Mind-Blowing Physics Discoveries of the Past: What More Can We Find?

[adjacent]

I was wondering if any more can be discovered.There are no mind blowing advancements made in physics these days,but in 1600 to 1900 there were continuous advancements and now,the rate is decreasing.My point is is there any more mind blowing discoveries to discover like relativity and Newtons gravitation?

 

[micromass]

There are no mind blowing advancements made in physics these days

Who says that?

 

[Danger]

Ever hear of the Higgs bosun?

 

[adjacent]

Who says that?

Certainly not greater than relativity or principia of Newton(of his time)

 

[Danger]

You can't know that. The whole idea of "undiscovered" means that it might be anything that hasn't been thought of.

 

[micromass]

I would dare to say that in the 20th century, more physics was discovered than in the entire history of humans combined. I know for sure that it's true for mathematics, so I guess it's also true for physics. Just because you don't know the physics, doesn't mean that it isn't there.

The theories we develop now are far more complex and more difficult than what Newton or Einstein ever did. I'm not dissing Newton and Einstein though, they are rightfully some of the greatest physicists ever.

So no, physics isn't going to end in a long time. Exciting discoveries are made every day. It just gets less media coverage than relativity theory.

 

[adjacent]

But now a days there are no sudden BIG discoveries that revolutionize the fundamental concepts Like Newton and einstein.In einsteins time one could see thousands crowding einstein.

 

[jackmell]

I was wondering if any more can be discovered.There are no mind blowing advancements made in physics these days,but in 1600 to 1900 there were continuous advancements and now,the rate is decreasing.My point is is there any more mind blowing discoveries to discover like relativity and Newtons gravitation?

You're completely ignoring the non-linear component of change; it doesn't always flow smoothly and often has jump-discontinuities. Sometimes the smallest of change can lead to the biggest of effect, causing a fire-storm of futher developements like what happen when the transistor was introduced. And because the Universe is so massively non-linear, it may also be dense in it's diversity. Recall the Lorenz attractor. It never, ever crosses trajectories and thus in some sense has infinite diversity. This may be true of the Universe as well: there may be no end to discovery.

 

[adjacent]

As einstein once said"Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect, as well as for the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper"
So we have to discover things only then we will be the way we are.Am I right?

 

[Danger]

I suspect that the main reason for the appearance to the public that nothing Earth'shattering is happening is mass media/social media being everywhere including the labs and theoreticians' offices. For the most part, science is a massive collaboration (often among scientists who have never actually met in person) rather than a lone genius hunched over a desk, and a lot of it is done in the public eye. Popular scientific shows like Daily Planet constantly show work under way. Even a huge event such as finding the Higgs bosun isn't surprising because we've all been part of the search through our TV's and magazines, and have been expecting it for years.
Who would ever have heard of Thomas Edison if he had worked for Bell Labs? Although some of you can, I sure can't name the guy who invented transistors.

edit: Your last post went up while I was writing this one, so I just now saw it.
Remember that Einstein was wrong about Determinism. Quantum mechanics kills that whole idea.

 

[FlexGunship]

There are no mind blowing advancements made in physics these days,but in 1600 to 1900 there were continuous advancements and now,the rate is decreasing.My point is is there any more mind blowing discoveries to discover like relativity and Newtons gravitation?

Certainly not greater than relativity or principia of Newton(of his time)

As einstein once said"Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect, as well as for the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper"
So we have to discover things only then we will be the way we are.Am I right?

There's an odd amalgam of ideas here which I'm not following as a consistent thread of thought.

Relativity modified or replaced much of Newton's mechanics from about 200 years earlier. I say we give relativity at least as much time before removing the "EDIT" button from physics. Furthermore, there are amazingly huge problems left to be solved: quantum gravity, explanation of the strength of the gravitational force, the existence of dark matter, and the grand-freakin'-unification theory just to name a few.

I'll pose a counter-question to you, Adjacent:

As we understand more about our universe we uncover new questions that need to be answered; is the total number of questions about physics/reality/existence increasing or decreasing? Correspondingly, should we expect more breakthroughs or fewer?

 

[Office_Shredder]

I have heard that in the late 1800s, people were advised NOT to study physics, because it had basically all been worked out already

 

[DEvens]

I was wondering if any more can be discovered.There are no mind blowing advancements made in physics these days,but in 1600 to 1900 there were continuous advancements and now,the rate is decreasing.My point is is there any more mind blowing discoveries to discover like relativity and Newtons gravitation?

Actually, there are. You just didn't notice because they are pretty darn subtle.

Look up Bell's theorem. Contemplate that it means that quantum mechanics in fact says that there is no such thing as objective reality, at least not while we are not looking. Then note that Bell's theorem only got published in the 1970s.

Or contemplate the Aharonov-Bohm effect. A region in which there is no electric or magnetic field can still have an effect on a charged particle. Whee!
Dan

 

[WannabeNewton]

I love how you only mention Newton and Einstein. What happened to Maxwell and Faraday and Thompson and Kelvin etc? Just because discovery channel makes documentaries about Einstein doesn't mean he was a god amongst physicists. If anything, Faraday was a god amongst physicists.

 

[Andre]

I was wondering if any more can be discovered.

That's what Michelson said too, the other century

The more important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have all been discovered, and these are so firmly established that the possibility of their ever being supplanted in consequence of new discoveries is exceedingly remote.

 

[micromass]

That's what Michelson said too, the other century

That's funny, because it was (among others) his experiment that is the basis of relativity...

 

[Andre]

Exactly

 

[DiracPool]

The difference between today and the days of Newton and Einstein is twofold: 1) in their time, science was not as revered as it is now and 2) dissemination of knowledge was archaic. Therefore, the threshold the average person to receive "science news" was high, and it was only the major advances or breakthroughs in science that came to the public consciousness through discontinuous jumps. This made these advances seem more dramatic than those today.

Today, everyone is hammered daily on even tiny advances in science, so nothing "dramatic" ever seems to happen. But its happening. Imagine that you had tuned out to science over the last 20 years and then tuned in one day to find out that the universe was accelerating, it was 13.7 billion years old, and that only 5% of it is visible matter. I think you might think that was a breakthrough. It may not seem so because you've followed this development day by day.

It's kind of like when you hit middle age and you start gaining weight. It's so small and imperceptible you don't even notice it until you re-unite one weekend with your old college buddies and they don't even recognize you. They look at you and certianly see a "breakthrough." You didn't even notice it...

 

[ZombieFeynman]

I see a lot being mentioned about cosmology and high energy physics. There have exciting advances in condensed mattermand biophysics in just the last decade or two.

 

[ModusPwnd]

If the realm of physics is to include high level, complex or emergent phenomenon then there is plenty left to model.

 

[collinsmark]

Let's not forget about the flood of applied physics and engineering advancements over the last few decades, incremental as they may be. We've only seen the tip of the iceberg.

 

[adjacent]

From the comments of you all,it seems that physics will never end we will encounter different things and discover different things through out human race.Isn't it?

 

[DiracPool]

From the comments of you all,it seems that physics will never end we will encounter different things and discover different things through out human race.Isn't it?

Let me put it this way...Until I am ecstatically happy all the time due to some chemical management of my mood state that doesn't cause hangovers (hark:Soma from Huxley's Brave New World?) or to some utopian dream society we create with our technology, there will be room for progress, at least in physical chemistry. After we've acheived that, it really doesn't matter much.

 

[Danger]

Imagine that you had tuned out to science over the last 20 years and then tuned in one day to find out that the universe was accelerating, it was 13.7 billion years old, and that only 5% of it is visible matter.

One of my absolute favourite authors (although he was a bit of a nut-bar) was Martin Caidin. (He wrote "Marooned" which instigated the Apollo-Soyuz link-up and "Cyborg" which was the much more serious basis for the "Six Million Dollar Man" TV show.) Among his incredible wealth of experiences was being a journalist covering the very beginning of the US space program. He was drinking buddies with all of the first astronauts and military support staff, as well as other science/science-fiction writers. He said something on "The Tomorrow Show" that surprised me but points out how we can be blindsided by advancement. Everyone of his acquaintance knew in their guts that a human would be sent to the moon; that was a given fact to them just by the nature of human efforts and knowledge of how aerospace technology works. Not one of them ever imagined that there would be television sets so people could watch it being done!

 

[DiracPool]

Not one of them ever imagined that there would be television sets so people could watch it being done!

That's a good point. I think humanity as a rule likes to think they are so precient about the technologies that will be created in the future. Just turn on the science channel. However, it always seems to happen that we often get it wrong. But the surprising new technologies we never even dreamed of are often so much better than what we had hoped for.

 

[Danger]

But the surprising new technologies we never even dreamed of are often so much better than what we had hoped for.

Not just new technologies, though. Even unexpected results of common technology make a huge difference in some cases. Who would have thought that a stray piece of mold landing in a Petrie dish would end up saving millions of lives? Or that a failed experiment (Michaelson-Morley) would turn out to be a pivotal discovery in physics when re-examined?
(I know that the history of penicillin is more convoluted than that, so don't anybody go barking at me about it.)