- #1
victorvmotti
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My understanding is that scientific proof, if we mean physics not pure mathematics, is all about "postulations" to explain experiment, observation, and data.
But these set of consistent postulations that give us elegant charming equations have their limits of applications and run into anomalies in the underlying theory.On the issue of anomalies in a given theory consider the Newtonian mechanics and law of gravity. What happens to $$F=ma$$ or $$F=\frac {GmM}{r^2}$$ if you take the limit when the object is massless, i.e. light, and $$m, M = 0$$?
The result of calculations is nonsense, a singularity, division by zero. Here comes a new theory by Einstein, totally disregarding the notion of a "force", and gives you some geometrical sense. Light particles, or photons, can have gravity among themselves, called technically "pure radiation", "null dust", or "Vaidya metric" solution.
Even Einstein version of gravity is immature, because for the interior of black holes, beyond the event horizon, and the Big Bang moment runs into singularity itself. Not to mention that cosmology theory only explains almost 5% of mass energy density of cosmos and the unfit data to current theory is regarded simply as dark energy and dark matter, reflecting our total ignorance, completely "dark" territory of rather known unknowns! Perhaps the key or solution is an unknown unknown.
In the quantum formalism you also get nonsense results if you insist on a particles system and interpretation. When you disregard this "postulate" and introduce the ontological idea of "matter fields" throughout spacetime you can simply avoid nonsense as physicists do in quantum field theory. Yet again your postulate and new theory breaks down when faced with infinitely large energies or small distances, i.e. "ultraviolet divergence". Making you wonder what is really infinity! Perhaps the solution is in rethinking set and number theory!
I am not familiar with string theory but would guess that it also counts on alternative postulates.
A renowned postulate is "the principle of least action" used in classical and quantum and relativity theories based on Lagrangian formalism.The question is if the above understanding is correct and if new alternative postulates can only deal with known unknowns or is it a good scientific method also for unknown unknowns?
The question is should we add a new physical notion that should be observed to avoid singularities of current theory?How about multiverse interpretation of QM. We cannot in principle observe a parallel universe. It will remain unknown. Can we therefore say those theories are "unscientific".
But these set of consistent postulations that give us elegant charming equations have their limits of applications and run into anomalies in the underlying theory.On the issue of anomalies in a given theory consider the Newtonian mechanics and law of gravity. What happens to $$F=ma$$ or $$F=\frac {GmM}{r^2}$$ if you take the limit when the object is massless, i.e. light, and $$m, M = 0$$?
The result of calculations is nonsense, a singularity, division by zero. Here comes a new theory by Einstein, totally disregarding the notion of a "force", and gives you some geometrical sense. Light particles, or photons, can have gravity among themselves, called technically "pure radiation", "null dust", or "Vaidya metric" solution.
Even Einstein version of gravity is immature, because for the interior of black holes, beyond the event horizon, and the Big Bang moment runs into singularity itself. Not to mention that cosmology theory only explains almost 5% of mass energy density of cosmos and the unfit data to current theory is regarded simply as dark energy and dark matter, reflecting our total ignorance, completely "dark" territory of rather known unknowns! Perhaps the key or solution is an unknown unknown.
In the quantum formalism you also get nonsense results if you insist on a particles system and interpretation. When you disregard this "postulate" and introduce the ontological idea of "matter fields" throughout spacetime you can simply avoid nonsense as physicists do in quantum field theory. Yet again your postulate and new theory breaks down when faced with infinitely large energies or small distances, i.e. "ultraviolet divergence". Making you wonder what is really infinity! Perhaps the solution is in rethinking set and number theory!
I am not familiar with string theory but would guess that it also counts on alternative postulates.
A renowned postulate is "the principle of least action" used in classical and quantum and relativity theories based on Lagrangian formalism.The question is if the above understanding is correct and if new alternative postulates can only deal with known unknowns or is it a good scientific method also for unknown unknowns?
The question is should we add a new physical notion that should be observed to avoid singularities of current theory?How about multiverse interpretation of QM. We cannot in principle observe a parallel universe. It will remain unknown. Can we therefore say those theories are "unscientific".
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