Will increasingly sophisticated computer simulations “end” theoretical physics as we know it?
| August 29, 2018 | Posted by News under Computing, AI, Cybernetics and Mechatronics, Cosmology, Mathematics, Physics |
Leaving mathematics on a blackboard somewhere:
That we are able to write down natural laws in mathematical form at all means that the laws we deal with are simple — much simpler than those of other scientific disciplines.
Unfortunately, actually solving those equations is often not so simple. For example, we have a perfectly fine theory that describes the elementary particles called quarks and gluons, but no one can calculate how they come together to make a proton. The equations just can’t be solved by any known methods. Similarly, a merger of black holes or even the flow of a mountain stream can be described in deceptively simple terms, but it’s hideously difficult to say what’s going to happen in any particular case.
Hence the elaborate computer simulations. 
But for me, the most interesting aspect of this development is that it ultimately changes how we do physics. With quantum simulations, the mathematical model is of secondary relevance. We currently use the math to identify a suitable system because the math tells us what properties we should look for. But that’s not, strictly speaking, necessary. Maybe, over the course of time, experimentalists will just learn which system maps to which other system, as they have learned which system maps to which math. Perhaps one day, rather than doing calculations, we will just use observations of simplified systems to make predictions. Sabine Hossenfelder, “The End of Theoretical Physics As We Know It” at Quanta
Then, of course, as with other computer sims, the question is, how much is fact and how much is fiction? Prediction: Some good research and some really surprising, unreplicated findings.
Note: Theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder is the author of Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray.
See also: Sabine Hossenfelder: Free will is compatible with physics
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as to:
That reminds me of this piece of trivia that I learned. A major problem in trying to unify quantum mechanics and general relativity is that when theorists try to combine the two theories, then the resulting theory predicts that spacetime, atoms, and the universe itself should all be literally torn apart. Here are a few references that get this point across.
Moreover, besides physicist having no idea how atoms, and the universe itself, are holding themselves together, physicist also have no idea how the periodic table is to be explained.
And all this falls in line with the following article which extended Godel’s Incompleteness Theorem to physics and stated, “even a perfect and complete description of the microscopic properties of a material is not enough to predict its macroscopic behaviour”.,,, The researchers further commented that their findings “challenge the reductionists’ point of view, as the insurmountable difficulty lies precisely in the derivation of macroscopic properties from a microscopic description.”
To put Godel’s Incompleteness even more simply, “Anything you can draw a circle around cannot explain itself without referring to something outside the circle—something you have to assume but cannot prove”.
And as Godel himself pointed out in the following quote, a soul or a mind is necessary in order to provide “context” for material particles. i.e. to be ‘outside the circle’
Max Planck himself strongly echoed Godel’s inference to a mind and/or soul:
It is also interesting to note that the Bible ‘predicted’ this “Mind” that both Godel and Planck postulated to be necessary to explain why things ‘hold together’.
Moreover, if we rightly let the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into the picture of modern physics, as the Christian founders of modern science had originally envisioned, (Sir Isaac Newton, James Clerk Maxwell, Michael Faraday, and Max Planck, to name a few), then an empirically backed reconciliation between Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity, i.e. the ‘Theory of Everything’, readily pops out for us in Christ’s resurrection from the dead.
Verse: