What's Your Favorite Scientific Theory?

[BadgerBadger92]

I was just wondering what all of your guys favorite theory! For me it is a tie between special relativity and general relativity. I mainly want to know so I can look up any theories posted and learn about them.

So what’s your favorite theory?

 

[JT Smith]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Elk's_Theory_on_Brontosauruses

 

[Algr]

I was quite impressed by Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond.
Simulation theory also sounds like fun, but it is more like fantasy then anything we'll ever really be able to use.

 

[topsquark]

That Stan Lee is really Uatu, the Watcher.

Seriously, original Heisenberg Matrix Mechanics.

-Dan

 

[Vanadium 50]

Dunning & Kruger

 

[Hornbein]

I like the theory that the Moon is an alien spaceship.

 

[malawi_glenn]

Quantum Field Theory

 

[Buzz Bloom]

I find that there are many conjectures sometimes referred to by "Theory". My favorite is the conjecture/Theory that the universe is finite.

 

[Grelbr42]

My fave theory is clearly QED. It's massively successful with comparisons to experiment to an amazing number of digits. The magnetic moment of the electron is now getting to the point where we will need to include weak interactions to progress the calculation.

For things *adjacent* to theories, not really theory as such, but important results, I have two that I am exceedingly fond of.

There is Noether's theorem. It connects symmetry to conserved quantities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noether's_theorem

And there is Bell's inequality. This is a result that shows a method that can experimentally distinguish between causal-deterministic theories and quantum mechanics.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell's_theorem

 

[gmax137]

I can't believe I missed this thread when it first came out .

 

[BillTre]

As a biologist, I have several favorite theories:

• cell theory
• evolution by natural selection (but also other kinds of evolutionary change like drift)
• endosymbiosis
• neuron doctrine
• processes underlying molecular biology

These provide a basis for modern biology.

 

[DaveE]

Dunning-Kruger

 

[phinds]

Experimental evidence over many years tells me that my favorite is Murphy's Law.

 

[Vanadium 50]

Dunning & Kruger

Dunning-Kruger

Hmmm....

 

[Vanadium 50]

Murphy's Law.

When I was a student I went to a colloquium by a guy who floew balloons. He plotted the fraction of time they landed instrument side down vs. the cost of the payload - a straight line. Experimental proof of Murphy's Law!

 

[hutchphd]

Do we really need more proof?

 

[Hornbein]

My favorite theory is the Aquatic Theory, that mankind originated in a place where they did a lot of swimming.

 

[BoraxZ]

My favorite is the rishon model. Only two Weyl spinor fields (and 17 (8+8+1) associated massless gauge fields, based on a SU(3)xSU(3)xU(1) symmetry) are needed to describe the world of particles (without gravity). If one of them, call it C (with anti c) is electrically charged (1/3), and the other has zero electric charge (the rest being equal), call it Y (with anti u) then the particles of the standard model are:

Elektron: ccc
Up-quark: CCU
Down-quark: cuu
E. neutrino: UUU

Families are excitations of these bound states.

It's interesting to see what happens if we consider the electron, proton, neutron, and neutrino (which are universally present in a 1:1:1:1 ratio):

Electron: ccc
Proton: CCU CCU cuu
Neutron: CCU cuu cuu
Neutrino: UUU

What do we see? There are 6 C's and c's, and 6 U's and U's. Which means equal amounts of matter and antimatter! Which means that a version Wheeler's one-electron universe is applicable (and in this model a positron is indeed present in the proton as Wheeler hypothesized). The electron being a U or a C. Proton decay is "easily" explained (heuristically). In fact, ALL particle interactions could be.explained in this way .

Of course, there is no evidence that quarks or leptons are composite. But there is a lot of space left between the Planck scale and 10^-21m. Just smash two electrons head-on and listen if you hear a rattle within them. Or maybe the muon-g2 experiment is an expression of this theory. Or it is a fata morgana. Nature will tell us. I wonder how strong theory had to modified, if that could be done....

 

[PeterDonis]

My favorite is the rishon model.

I assume you mean this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rishon_model

 

[Pythagorean]

I also have several:

abiogenesis (how life started from chemistry and physics)
symbiogenesis (eukaryotes are the result of cells "eating" other cells then making them into organelles)
generalized information theory (still under construction)
Proto-Indo-European reconstruction (Sanskrit, Persian, Gaelic, Russian, English, Norwegian and many more all descended from the same ancestor language and we can assess this through technique analogous to genealogy)
topological approach to quantum gravity (entangled particles are doughnut holes or something, I don't know)