinbn]

If you have done some work, which you think is worth sharing, and have written your paper, then send it to a physics journal. You will get feedback.

 

[fresh_42]

One author, not associated with a uni, no previous however might just get binned.
@fresh_42 what you think?

Yes, but this isn't new. Fermat, Kafka, Galois have all become famous after their deaths as others published what they had left. But how are the chances of binning a new Galois?

I don't see the problem on the publishing side. As mentioned, a publication is easy. The difficulties are on the readers' side. Someone who publishes wants to be read. Now, here is the crux: they don't want to be read by other crackpots, but by serious scientists. By what justification? Every such publisher claims that his work is revolutionary, and even if you are kind and bored, you simply cannot read all of them, disregarding the fact that most of them are extremely painful to read. So, how to convince an intended reader? That is the point, not the publication. The time of a scientist is extremely valuable. You basically have only around 20 years for your own research. Too young and you don't know enough, too old and you risk becoming a tragic figure (Zuse, Atiyah, Nash), or the least, your productivity falls low. Hence, you are forced to manage your time efficiently, and I'm afraid reading other people's papers with a 99% chance of wasting time on nonsense won't make it on the list.

My mentor once told me about a dialogue with his former mentor:
"How many books (novels) do you read a year? Let's say 10. How old are you? Do the multiplication, and choose wisely!"

 

[adam_snyder]

And George Green was a miller from Nottingham who did ground-breaking work in mathematical physics in the early 1800's. That was 1800, and this is 2025. The amount of physics and mathematics that has been developed in the past 225 years is enormous. The work and theorems of that time are now part of the undergraduate syllabus. Groundbreaking experiments today are multi-million dollar extravagences. Gone are the days when you can look through a telescope and find a new planet. The amount of cosmological data is vast.

Re Einstein, quite the opposite is true. He had to take a job as a patent clerk because no paid university posts were available. Today, he would probably get a post-doctorate position. Academia has opened up to people like Einstein, who were not from wealthier backgrounds and needed a salary. It was the social conditions in those days that restricted academia to those with independent wealth.

And we have much more powerful computers and tools to help us learn as well... Taught myself a crash course in quantum mechanics with 11 hour youtube videos like this:

 

[adam_snyder]

I like the way you have framed this, you could be a crack pot but you are an articulate crack pot if your are!
PF is very well policed on personal theory people as they tend to be bad posters 99 times out of a hundred.
This keeps the noise to signal ratio low.
As @russ_watters said it will be extremely unlikely you have a theory or just a hypothesis that is correct, novel or relevant.
Physicists do this for a living, they teach it, they experiment, they explore new ideas every day.
Having said that, you made a decent post so, do you know any faculty guys?
Anyone with a physics UG or higher? At your uni?
Talk it through with them?
Im always bugging my science guys from uni with stuff.
I am not a scientist or physicist, so if I had an idea and wrote it up, I would probably think about submitting it to a journal.
One that is not on Beals list.
One author, not associated with a uni, no previous however might just get binned.
@fresh_42 what you think?

LOL. I didn't go to college, so I'm totally outside of the "normal". I don't have any connections. I'm fully self taught...

Maybe I am a crackpot. Sometimes I wonder... But math doesn't really lie. I would love for someone to review my work and tell me if I should abandon my hobby!

 

[adam_snyder]

If you have done some work, which you think is worth sharing, and have written your paper, then send it to a physics journal. You will get feedback.

Oh, I can just do that? Do you have a recommendation for a journal that would be interested in a full refactoring of GR math?

 

[martinbn]

Oh, I can just do that? Do you have a recommendation for a journal that would be interested in a full refactoring of GR math?

What do you mean by refactoring? What journals are the papers you have read published in?

 

[Bandersnatch]

Einstein had a doctorate under Lorentz

I don't think that's correct. It was Kleiner.

 

[.Scott]

What do you mean by refactoring? What journals are the papers you have read published in?

Refactoring is a computer engineering term.

Physicist deal with equations. Those equations can be stated or restated in different terms to make a different point in an argument.

But when it is necessary to perform specific calculations - to implement a Physics model on a computer - then those equation transition from "declarations" to "imperatives" that direct the operations of the computer. What becomes important is not whether a point is made - but what kind and amount of processor resources will be needed to do the computations.

So, instead of changing the terms to make a point, you change the terms so that you avoid recalculating the same thing over and over again. Or you arrange things so that you can control the precision economically.

A great example of this kind of "refactoring" is the FFT. If you start with the Fourier transform and just code it up directly as written, you will not be making efficient use of your available computer resources.
J W Cooley and John Tukey refactored the DFT problem and published their method in 1965. It has made a huge difference.

 

[Ibix]

I don't think that's correct. It was Kleiner.

I stand corrected. Looks like Lorentz did teach him, but was not his PhD advisor.

 

[fresh_42]

I stand corrected. Looks like Lorentz did teach him, but was not his PhD advisor.

https://www.research-collection.eth.../fc0b3f1c-59c6-4e0c-b2cc-e9a84abc0e25/content

 

[PeroK]

And we have much more powerful computers and tools to help us learn as well... Taught myself a crash course in quantum mechanics with 11 hour youtube videos like this:

Perhaps you could pass an undergraduate QM exam, but there is a gulf between that and doing new research.

 

[.Scott]

Oh, I can just do that? Do you have a recommendation for a journal that would be interested in a full refactoring of GR math?

I have no experience in this, but this seems to be in the ball park:
https://iopscience.iop.org/journal/1347-4065/page/submission-options

It's the "Japanese Journal of Applied Physics" - but its published in English and has wide distribution.

 

[Haborix]

I think OP could have a more productive discussion by posting in the relativity subforum using the homework template. It really sounds like OP has manipulated some GR equations for a Schwarzschild black hole and then solved them numerically. The claim doesn't seem to be that the algorithm for the numerical solution is faster but just that the PDE starting point is somehow advantageous.

 

[.Scott]

I think OP could have a more productive discussion by posting in the relativity subforum using the homework template. It really sounds like OP has manipulated some GR equations for a Schwarzschild black hole and then solved them numerically. The claim doesn't seem to be that the algorithm for the numerical solution is faster but just that the PDE starting point is somehow advantageous.

Yes to the "manipulated part". No to the "faster" part - that is, his algorithm is faster.

He is claiming that of the two software implementations of this problem, the second method is hugely faster than the "traditional" method. And, although I have not tried to run his code, a code inspection suggests that it most certainly should be faster.

So, the remaining questions are:
1) Is anyone actually using the "traditional method".
2) Are the two methods really (or practically) equivalent?

He can demonstrate the answer to that second question with either changes to his test procedure and how he describes it (as I explained in an earlier post). Although, it would be good if one of our Forum Physicists could verify it - because they might have better in sight into whether this could be applied to rotating BH and such.

 

[Haborix]

I'm not really convinced that what is being called the traditional method isn't starting from a different set of PDEs. In other words, I think the numerics are getting confused with the equation selection and manipulation.

[EDIT] To try and make my point clearer. Say I come up with two formulations of the same physical problem and apply Runge-Kutta to numerically solve each. If one formulation gets solved more quickly than the other, I don't attribute that difference to the numerics---both formulations use the same numerical method.

 

[jbergman]

One of the biggest things I'm noticing about the physics community is that there are some serious barriers to entry. As a software engineer, i'm used to a much different style of community. Anyone can create and post open source code, and if it works well it gets adopted. People are generally interested in new ideas and are excited to try them out.

The exact opposite seems to be true in physics. I've tried a few times in different places to get feedback/discussion on the physics work I've done, and every time my posts get deleted and I get attacked for not being published in a peer reviewed journal. Reddit was the worst. I've reached out to people to try to get endorsed on arxiv, but that hasn't been working out either.

My paper isn't some crazy theory, it's a pure math refactoring of general relativity that reproduces the exact same results with different pedagogical understanding and has some real computational benefits. I hesitate to get into to much details for fear of being warned for self promotion.

Does anyone have any advice? Are there any physics communities that people know of that are more open to outsiders? I get that people are probably just tired of crackpots, but when people reject new things without even considering or looking at what they are, potential opportunities are lost. This seems like a major tragedy, especially for somthing as important as understanding the nature of reality itself.

I don't understand. Why can't you just post your work on a blog or github or YouTube? I have done this before and have good results. What specifically are you looking for?

 

[PAllen]

This is exactly the attitude I'm talking about. There is a "holier than thou" vibe. The idea that someone couldn't possibly have taught themselves is just objectively wrong. Some of the most important contributions in the history of physics came from people that were outsiders.

Michael Faraday had almost no formal mathematical education, worked as a bookbinder's apprentice. Self taught from books he was binding.

Wrong. He did a long apprenticeship with Sir Humphrey Davy (president of the Royal Society, world famous chemist) before his work on EM. Also, the field was young and undeveloped compared to physics fields today.

Einstein was a patent clerk, not in academia.

Wrong again. He graduated from a top physics school, and was working in a patent office temporarily while finalizing his doctoral thesis. He was already affiliated with Annalen der Physik, a leading journal of the time.

Oliver Heaviside was self taught, worked as a telegraph operator.

Don't know this history, but your track record above leaves me thinking there is a lot more to the story.

The patent clerk who revolutionized physics might not get past today's gatekeepers.

 

[Nugatory]

Einstein was a patent clerk, not in academia.

However he also had been through the most rigorous physics program available at the the time, had completed his PhD, was a regular correspondent with many of the top physicists of the era and was familiar with the work that had already been done by Lorentz, Fitzgerald, Poincaré towards the problem that special relativity finally solved.

Einstein was not a lone genius slaving away in isolation to find a truth that had escaped the academic community. Instead, his early career confirmed that you cannot advance the frontiers of knowledge unless you know where the frontier is and have gotten yourself there.

 

[PeterDonis]

I would love for someone to review my work and tell me if I should abandon my hobby!

Unfortunately we don't do that here. Please note that your post showing some of your work, and a number of posts in response to it, have been deleted. They're off topic, both because we don't review personal research here, and because this is the GD forum, not one of the physics forums, which is where actual physics questions belong.

 

[PeterDonis]

I think a short summary of that would be of interest to this community.

"A short summary" is still personal research and off topic here.

 

[Hornbein]

Don't know this history, but your track record above leaves me thinking there is a lot more to the story.

History says that Oliver Heaviside was self taught and did highly original and important work. But that was in the 19th century. Faraday was 200 years ago.

No one knows whether all the easier things have already been discovered, but it seems that way.

 

[.Scott]

"A short summary" is still personal research and off topic here.

Despite his sales pitch, his idea is just computational. He saying he has a better way of doing some calculations. If his way of computing the red shift comes up with a different number - it wouldn't be new Physics, it would just be a mistake.
It's the same nature of "research" that someone would use in finding a different way to figure out a homework problem. All I am doing is asking him to be very explicit in explaining his solution - to make it easier to verify.

 

[PeterDonis]

Despite his sales pitch, his idea is just computational. He saying he has a better way of doing some calculations.

That's still personal research. PF is not for reviewing that kind of work.

 

[PeterDonis]

All I am doing is asking him to be very explicit in explaining his solution - to make it easier to verify.

If you want to spend the time and effort doing that via PM with the OP, that's up to you. But it's off topic in a public thread.

 

[PeroK]

If you want to spend the time and effort doing that via PM with the OP, that's up to you. But it's off topic in a public thread.

That said, it looks more like "advanced physics homework". The problem is in the expectation that it's something for a physics journal or publication, rather than something for a tutor or homework helper to review.

 

[PeterDonis]

it looks more like "advanced physics homework"

A question about the relevant equations might be. But this...

it's a pure math refactoring of general relativity that reproduces the exact same results with different pedagogical understanding and has some real computational benefits. I hesitate to get into to much details for fear of being warned for self promotion.

...is not.

 

[Rive]

One of the biggest things I'm noticing about the physics community is that there are some serious barriers to entry.

Sure. Physics has that pesky 'reality' thing above all, what makes a difference: those who did not prove beforehand to be able to walk the walk will have clear difficulties.

My paper is ... pure math refactoring of general relativity that reproduces the exact same results.... and has some real computational benefits.

I think you will need to prove two things really carefully in a paper.

First is, that there is significant benefit: this part is just a benchmark of calculations with different methods.
This part may seem simple, but you need to be extremely familiar with the calculation methods in use and the cutting edge problems people has. Basic university grade stuff won't cut it, not even close.

Second, most important part: mathematically prove that your method is really equivalent with GR within the whole already proven framework (or within a significant and important enough part of it) of GR. Just pointing out that at the end the numbers are the same won't cut it.

If you frame your idea as a computational benefit and not some 'new pedagogical understanding' or whatnot then you might pass the hurdle. There is a decent heritage of seemingly competing but (at least within a range) mathematically equivalent approaches in physics (with different benefits) so if your stuff is sound, then it's not entirely hopeless.

But: not here.

 

[pinball1970]

This is exactly the attitude I'm talking about. There is a "holier than thou" vibe. The idea that someone couldn't possibly have taught themselves is just objectively wrong. Some of the most important contributions in the history of physics came from people that were outsiders.

Michael Faraday had almost no formal mathematical education, worked as a bookbinder's apprentice. Self taught from books he was binding.

Einstein was a patent clerk, not in academia.

Oliver Heaviside was self taught, worked as a telegraph operator.

The patent clerk who revolutionized physics might not get past today's gatekeepers.

Damn it, I did not read this post, just the first one.
Ok so my crankometer just went off a little.
Comparing yourself to Faraday and Einstein really is not the way to go, and believe it or not this is not the first time we have heard that.

 

[TensorCalculus]

If you want the opinion of someone who’s also self-taught in physics, though maybe not to the same level as you are, it’s the same as most of the people on this thread.

- You could spend one hour learning python and ship a basic text-based game on GitHub. You can spend a couple months learning game dev and ship a really decent game on GitHub.
- One hour of physics and you probably haven’t even started to describe any physical systems yet, let alone post something of meaning online. A couple months of physics and even if you were an astoundingly quick learner you wouldn’t be past the stage where everything is drastically “dumbed down” and sometimes twisted just to make life simpler for people learning physics. You still probably wouldn’t even understand a good chunk the conversations on online forums like PF (especially the technical conversations), let alone make worthwhile contributions to science.

The difference between the amount you can contribute to the coding and physics community after a certain amount of time only increases from there. Someone who has been teaching themselves coding for 10 years will be able to contribute much more to the community than someone who has been teaching themselves physics for 10 years. That’s just the nature of the subject.

And we have much more powerful computers and tools to help us learn as well... Taught myself a crash course in quantum mechanics with 11 hour youtube videos like this:

If learning off a YouTube video gave you the neccesary knowledge and tools to make a groundbreaking contribution to science, wouldn’t the person who made the video have already made said contribution by now?

 

[.Scott]

A question about the relevant equations might be. But this...

[... refactoring of general relativity ...]
...is not.

I think you have succumbed to his sales pitch. I strongly suspect that the alternative equation he is using is already well-known.
In the code he presents no "argument" in its favor - seeming to presume that it is known to be valid.
In fact, I would add that as another complaint to him - he needs a citation for that as well.
His "claim to fame" is that he is picking the right equation to implement in code.

 

[Dale]

Einstein was a patent clerk, not in academia.
…
The patent clerk who revolutionized physics might not get past today's gatekeepers.

Einstein was in academia. He published in the professional scientific literature of his time. He was an academic that also worked as a patent clerk, not a scientific outsider. He followed the standard processes of the scientific community of his day, I see no reason why he would have had any difficulty doing the same thing today.

when people reject new things without even considering or looking at what they are, potential opportunities are lost.

Potential opportunities are also lost when people do consider each new thing and look at what they are. There is an opportunity cost either way.

My paper isn't some crazy theory, it's a pure math refactoring of general relativity that reproduces the exact same results with different pedagogical understanding and has some real computational benefits.

Do you have a recommendation for a journal that would be interested in a full refactoring of GR math?

Seems like it would be suitable for a math or computational physics journal. I don’t know that area of the literature well enough to suggest a journal.

Often, you can get a good idea of which journal to publish in based on which journals you have researched during the project. Which journals did you research and how many papers from each did you study?

 

[PeterDonis]

I think you have succumbed to his sales pitch.

No, I'm just pointing out that his "sales pitch" makes his proposal off topic. The fact that his "sales pitch" might not be an accurate description of what he's actually doing is irrelevant; he's still making the "sales pitch" claim, and that's how the thread is going to be treated.

I strongly suspect that the alternative equation he is using is already well-known.

Again, if you want to try to work that out with him via PM, that's up to you. Doing the work to try to figure out whether the "sales pitch" claim is really true or not is off topic for this public thread.

 

[Herman Trivilino]

Taught myself a crash course in quantum mechanics with 11 hour youtube videos

Such a thing is impossible. It's a delusion.

Just as you can freely release open source software that you've created, you can also self-publish your physics ideas. Having a degree, or even being published in a peer-reviewed journal, is no assurance that your work will be taken seriously, or indeed even looked at, by the physics community.

The same is true of the software you create. Releasing open source code is equivalent to self-publishing.

 

[ersmith]

@adam_snyder if you have a software development background, and believe you have found some improved ways to do computational general relativity, why don't you contribute to one of the many open source GR programs? A Google search turns up a number of projects on GitHub, and some other projects associated with universities and research groups. Your actual working code should be welcome there (subject to the usual requirements of peer review and such).

May I humbly suggest, though, that you not compare yourself to Faraday or Einstein when submitting your pull requests. You're probably quite a smart person, but *very* few people indeed are in Faraday 's league, and fewer still are in Einstein 's. Plus, as others have pointed out, neither of them were self taught outsiders.

 

[PAllen]

A little off topic, but since I alluded to Faraday's long apprenticeship with Sir Humphrey Davy that acted as bridge from self teaching to actual research, an amusing quote from Davy is that when asked, late in life, what he thought his greatest discovery was, he said Michael Faraday.

 

[sbrothy]

@adam_snyder if you have a software development background, and believe you have found some improved ways to do computational general relativity, why don't you contribute to one of the many open source GR programs? A Google search turns up a number of projects on GitHub, and some other projects associated with universities and research groups. Your actual working code should be welcome there (subject to the usual requirements of peer review and such).

May I humbly suggest, though, that you not compare yourself to Faraday or Einstein when submitting your pull requests. You're probably quite a smart person, but *very* few people indeed are in Faraday 's league, and fewer still are in Einstein 's. Plus, as others have pointed out, neither of them were self taught outsiders.

Also, a little humility is a becoming character trait. Opening an exchange by pointing out your own brilliance invites skepticism.

You can always impress people later.

 

[fresh_42]

I just explained in a DM how math proofs must be read. I think it is a nice, though very simple example of why it is a big deal to proofread scientific texts. It is not as if you could read them like an essay. Here is my example:

Proposition: The square root of a prime number is an irrational number.

Proof: If there is a prime number $p$ such that $\sqrt{p}\in\mathbb{Q}$, then we have an equation
$$
\sqrt{p} = \dfrac{r}{s}\quad (*),
$$
where we may assume that $r,s$ are coprime. Hence, $p \cdot s^2=r^2.$ Thus $p$ divides $r,$ say, $r=q\cdot p.$ Then $r^2=q^2\cdot p^2$ and $s^2=q^2\cdot p.$ This, however, implies that $p$ divides $s$ and $r/s$ wasn't coprime, contradicting our assumption. This means that the equation $(*)$ does not exist and $\sqrt{p}\not\in \mathbb{Q}.\quad\blacksquare$

This is one of the shortest proofs I know. Yet, it is full of questions whose answers are not included: Why can we make those assumptions, the existence of such a $p$, the fraction, coprimality? Where did we use that $p$ is prime? It must have been used, since $\sqrt{36}$ is definitely rational.

Now for the extended version of how it has to be read:

Proof: If there is a prime number $p$ such that $\sqrt{p}\in\mathbb{Q},$ ...

[Indirect proof by contradiction. We want to show non-existence, so we assume existence and require that our conclusions will inevitably lead to a contradiction. Since FALSE cannot follow from TRUE, the assumption had to be FALSE.]

... then we have an equation
$$
\sqrt{p} = \dfrac{r}{s}\quad (*),
$$

[By the definition of rational numbers, and our assumption.]

where we may assume that $r,s$ are coprime.

[Why may we assume that? Imagine $\sqrt{p}=\dfrac{r'}{s'}$ and $r',s'$ weren't coprime. This means that there is an integer $t'$ such that $r'=r''\cdot t'$ and $s'=s''\cdot t'.$ Next, we may cancel $t'$ and receive an expression $\sqrt{p}=\dfrac{r'}{s'}=\dfrac{r''\cdot t'}{s''\cdot t'}=\dfrac{r''}{s''}.$ If $r'',s''$ are still not coprime, then we continue with that procedure. But why does it have to come to an end? $r',s'$ are finite numbers and as such can only have finitely many, proper (not $\pm 1$) divisors. Every cancellation leads to a smaller value of $|r''|,|s''|$ by the Euclidean division since we excluded $\pm 1.$ Note that we used that the integers are a Euclidean domain. (Maybe there are other ways to show that the procedure has to halt. I just took what I had anyway.) But the positive integers $|r''|,|s''|$ are bounded from below by $0,$ so we cannot go on forever. At the end, we have a coprime representation in $(*).$]

Hence, $p \cdot s^2=r^2.$

[Simple algebra.]

Thus $p$ divides $r,$ ...

[Why? This is where we use that $p$ is prime. We have $p \,|\,p\cdot s^2=r\cdot r$ and a prime number is one, that whenever it divides a product, in our case $r\cdot r,$ then it has to divide one of its factors. We have only the factor $r,$ so $p$ has to divide $r.$ This argument fails for non-prime numbers. E.g., $36\,|\,12\cdot 12$ but $36\,\nmid\,12.$ Pretty hidden, isn't it?]

... say, $r=q\cdot p.$ Then $r^2=q^2\cdot p^2$

[Algebra.]

and $s^2=q^2\cdot p.$

[Substitution plus cancellation of the common factor $p.$ Note that the cancellation can only be done since $\mathbb{Z}$ is an integral domain. We have $a\cdot x= b\cdot x.$ How can we conclude $a=b$? We first get $a\cdot x- b\cdot x=(a-b)\cdot x=0.$ If there are no zero-divisors, we may conclude $x=0$ OR $a-b=0$ which means, if $x\neq 0$ that $a=b.$ That's how cancellation works. It does not automatically work if there are zero-divisors. Consider $\mathbb{Z}/6\mathbb{Z}.$ Then $2\cdot 3=0$ although $2\neq 0$ and $3\neq 0.$ ]

This, however, implies that $p$ divides $s$ ...

[By the same argument as before. We use that $p$ is prime and divides a product, this time $s\cdot s.$]

... and $r/s$ wasn't coprime, contradicting our assumption.

[This is the contradiction we needed: ($r,s$ are coprime) AND ($r,s$ have a common factor $p$) is FALSE. Note that we used $p>1$ here. We use that units cannot be primes!]

This means that the equation $(*)$ does not exist ...

[as we falsely assumed]

... and $\sqrt{p}\not\in \mathbb{Q}.$

[Again, by definition of $\mathbb{Q}.$]
$\blacksquare$

Sure, this example is more or less trivial. Nevertheless, it shows all the hidden properties of primes and integers that I have used without mentioning. One sees that the written-out thoughts are significantly longer than the proof itself. Now, that happens with every scientific text, only that the parts in brackets are way longer, often requiring looking up many references, scribblings to convince the reader, and so on. This is why it is not a matter of kindness to read a paper. It is hard work!

 

[sbrothy]

OK. Your move Sir. I’m out of here.

 

[PeroK]

Proposition: the square root of a positive integer is either an integer or irrational (it cannot be a proper rational).

Proof (by contraposition). Let $m/n$ be a proper rational, where $m, n$ have no common factors (and $n \ne 1$). This implies that the prime factors of $m$ and $n$ are disjoint sets. Note that $m^2$ and $n^2$ have the same prime factors as $m$ and $n$ respectively. Those are the same disjoint sets, hence $m^2$ and $n^2$ have no common factors, $n^2 \ne 1$, hence $m^2/n^2$ is a proper rational. QED

That's my contribution to the development of mathematics. Why that proof is not taught to undergraduates is beyond me. That said, there must have been a mathematician somewhere, sometime who taught it that way. That the square root of any whole number is irrational (unless the number is a perfect square) seems like the sort of reason we study mathematics in the first place. Being prime is not the issue. It's not being a perfect square.

But, in 2025, my proof hardly counts as original research. It must already be somewhere.