Many talk of a crisis in particle physics. Boson pioneer Carlo Rubbia’s advice is to smash atoms in new and crative ways:
More than three decades later, particle physics once again finds itself at a crossroads. A decision looms about which big particle-collider experiment to build next — if indeed one is built at all. While CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) has performed flawlessly, its collisions have yielded no signs of new particles beyond the expected 17, whose properties and interactions are described by the Standard Model of particle physics. This model makes incredibly accurate predictions about those particles’ behavior, yet it’s also understood to be an incomplete description of our world. It fails to include the gravitational force or dark matter — the mysterious substance that astronomers consider to be about five times more abundant than normal matter — or account for the universe’s matter-antimatter imbalance. Moreover, many theorists feel uneasy about the Standard Model’s inability to explain its own basic truths, such as why there are three families of quarks and leptons, and what determines the particles’ masses.
Rubbia, who at 85 remains at the forefront of the field, isn’t fazed by the absence of “new physics” in the LHC data. He urges his peers to press on in search of more and better data and to trust that answers will come. The Higgs boson — the 17th piece in the Standard Model puzzle — materialized at the LHC in 2012, and now Rubbia wants to explore its characteristics in depth with a state-of-the-art “Higgs factory.”
Thomas Lewton, “A Call for Courage as Physicists Confront Collider Dilemma” at Quanta
In the interview with Lewton that follows the article, Rubia says, “I’m a bit concerned that the future of particle physics at CERN does not involve, so far, any new alternative after the termination of the LHC program. When I was responsible for the activities at CERN, whenever we had one machine, we had the next one coming. We need to have more courage, and collectively agree on alternatives.”
Just a thought: Could the great age of particle physics be coming to an end? That is, not so much a crisis as the beginning of a long, slow decline? That happened to science in many former civilizations. There were high points and then somehow things slowed down. How would we know?
That might be the explanation for the way speculation on, say, the multiverse substitutes in many people’s minds for science.
See also: Sabine Hossenfelder: Has The Large Hadron Collider “Broken Physics”?
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The purpose of particle physics is to generate a purpose for particle physics. As with any bureaucracy, each stage of “solving” a problem must fail in a way that “justifies” more expenditure. Real physics was complete in 1900. The rest is just exponentially self-increasing consumption of tax money.
Could it be that the cost of building ever larger colliders is very high and the benefits appear to be very low?
This is an interesting comment:
In the following article, Luke Barnes reflects on some of ‘its own basic truths’ that the standard model is unable to account for:
Likewise, in the following interview with Richard Dawkins, Steven Weinberg makes a similar confession to “the fix we are in”,,,
And while atheists may be befuddled as to where theses finely tuned laws of nature come from the Christian Theist knows exactly where they come from. In fact modern science was born precisely out of the presupposition of God being behind the laws of nature.
In fact, the first major unification in physics, and arguably the founding of modern physics itself, was Sir Isaac Newton’s realization, which was born out of his Christian worldview, that “the same force that caused an apple to fall at the Earth’s surface—gravity—was also responsible for holding the Moon in orbit about the Earth”,,
In regards to this first unification, Sir Isaac Newton stated: “This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being. And if the fixed stars are the centres of other like systems, these, being formed by the like wise counsel, must be all subject to the dominion of One;,,,”
Besides atheists being unable to account for where the laws of nature come from, the atheist also has no clue as to why we should be able to describe the universe with mathematics in the first place. Both Einstein and Wigner are on record as to regarding it as a miracle that we could dare even describe the universe with mathematics:
Atheists, as the quote from Weinberg made clear, apparently believe that mathematics is some sort of self existent entity that needs no explanation for its existence. Yet Godel, with his incompleteness theorem, has shown that mathematics is not some sort of self existent entity that needs no explanation for its existence.
As Stanley Jaki put it,
In fact, I hold that not only can atheists not account for the “miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics”, but I also hold that our own unique ability to contemplate the timeless, immaterial, and yet ‘incomplete’, Platonic realm of mathematics is proof that we ourselves must have a immaterial, timeless, even eternal, component to our being, i.e. a ‘soul/mind’, that is inexplicable to the materialistic belief of Darwinists that holds we are purely material beings.
As Johannes Kepler stated
And as Alfred Wallace stated:
And as David Belinski stated,
There simply is no coherent answer that the atheistic materialist can give for why we can contemplate this timeless, immaterial, Platonic realm of mathematics (and logic). As Dr. Egnor asks, “What is the location of modus ponens? How much does Gödel’s incompleteness theorem weigh? What is the physics of non-contradiction? How many millimeters long is Clark’s argument for naturalism?”
Thus, without even getting into the recent evidence from quantum biology that gives us very strong empirical evidence that we do indeed have a transcendent component, i.e. a soul, to our being that is not reducible to materialistic explanations of Darwinists,,
,, without even getting into that, I find that our ability to even contemplate this timeless, immaterial, Platonic realm of mathematics (and logic) to be ample evidence, in and of itself, to prove that we must possess a timeless, immaterial, component to our being, i.e. a soul/mind, in order for it even to be possible for us to contemplate the “miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics” in the first place.
Let’s go back to Lewton feeling “uneasy about the Standard Model’s inability to explain its own basic truths”
The first thing that popped out to me after I read that sentence from Lewon is that ‘truth’ itself is a property of an immaterial mind that is inexplicable to the reductive materialistic explanations of Darwinian evolution.
Ethan Siegel offers this interesting example of an ‘eternal truth’ a-priorily residing in an immaterial mind::
And yet, exactly where does this ‘perfect sphere’ and/or the ‘perfect oblate spheroid’ exist for scientists in order for them to be able to determine the truth of whether the earth is a sphere or not? There simply are no geometrically perfect spheres in the universe for them to compare the earth to in order for them to be able to determine the truth of falsity of the claim that the earth is a sphere.
In other words, it necessarily follows that ‘eternal truth’ itself is properly grounded in the immaterial mind of God, in Theism, and that the immaterial mind of man can somehow, being made in the ‘image of God, grasp this eternal truth. Eternal truth simply cannot ever be possibly be grounded within the atheistic materialism of Darwinists.
Moreover, ever since modern science was born in medieval Christian Europe, science has had a history of looking for ‘platonic perfection’, and assuming the Mind of God to be behind that ‘platonic perfection’. That is to say, that science has a history of reaching for perfect agreement between the immaterial mathematics that describe a facet of this universe and the experimental results that measure those mathematical predictions.
Copernicus, (who was heavily influenced by Platonic thinking), imagined (incorrectly) that the planets move in perfect circles (rather than ellipses). Later, Newton, for allowing God could adjust the orbits of the planets, was chastised by Leibniz, (and Laplace) for having a “very narrow ideas about the wisdom and the power of God.”.. i.e. For having a narrow view of the perfection of God.
Normally, as mentioned previously by Dr. Michael Egnor, and as Ethan Siegel, unbeknownst to himself, alluded to in his article, “Mathematics is entirely about concepts, which have no precise instantiation in nature,,”
And indeed for most of the history of modern science in the Christian west, finding ‘platonic perfection’ for the mathematical descriptions of the universe has been a very elusive goal. This all changed with the discoveries of Special Relativity, General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics. That is to say, as far as experimental testing will allow, there is no discrepancy to be found between what the mathematical descriptions of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics predict and what our most advanced scientific testing of those predictions are able to measure.
As well, quantum electrodynamics (QED), which is a combination of special relativity and quantum mechanics, also now joins the list of perfect mathematical descriptions of the universe in which we can find no deviation from what the mathematics predict and what our best experimental testing can discern. In other words, as far as we can tell, ‘platonic perfection’ is reached for QED:
As Nima Arkani-Hamed himself, the discoverer of the amplituhedron, stated “It seems inconceivable that this intricate web of perfect mathematical descriptions is random or happenstance. This mystery must have an explanation.”,,,
Another very important place where ‘platonic perfection’ is now shown to be ‘perfectly reached’ in the universe, (as far as our most precise testing will allow), is for the ‘flatness’ of the universe.
Moreover, this ‘insane coincidence’ of ‘plantonic perfection’ being reached for the axiomatic ‘primitive object’ of the line just so happens to be necessary for us to even be able to practice math and science, (and apply technology in our world), in the first place:
Simply put, if the universe were not ‘ever-so-boringly’ flat (and if the universal constants were not also ‘ever-so-boringly’ constant), but the universe were instead governed by randomness, as atheists presuppose, or governed by some other of the infinitude of ‘platonic topologies’ that were possible, modern science and technology would have never gotten off the ground here on earth.
Nor, if platonic perfection were not present for the flatness of the universe would we have eventually been able to deduce the ‘platonic perfection’ that is revealed in the ‘higher dimensional’ mathematics that lay behind Relativity and Quantum Mechanics.
More interesting still, these findings of ‘platonic perfection’ for the higher dimensional mathematics that lay behind Relativity and Quantum Mechanics are VERY friendly to overriding Christian presuppositions of life after death as well as the presupposition of God upholding this universe in its continual existence. The beginning of the following video goes over some of those VERY friendly Christian implications
Most everyone who is looking for the ‘next’ scientific theory to superseded the ‘platonically perfect’ theories of relativity and quantum mechanics are looking for a purely mathematical theory in order to do so. Yet mathematics is held to be deterministic and therefore, by default, Agent Causality will never be contained within a supposed mathematical ‘theory of everything’. As George Ellis noted in his critique of Max Tegmarks’s book “Our Mathematical Universe”, presupposing that we ourselves can be reduced to a mathematical description “is a view that assigns to mathematical structures a degree of agency that they are not otherwise thought to possess.”
In fact, our ability to devise new mathematical theorems is itself dependent on us having free will and/or agent causality. As the following article notes, “Creating new axioms (in mathematics) and free will are shown to be different aspects of the same phenomena: the creation of new information.”
Thus free will necessarily precedes any mathematical description that we may devise of the universe.
Interestingly, although free will itself is not contained within the equations of quantum theory itself, free will is, none-the-less, necessary for us to properly understand how the equations of quantum mechanics actually work.
As Steven Weinberg, an atheist, explains, “In the instrumentalist approach (in quantum mechanics) humans are brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level.,,, the instrumentalist approach turns its back on a vision that became possible after Darwin, of a world governed by impersonal physical laws that control human behavior along with everything else.,,, In quantum mechanics these probabilities do not exist until people choose what to measure,,, Unlike the case of classical physics, a choice must be made,,,”
In fact Weinberg, again an atheist, rejected the instrumentalist approach precisely because “humans are brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level” and because it undermined the Darwinian worldview from within. Yet, regardless of how he and other atheists may prefer the world to behave, quantum mechanics itself could care less how atheists prefer the world to behave.
For instance, this recent 2019 experimental confirmation of the “Wigner’s Friend” thought experiment established that “measurement results,, must be understood relative to the observer who performed the measurement”.
Moreover, although there have been several major loopholes in quantum mechanics over the past several decades that atheists have tried to appeal to in order to try to avoid the ‘spooky’ Theistic implications of quantum mechanics, over the past several years each of those major loopholes have each been closed one by one. The last major loophole that was left to be closed was the “setting independence” and/or the ‘free-will’ loophole:
And now Anton Zeilinger and company have recently, as of 2018, pushed the ‘free will loophole’ back to 7.8 billion years ago, thereby firmly establishing the ‘common sense’ fact that the free will choices of the experimenter in the quantum experiments are truly free and are not determined by any possible causal influences from the past for at least the last 7.8 billion years, and that experimenters themselves are therefore shown to be truly free to choose whatever measurement settings in the experiments that he or she may so desire to choose so as to ‘logically’ probe whatever aspect of reality that he or she may be interested in probing.
Moreover, here is another recent interesting experiment by Anton Zeilinger, (and about 70 other researchers), that closed a technical loop-hole and insured the complete independence of the measurement settings in a Bell test by using the free will choices of 100,000 human participants instead of having a super fast randomizer determine the measurement settings (as is usually done in these quantum experiments).
Thus regardless of how Steven Weinberg and other atheists may prefer the universe to behave, with the closing of the last remaining free will loophole in quantum mechanics, “humans are indeed brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level”, and thus these recent findings from quantum mechanics directly undermine, as Weinberg himself stated, the “vision that became possible after Darwin, of a world governed by impersonal physical laws that control human behavior along with everything else.”
Moreover allowing free will and/or Agent causality into the laws of physics at their most fundamental level has some fairly profound implications in our quest to find the supposed ‘theory of everything’.
Allowing the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into physics, as the Christian founders of modern science originally envisioned,,,, (Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday, James Clerk Maxwell, and Max Planck, to name a few of the Christian founders),,, and as quantum mechanics itself now empirically demands (with the closing of the free will loophole by Anton Zeilinger and company), rightly allowing the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into physics provides us with a very plausible resolution for the much sought after ‘theory of everything’ in that Christ’s resurrection from the dead provides an empirically backed reconciliation, via the Shroud of Turin, between quantum mechanics and general relativity into the much sought after ‘Theory of Everything”.
In the following video Isabel Piczek states,,, The muscles of the body are absolutely not crushed against the stone of the tomb. They are perfect. It means the body is hovering between the two sides of the shroud. What does that mean? It means there is absolutely no gravity.
The following article, (which is behind a paywall), states that ‘The bottom part of the cloth (containing the dorsal image) would have born all the weight of the man’s supine body, yet the dorsal image is not encoded with a greater amount of intensity than the frontal image.’
Kevin Moran, who is an optical engineer who worked on the mysterious ‘3-Dimensional’ nature of the Shroud image, states that,, ,,, “The radiation that made the image acted perfectly parallel to gravity. There is no side image.,,, It is not a continuum or spherical-front radiation that made the image, as visible or UV light. It is not the X-ray radiation that obeys the one over R squared law that we are so accustomed to in medicine. It is more unique,,, This suggests a quantum event where a finite amount of energy transferred abruptly. The fact that there are images front and back suggests the radiating particles were released along the gravity vector.”
In the following paper, the researchers found that it was not possible to describe the image formation on the Shroud in classical terms but they found it necessary to describe the formation of the image on the Shroud in discrete quantum terms.
And to further drive this point home, the following study ‘concluded that it would take 34 Thousand Billion Watts of VUV radiations to make the image on the shroud.’
Moreover, the overturning of the Copernican principle by both General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics adds considerable weight to my claim that Jesus’s resurrection from the dead is the correct ‘theory of everything’
Verse and video:
Polistra @ 1
Lord Kelvin, as I live and breathe!
Relativity also had nothing to do with real physics? Really?