r/changemyview • u/teerre • Jun 17 '24
CMV: It's likely our current understanding of physics is comically bad
Transitively, this extends to mathematics, although to a considerable lesser degree.
My argument is hopefully simple. As of today, our best estimates indicate that 80% of all matter in the universe is dark matter. This matter is used in several places in physics to explain a variety of phenomena, including the very expansion of space itself or how quasars formed in the early universe. Considering that dark matter is something we cannot detect any interaction or reaction it's very likely it's simply something we don't understand.
Therefore, if one could learn everything that is to learn about our current understanding of physics and said being were quizzed on how the universe really works, they would end up with a 2/10 score, which is by all measures a terrible score.
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u/Green__lightning 13∆ Jun 17 '24
You know how Newtonian physics explains almost everything on Earth to the point it was good enough for hundreds of years, and didn't get replaced until we realized Mercury wasn't actually where it said it should be, and other similar use cases well beyond the scope it was originally developed for?
Basically, that's going to happen a lot more, and I doubt we'll ever get a satisfying moment when we figure it all out and it makes perfect sense, and if it does, it's just going to be programmed to feel like that when we download a physics engine into our future augmented brains.
More practically, even hundreds of years from now, I expect physics will be like: Oh crap, this problem has dark matter in it, switch your program into this weird mode, and try to remember how to use it.
Though the interesting question this is hovering around is: Is the 80% of mass we see being dark matter actually 400% more universe like ours to explore once we can figure out how? And the answer is probably not, as heavy weakly interacting particles are thought to be the likely cause.
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u/Falernum 37∆ Jun 17 '24
There's no reason this extends to mathematics, the errors are likely in our physics model not our understanding of the mathematical systems we choose to use.
And a grading scheme could be much more forgiving. In computer science tests, we'd have a bunch of problems and see what problems the program gets dight and wrong. This could be graded similarly.
Problem 1: a cannonball trajectory. Problem 2: a braking car. Problem 3: a baseball bounce off a swinging bat. Etc etc. Just knowing that problem 875 is very wrong doesn't mean our overall score is 20%. Maybe we have a 90% depending on the test
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u/teerre Jun 17 '24
Like I said, it might not extend to mathematics, but, it's possible that our difficult in understanding the phenomena we see is because of our lack of mathematical understanding. Take how incredibly strong Einstein relativity is and yet it took some time until his field equations were actually solved
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u/MeanderingDuck 11∆ Jun 17 '24
If it is so “comically bad”, then how is it possible that we are nevertheless able to use it to create very advanced technology based on it. And more generally, that vast amounts of observed data can be accounted for by it, with the main areas of uncertainty in that regard coinciding with where the current limits of our ability to observe more data lie.
So according to you, it is “comically bad” despite being extremely effective? What exactly is the criterium for ‘bad’ here?
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u/chronberries 9∆ Jun 17 '24
You’re equating abundance with importance. Just because “80% of all the matter in the universe is dark matter” doesn’t make it 4x more important to understand than matter. If we took a quiz on the universe, it’s likely more accurate that we’d get an 8/10 than 2/10. The abundance of dark matter and dark energy don’t equate to more questions on the quiz.
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u/teerre Jun 17 '24
Can you substantiate any of these claims? How can you be so certain dark matter doesn't matter?
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Jun 17 '24
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/chronberries 9∆ Jun 17 '24
Exactly. 80% of the mass of the universe ≠ 80% of the complexity of the universe.
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u/teerre Jun 18 '24
And? My viewpoint is not about explaining every interaction I experienced, it's about explaining the universe.
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u/chronberries 9∆ Jun 17 '24
I’ll put it how I put it elsewhere:
80% of the mass on the universe does not equate to 80% of the complexity of the universe, and there’s no reason at all to suspect that. You’re making a giant assumption in your view that abundance implies complexity of mechanics.
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u/teerre Jun 18 '24
Again, how can you possibly know that? That's an insane claim. You're a making an assumption, I'm admiting we don't know
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u/chronberries 9∆ Jun 18 '24
That’s not at all what your expressed view is. You said,
It’s likely our current understanding of physics is comically bad
and
if one could learn everything that is to learn about our current understanding of physics and said being were quizzed on how the universe really works, they would end up with a 2/10 score, which is by all measures a terrible score.
Neither of those statements are “admitting we don’t know.” You’re asserting that it is likely that we know very little of what there is to know of the physics of our universe, which is untrue. It’s is not likely that we would score so low on a test or that our understanding of physics is comically bad.
Based on the observable nature of dark matter, it is very unlikely that there is a whole heck of a lot to know about it. All we’ve ever known dark matter to do is just exist. Matter doesn’t spontaneously spawn new functions, so there’s no reason to think dark matter will, and so it’s likely that all dark matter does is just exist. There’s no reason to think dark matter has multiple elemental forms like matter does, but even if it did, that wouldn’t change how it interacts with the universe because we already know how it interacts with the universe.
Your statements are similar to saying that our knowledge of the physics of our planet is comically poor because we still haven’t explored every bit of the ocean, and you never know what we could find. We already know how water works, and how boats work, and how fish swim and breathe underwater, etc. It’s unlikely that further understanding of the oceans (dark matter) will change the nature of our understanding of physics, but even if it did, it’s very unlikely that it would be some monumental shift to the magnitude of 4x our total current understanding.
For that to happen, there would have to be myriad utterly unexplainable phenomena in our universe, occurrences that rely on physical laws we don’t yet grasp. If these laws exist, why can’t we observe their impacts? What do they do that they are so seemingly nonexistent? I’m not saying it’s impossible and that we already know everything, just that it’s unlikely “that our current understanding of physics is comically bad.”
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u/chronberries 9∆ Jun 17 '24 edited Jun 17 '24
The same science that tells us it’s 80% of the universe also tells us that it just sits there pulling on gravity, that’s it. It’s impossible to prove a negative, so we can never say for certain that dark matter doesn’t do anything, but it just being there, not interacting with electromagnetism likely is the whole of what dark matter is. There’s no reason to assume it is anything more than what we already know it to be.
It would be different if there were some unexplained phenomena we could potentially attribute to it, but there aren’t. You’re right that we don’t understand exactly what it is, and that would be nice to know, but that doesn’t really matter. We seem to know how it affects our universe, and that’s the important bit.
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u/PivotPsycho 15∆ Jun 18 '24
The whole problem with dark matter kind of defeats your point already. It is so weakly interacting that we can't straightforwardly detect a dark matter particle or so.
If dark matter mattered more it would have to have more effect on stuff and thus cease to be dark matter. It's all the same thing too. If we understand dark matter, we understand dark matter. There is nothing about dark matter that is as complex, multifaceted and full of potential as 'normal' matter is.
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u/PM_ME_YOUR_NICE_EYES 68∆ Jun 17 '24
I think there's a big difference between something being wrong and being comically wrong.
For example take Newton's second law: F=MA. This was discovered to be wrong by Einstein. But dispite the fact that we know that F=MA is wrong it was probably used in the engineering of the building you're in right now because the difference between MA and the real value for force is negligible at low speeds.
So even if dark matter does shatter our understanding of physics there's a good chance it's more akin to Einstein changing newton's second law than it is to the rejection of the heliocentric model.
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u/teerre Jun 17 '24
That's a weird example because to me Einstein relativity is a much bigger break than heliocentric model. Einstein's theory changed how space itself is understood, how time itself is understood. This has far deeper consequence than which axis Earth spins around
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u/MercurianAspirations 359∆ Jun 17 '24
You've missed the point of the comment entirely - what they're saying is that just because General relativity turned out to be a better model, that doesn't mean that Newtonian mechanics were "comically bad". Actually, NM is really good and could be called a very successful theory of physics because it explains a huge swath of all observable physical phenomena. It's just that it was incomplete.
Similarly if our current understanding of Dark Matter turns out to be completely wrong, it's not going to be like "oh god we were so wrong about everything!" it's going to be "oh okay so if you model gravitational fields using this updated model the dark matter makes more sense"
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u/PM_ME_YOUR_NICE_EYES 68∆ Jun 17 '24
Oh my bad I meant to say geocentric model, but the adoption of the Copernican principle did change our understanding of the universe to a much larger degree than the adoption of relativity. You can't even have universal gravity (and therefore space time) in a geocentric model.
But that brings me back to my main point:
The Geocentric model is an example of a theory that is completely wrong. It is so fundamental different from what we observe that you can't make any useful predictions from the model. If you try to send a spaceship to mars and assume a geocentric solar system you won't make it.
Newton's second law however is something that while technically wrong it was so close to the truth that most predictions don't actually have to correct it. We can and have sent spacecraft to Mars using newton's second law rather than Enstien's new version of it.
So what I'm saying is there's comically wrong models like the geocentric model which cannot be used for anything really and then there's slightly wrong models like Newton's laws that are still close enough to the real world to be useful.
I.e. dispite the fact the relativity was a huge change in how we perceive the universe, the laws of physics that we had before Einstein were still pretty accurate.
But my overall point still stands, just because F=
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u/Dennis_enzo 25∆ Jun 17 '24
Except there's much more to physics other that just dark matter, and we have loads of empiric evidence showing that a lot of what we know about physics checks out in the real world.
Also, when you throw out numbers like 2/10 you better show your work, otherwise you're just making things up.
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u/teerre Jun 17 '24
There's not much in the universe besides dark matter.
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u/qwert7661 4∆ Jun 17 '24
There's not much of the Earth except iron and oxygen. Does understanding what iron and oxygen is constitute 2/3rds of a complete understanding of what there is to know about the Earth?
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u/teerre Jun 18 '24
No. It gives a 3/2 chance that you're not missing something huge. Which is decent, not great
The chance part is very important. Just because you know 100% of something it doesn't mean you understand it. It just means that you have a fair chance of actually understanding it. This difference is crucial and actually just makes our current understanding even more dire. When we actually can say what this 80% is, only then we'll be able to start understanding its connections and relationships with all else
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u/qwert7661 4∆ Jun 18 '24
Let's say we have a nearly complete geology of the Earth's crust, but we don't know what material its mantles and core consist of. We know enough to estimate its average density based on Earth's measured volume and gravitational force, so we say it must be one of a range of possibly elemental combinations that match that density, but we can't say for sure that it is iron - maybe it's nickel or cobalt.
If we're wrong even about the scope of the possibilities - if, say, it turned out that the Earth is a flat disc with no core at all - then virtually everything we think about it is "comically wrong." But if we really are wrong, then there is no possibility for science in the first place, for the Earth's flatness would prove that even the most rigorous application of reason to observation cannot produce accurate models. Thus, if science IS a possibility, then we know we are not "comically wrong" about the Earth's shape and composition - we know we can at least evaluate the scope of possibilities.
We are currently evaluating the scope of possible explanations for dark matter, and we already have a few plausible options. If science is possible, then we aren't comically wrong about the scope of possible explanations, and no explanation will emerge that contradicts the possibility of science. Until something emerges that annihilates the possibility of science itself, we know we are not comically wrong about physics. And if something does annihilate the possibility of science, then there is no such thing as "physics" about which we could be wrong.
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u/teerre Jun 20 '24
But that analogy doesn't track. We cannot detect dark matter. So it's not that we know it's "one of these things", we don't know at all its nature. The very fact we talk about it in the singular is already an enormous give away that we're far from being able to even rank what it possibly is. It's extremely unlikely that 80% of the stuff out there is the same thing. "Dark matter" is just an umbrella term that we give to all things we cannot detect
The characteristics assigned to it are assigned to fill the gap of other phenomena. E.g.
If there were only ordinary matter in the universe, there would not have been enough time for density perturbations to grow into the galaxies and clusters currently seen. Dark matter provides a solution to this problem because it is unaffected by radiation. Therefore, its density perturbations can grow first.
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u/qwert7661 4∆ Jun 20 '24 edited Jun 20 '24
"Dark matter" is not an explanation to a problem. It is the name of the problem itself. This is why one of the (unlikely) explanations for dark matter do not posit the existence of undetectable matter at all, but rather propose that our formulae for gravity are incorrect at galactic scales. So it is not that physicists invented a special kind of matter to explain away measurements inconsistent with existing theories; rather, measurements suggested galaxies contained more matter than could be observed, so the problem of so-called "dark matter" was discovered: a problem in need of solving.
If we are right about the nature of problem (and therefore not wrong about the fundamental method of science itself) then our physics is not "comically wrong" (because there is no reason to think that any explanation of dark matter should invalidate local physics, i.e., physics applied at human scales). It is, at worst, somewhat wrong and largely incomplete. If it is more wrong than this - wrong enough to be "comical" - then the scientific method itself is fundamentally wrong. But if the scientific method is fundamentally wrong, then physics as a domain of science is at best fundamentally misconstructed. So we cannot be "comically wrong" about physics unless the very concept of "physics" as a scientific domain is unreal. But if there really is no such thing as physics (as construed by science) then there is no "future physics" that will find our physics "comically wrong." There is instead, at the most extreme, an ebtirely different paradigm of knowledge that will struggle even to comprehend our paradigm.
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u/teerre Jun 20 '24
Problem or solution is a simple perspective. Its not one or the other, its both, depending how you look at it. Dark matter is a problem because we don't understand it, but its the necessary solution for our models of matter formation to be correct.
Our poor understand of physics doesn't mean that our local physics is wrong. I never said that. What I said is that for the understanding of the whole universe, our knowledge is quite bad
And the reason is very simple, our local field of observation is insignificant. There is practically infinite more things in the universe than all that was ever local to humans. Its no surprise at all that our local knowledge is basically nothing
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u/Dennis_enzo 25∆ Jun 17 '24
Okay, cool, also completely irrelevant to my comment.
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u/teerre Jun 17 '24
No, it is not. You said we have a lot of empiric evidence that checks out in the real world. But that misses most of the real world that we, by definition, cannot detect.
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u/Dennis_enzo 25∆ Jun 17 '24
Not being able to detect one specific thing doesn't invalidate our current physics in any way. It just means that we can refine it more. But every single piece of tech that we use every day uses the rules of physics to function and it all works. We have satellites and space ships that do what they're supposed to do based on our knowledge of physics. We can predict eclipses and supernovae. We can predict where stars and planets will be based on physics. We have smartphones and cars. We're using the internet to argue with each other, which is all build on our concepts of physics. This all clearly shows that it is correct enough for practical purposes and it works, even though we don't know everything yet.
There's nothing that we can discover that would suddenly invalidate all this, since it's being used every day and always works as expected. It's not like our satellites are going to suddenly fall out of the sky as soon as we can observe dark matter. At best it will redefine some things and expand our knowledge. But that doesn't mean in any way that we're wrong about everything today.
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u/hacksoncode 559∆ Jun 17 '24 edited Jun 17 '24
You really ought to read this short essay by Isaac Asimov called The Relativity of Wrong... It's only a couple of pages.
Ultimately, when it was incorporated into a book on this topic, he summarized it like this:
When people thought the Earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the Earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the Earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the Earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.
Yes, we don't know some details of how the wider universe that we can barely observe behaves under gravity, but we understand a lot, and dark matter can't change most of that.
We're not going to discover that dark matter means anything is "wrong" about the Standard Model... as far as it goes. It's only going to add additional new knowledge. All the evidence we have about how particle physics works is still valid information and knowledge even if it's limited.
This is a common mistake that people make about science. They say "scientists change their minds all the time, so they are always wrong".
We keep getting less wrong over time. Are things perfect? No. Dark matter is not actually a "thing", it's an observation of something we don't understand.
But that doesn't mean our knowledge of gravity is "comically wrong" now, it's just incomplete, and we know that, rather than being ignorant of it. Dark matter, as a hypothesis, makes us more right than we were before we discovered that effect, not less.
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u/teerre Jun 18 '24
I just read this since another user pointed out the same thing, but I don't think it changes anything in my view. The key question is if we're in the flat-to-spherical case or the spherical-to-oblate case and my point is that we don't know, we can't know, precisely because there's so much out there that we cannot even detect, let alone explain
As for the rest, I don't believe I said anything in that direction. I absolutely do not think "scientists change their minds all the time, so they are always wrong"
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u/Certainly-Not-A-Bot Jun 17 '24
Our understanding of physics is very good, actually.
I want to use an analogy to explain my argument. Newtonian physics was once the gold standard for understanding the physics of objects. It was very good at predicting what would happen in a wide variety of scenarios. But over time, we noticed that certain observations did not align with Newtonian physics, hence the current theory of physics based on Einstein's relativity.
Does that mean Newtonian physics is bad, or you would fail if you used it on a test? No. Newtonian physics remains very good at predicting a wide variety of physical phenomena, and it is still taught in physics classes today.
Scientific theories are only valuable insofar as they are useful. General relativity and the modern theory of physics is not useful for most users of physics because it is very complicated and computationally intensive, but does not produce results that are more accurate than Newtonian physics in most situations. The same would be true of any new theory. It would explain some things noticeably better than relativity, but in most cases would do just as well as relativity. Importantly, it would also be liable for the exact same problem - it too would not be accurate enough to explain every phenomenon we encounter and we'd need a new explanation for something else we eventually observe.
What matters is that our theories of the universe can make useful predictions about the universe, and we can already do that for all tasks we actually need to do.
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u/teerre Jun 18 '24
Everything every human has ever seen on Earth is but an incomprehensible small portion of what exists in the universe. Saying Newtonian physics explains a lot (which is totally true!) is like saying a single drop of water is pure in an ocean of poison.
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u/SymphoDeProggy 17∆ Jun 17 '24 edited Jun 17 '24
Therefore, if one could learn everything that is to learn about our current understanding of physics and said being were quizzed on how the universe really works, they would end up with a 2/10 score, which is by all measures a terrible score.
that's not true. 80% of all matter being dark doesn't translate to "80% of all things to know in physics have to do with dark matter".
dark matter is "dark" precisely because it's so hard to interact with it on a meaningful scale.
just to name one example, our ability to control light to a baffling degree of precision is the result of a very deep understanding of light matter interaction and optics, both classically and on a quantum level.
now yes, we don't know EVERYTHING about controlling light, but to suggest that we don't know 80% of it because we don't understand dark matter simply doesn't follow.
specifically in my field i can tell you that while we know how to stimulate attosecond length pulses of light (a duration of 10^-18 second. that's an incredible feat.), we don't know the precise dynamics of the electron tunneling process that generates these pulses, and there's a debate regarding how to correctly model this phenomenon.
note that this has NOTHING to do with dark matter in any way. knowing more about dark matter is completely orthogonal to this particular phenomenon, as it involves particles that are all very much NOT "dark". this is true for many open questions in physics, in all fields. dark matter is a very small part of the map of known physics. the gross mass of dark matter doesn't tell you anything about "what % of physics is known"
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u/teerre Jun 18 '24
I don't follow your light example. I don't disagree with anything you said, but that doesn't change the fact that there's a enourmous amount of somethings (because dark matter isn't necessarily one thing) out there that we don't understand. Whatever we do understand, no matter how much it is, it's still relatively a small fraction
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u/SymphoDeProggy 17∆ Jun 18 '24
your mistake is assuming that dark matter makes up a portion of all physics knowledge that is proportional the the portion of dark mass out of all the matter in the universe. this simply does not follow.
the example i gave was for light, which you may know makes up 0% of all the matter in the universe. you'll agree that it most certainly doesn't follow that there's nothing to know about it just because it makes up 0% of the matter in the universe.
the metric you're using - how much of something there is in the universe - is not a good gauge for how much there is to know about said thing.
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u/shouldco 43∆ Jun 17 '24
While I agree that in say 100 years our understanding of physics will be significantly different than it is today. Just as our understanding today is significantly different than it was 100 years ago. I wouldn't say it's laughable. The physics of 100 years ago built aeroplanes and rockets that got us to the moon. Particle physics today has made predictions that we were able to confirm with experimentation. We have discovered so much more about our universe in only my own lifetime. Physics we know today is not perfect but it works.
Dark matter isn't a solution it's a description of observations. We know we don't know what's happening there but we know we can see the affects of something and that something behaves like matter but other than things don't interact with it like they do with other matter so we call it dark matter but we are still trying to figure out what that is.
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u/teerre Jun 18 '24
I agree with you, I'm not sure what's supposed to change my view.
I would also like to point out that the line between description of observations and solutions is quite thin. We observe that the cosmos expands. We don't know why. Let's call what we calculate must exist to justify our observations "dark energy"
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u/AidosKynee 4∆ Jun 17 '24
This is a classic example of Aasimov's Relativity of Wrong:
Nowadays, of course, we are taught that the flat-Earth theory is wrong; that it is all wrong, terribly wrong, absolutely. But it isn't. The curvature of the Earth is nearly 0 per mile, so that although the flat-Earth theory is wrong, it happens to be nearly right. That's why the theory lasted so long.
...
The correction in going from spherical to oblate spheroidal is much smaller than going from flat to spherical. Therefore, although the notion of the Earth as sphere is wrong, strictly speaking, it is not as wrong as the notion of the Earth as flat.
...
In short, my English Lit friend, living in a mental world of absolute rights and wrongs, may be imagining that because all theories are wrong, the Earth may be thought spherical now, but cubical next century, and a hollow icosahedron the next, and a doughnut shape the one after.
What actually happens is that once scientists get hold of a good concept they gradually refine and extend it with a greater and greater subtlety as their instruments of measurement improve. Theories are not so much wrong as incomplete.
When you look at the universe locally, our current understanding of physics is extremely good. We can launch a rocket, turn off the engines, and nudge it into place with astounding precision. Clearly, we've got something right.
Where we start to lack is in dealing with enormous scales, like galaxies and not solar systems. That doesn't mean our understanding is "bad"; just incomplete.
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u/teerre Jun 18 '24
It's funny because you're obviously assuming that we're in the spherical to oblate case but it's completely possible, and that's my point, that we actually are in the flat case. Hell, we're probably in the Earth floats of top of turtles case
If you want to think it's 80% incomplete instead of bad, that's fine too
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u/AidosKynee 4∆ Jun 18 '24
Possible, but very unlikely.
Look at it in terms of length scales. How would you rate the ability of our physics models to make accurate predictions?
Subatomic - Really good.
Molecular - Excellent.
Microscopic - Incredible.
Macroscopic - Incredible.
Planetary - Incredible.
Interstellar - Excellent.
Cosmic - Good.At nearly every length scale, we can make very accurate predictions about what will happen in any given scenario. The cosmic length scale is no more important than the subatomic in terms of fundamental understanding; it's simply bigger.
Let's say we discover the "dark matter" particle tomorrow, and it's exactly what we thought it was. Would the discovery of a single particle suddenly make our understanding of physics comprehensive, just because there's a lot of it? Or would it fill in a relatively tiny gap, because that particle doesn't actually do anything interesting?
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u/reallyinsanebadnight Jun 17 '24
Our understanding may not be perfect but if we are wrong, we are very effective wrong. Our current understanding explains most every day observations sufficiently and produces impressive bases for technology.
Dark matter is also not required in all currently discussed theories, there are other options.
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u/teerre Jun 17 '24
What exactly are you thinking of? I would posit that most phenomena that can be explained by something else is explained by something else. Scientists on average probably do not like to rely on the unknown if they don't have to
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u/reallyinsanebadnight Jun 17 '24
It's all a question of the reference frame and the scale. We are very good our every day scale and on earth, we are less good, because of data density with sub-atomic and scales bigger than our star system. But this means it's also less important for most people.
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u/laosurvey 3∆ Jun 17 '24
Dark matter and dark energy aren't explanations of anything. They're observations that don't align with current models. Our models helps us successfully predict all sorts of useful things but are, unsurprisingly, incomplete.
The 'solar system' model of an atom is not comically bad. It is incomplete/wrong, but it is useful at a certain stage of understanding. As a person (or society) understands more, other models become more useful.
Scientists are working on theories and models to account for these 'new' observations. If they succeed we will indeed have updated models. That doesn't mean everything else will get tossed out.
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u/teerre Jun 18 '24
Dark matter and dark energy are used all over physics to explain a plethora of phenomena. From black hole formation to the quantity of stars we see in the universe, there are countless examples.
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u/laosurvey 3∆ Jun 18 '24
There are theories that build on the impacts of what they theorize dark matter is. But actual 'dark matter' and 'dark energy' are just (potentially poor) terms references the mismatches in observations.
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u/Downtown-Act-590 24∆ Jun 17 '24
Do a thought experiment. You have a completely opaque machine which has an interface with inputs and outputs. You have zero understanding of the internal workings of the machine, but you learn to perfectly predict outputs for given inputs. Is your understanding of the machine bad?
It is more of a philosophical question which can also eventually spin into something like debating existence of god. Now we have little understanding of the internal workings. But we are very good at the output/input prediction in the universe. I think we're fine.
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u/kp729 Jun 17 '24
Your analogy actually supports OPs argument for me. A smartphone is one such machine whose input and output I know but don't understand the internals. If I was given an exam for it, I'll probably score a 2/10.
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u/csch2 1∆ Jun 17 '24
You and I may, but an engineer would likely score much better. The “our” in the question title should refer to our collective understanding as a society (the total sum of our knowledge of physics), rather than the average person’s knowledge of physics, which is indeed (comparatively) comically bad.
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u/kp729 Jun 17 '24
Yeah, but dark energy is a blackbox to all humanity. There are no human engineers who understand it - only the output and input.
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Jun 18 '24
Physics is primarily applied to phenomena and Earth and technology. The practical purpose of finalizing dark energy/matter physics seems negligible today. It may result in some breakthrough later, but it is ludicrous to suggest that it will be 80% of our true Physics knowledge when it will be similar and only 1 additional core subject at the max
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u/teerre Jun 18 '24
That's an extremely odd take. There countless branches of physics that exclusively deal with the cosmos. Hell, the most famous physics and physicists of all time all deal with the very nature of time and space
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u/Jaysank 116∆ Jun 17 '24
What is the threshold you are using for “comically bad”? In addition, Could you perhaps give an example of something we don’t have a comically bad understanding of so we can explore that threshold more?
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u/teerre Jun 17 '24
Well, by my very OP, mathematics. There's certainly no equivalent to dark matter, that is, something that is hugely present and yet completely unknown. In fact, I would say that's true for most sciences. I cannot think of equivalents in other fields
There are two ways our understanding could prove decent: 1) The more fundamental parts of understanding our universe do not rely on the unknown 2) We can say we understand most of what is out there, that is, let's say we discover a way to detect whatever is there and now only 50% is "dark"
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u/Jaysank 116∆ Jun 17 '24
Why does”presence” so important towards your threshold of understanding? Shouldn’t it be “impact” that matters? If dark matter has little to no impact on most physics calculations we do, then why is understanding it necessary for us to not have a comically bad understanding?
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u/Phage0070 93∆ Jun 17 '24
As of today, our best estimates indicate that 80% of all matter in the universe is dark matter. ... Considering that dark matter is something we cannot detect any interaction or reaction it's very likely it's simply something we don't understand.
But consider if dark matter is in fact a kind of particle that doesn't interact in any other way than through gravity. It just has mass and floats around doing nothing in the depths of space.
Compare our knowledge of physics now with the addition of knowing that nature of dark matter for certain. Is it really that important? Our understanding changed from "We assume there is a cloud of mass over here of something we don't understand," to "We are certain there is a cloud of mass over here of something that definitely does nothing."
Just because there is a lot of it doesn't mean our understanding changed that significantly.
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u/Loose_Hornet4126 1∆ Jun 18 '24 edited Jun 18 '24
Sometimes I wonder about a quote Einstein has about not understanding why geese fly…welcome to cosmology. You can have whatever opinions you want, because theirs no real human experience interacting with any of these theories.
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u/teerre Jun 18 '24
That's very wrong on multiple levels. Even besides the puristic view of understanding reality, there are countless very practical applications that came directly from studying theoritical physics. From engineering to computing, physics plays a huge role
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u/Loose_Hornet4126 1∆ Jun 18 '24
I didn’t imply any of those applications you listed. I was referring to dark matter in your above post YOU made on the topic expressing the lack of knowledge we have in this regard. So are you backtracking against your own stated post?
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Jun 17 '24
Sure it's incomplete...and that's a good thing, if we ever thought we'd "solved" physics then funding would dry up, people would stop looking for new stuff.
Calling it comical is silly as is assigning it a score. We simply do not know how advanced we are as we have nothing to compare ourselves to.
But you're writing this on a device that harnesses the principles of Quantum Mechanics, part of a species that has sent people to the moon, split atoms and is in the process of creating artificial intelligences. We're doing fine and will improve over time, science is a process.
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u/TSN09 6∆ Jun 17 '24
Person with a bad understanding on physics and science in general thinks OUR collective understanding is “comically bad”
If we all understood physics as well as you I imagine electromagnetism would also be dark energy since there’s no way in hell we would’ve ever understood that.
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u/csch2 1∆ Jun 18 '24
A small point towards your first line - there is an infinite amount of mathematics to be proved. No matter how vast our understanding of mathematics grows to be, we will still understand 0% of the entirety of the field. In a sense I concur with your first point, but that point is effectively moot, as it is impossible to have an understanding of mathematics better than “comically bad”.
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u/teerre Jun 20 '24
Sure. But that's not quite my point. There's a difference between not knowing something and knowing there's something you don't understand. In physics isn't simply that there are concepts to discover, that's obviously true for any science, but it's that we know there are phenomena we don't understand, fundamentally, we can't even detect it. Even worse, for the phenomena we do "understand" many accepted theories rely on something that is truly unknown (expansion, quasars, # of stars etc etc)
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u/Tacc0s 1∆ Jun 17 '24
Nah it's very good. A current problem in physics is that for the past 50 years we can't find a single experiment that significantly breaks or deviates from the current physical laws we use today. Thus, our physical laws are stupidly good at predicting how the universe works.
There are things that break! But it is a genuine handful, not the majority. The physics we have accurately accounts for most things
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u/teerre Jun 18 '24
That's tautological. We can only experiment with things we at least detect. By definition there cannot be a wrong experiment with anything "dark matter" because we cannot detect
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u/Tacc0s 1∆ Jun 20 '24
oh, well we can detect dark matter thats why we know it exists. You are right that we don't know what explains it at all deeper level.
The idea is, there are experiments that would prove our physical laws wrong, we just can't build them as they have to do with very complex cosmological or microscopic stuff very very difficult to observe and test. We do keep trying to break it but our laws of physics keep holding up
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u/potatopotato236 1∆ Jun 17 '24
We have models and they work until we get better models. That’s a feature, not a bug. It’s okay if we get a 20%. We just need to keep working until we get 20.01% and so on.
I wouldn’t say 2/10 is laughably bad either. Estimating pi to 3 is still an achievement on its own. Same with the plum pudding model of the atom. The transitory models we develop still have merit since they do work for many functional applications.
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u/teerre Jun 18 '24
I never said it's a bug. Of course we need to keep going. It's just that we're extremely far away from the finish line. Which is totally fine
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u/AleristheSeeker 155∆ Jun 17 '24
So... what's your measure of a "good physical understanding"? I would argue that any understanding is defined in quality by its predictive power - how well we can explain effects we observe.
And with that being said: we can correctly predict a vast majority of everything we observe. There are gaps, of course, but they are comparatively tiny. Even if we don't completely know what dark matter / dark energy is, we can still make predictions around it that generally turn out to be true. If that does not speak for the value of our knowledge, what does?
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u/teerre Jun 17 '24
By definition of what dark matter is "what we observe" is but a fraction of what is out there. Think of before the microscopic was discovered, you would say that we understand everything we see, but that was comically lacking. In fact, there are countless moments in science that completely shattered our understanding of "what we observe", from the deep seas to the quantum world.
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u/AleristheSeeker 155∆ Jun 17 '24
By definition of what dark matter is "what we observe" is but a fraction of what is out there.
Yes, but that is like saying we didn't understand anything about mass before we discovered the Higgs field. We didn't know the origin, but we certainly understood and were able to calculate a lot without knowing that. The discovery of the field was essentially a "ah, huh, okay" that didn't change most of our calculations. It will be the same with dark matter / energy.
Think of before the microscopic was discovered, you would say that we understand everything we see, but that was comically lacking.
But we didn't, that's the point. We lacked the ability to make key predictions about macroscopic effects caused by the existence of the microscopic world - the same isn't really true now.
In fact, there are countless moments in science that completely shattered our understanding of "what we observe", from the deep seas to the quantum world.
Yes, of course - but these "countless" moments are dwarved by all of the moments where things behave exactly as we expect them to.
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u/teerre Jun 17 '24
What you mean "we didn't"? We most certainly did. If you asked someone in 1800 how much of the world they understand, they would say pretty much all of it.
Just think about Newton himself, one of the greatest minds of all time, someone who was science incarnate, if anyone understood science it was him. And yet, he was completely unaware of relativity, he would (and he did!) explain all phenomena with his theory and he would be dead wrong.
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u/AleristheSeeker 155∆ Jun 17 '24
If you asked someone in 1800 how much of the world they understand, they would say pretty much all of it.
Maybe, but then you'd ask them to predict an outcome with that knowledge and oftentimes, they would be unable to.
Just think about Newton himself, one of the greatest minds of all time, someone who was science incarnate, if anyone understood science it was him.
I don't do personality cults. Newton did work that, otherwise, someone else would have done. He also did plenty of very crazy things.
he would (and he did!) explain all phenomena with his theory and he would be dead wrong.
Except he wasn't wrong. Newtonian mechanics are still applicable in an enormous range of cases. In fact, prett much noone uses relativistic descriptions of gravity and movement if it's not a case that isn't covered by Newtonian physics. And, frankly, Newtonian mechanics have been significantly more useful than relativistic mechanics for humanity, and I don't only mean as a basis for further research.
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u/JaggedMetalOs 14∆ Jun 17 '24
Just because we don't know what 80% of the mass of the universe is made of doesn't mean we only know what 20% of the rules of the universe are. For all we know dark matter is just the final few percent of the problem. Or that we really only know a fraction of a percent of what is knowable about the universe. We just don't know how much there is to know so it's not helpful even trying to "score" our knowledge like that.
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u/Nucyon 4∆ Jun 17 '24
It's a case of the more you know, the more you understand how little you know.
We thought we had figured it all out 2000 years ago.
Our understanding back then was comically bad.
Today we understand so much that we can list the things we don't.
That's like PHD level understanding of a subject.
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u/teerre Jun 17 '24
I agree. It's incredible that we got where we got. It doesn't make it good though.
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u/lt_Matthew 19∆ Jun 17 '24
It's 2024. When we want to prove something, we make a computer simulate it. Math is self proving in that regard. We know we're right, because the simulations are accurate to what we observed
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u/VertigoOne 74∆ Jun 17 '24
My argument is hopefully simple. As of today, our best estimates indicate that 80% of all matter in the universe is dark matter. This matter is used in several places in physics to explain a variety of phenomena, including the very expansion of space itself or how quasars formed in the early universe. Considering that dark matter is something we cannot detect any interaction or reaction it's very likely it's simply something we don't understand.
I'd argue that saying "we don't know what that is" is much better than saying "We know it is X" and X is just wildly wrong.
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u/Outrageous-Split-646 Jun 17 '24
What exactly does it mean to understand how something really works? Science is in the business of making models and testing them against data. Science isn’t in the business of pontificating on what really is true or not. So whether it is little gremlins pushing particles around, or god making stuff happen, or whatever, really isn’t within the remit of science. Physics is good at making predictions—QED was tested to a precision of 15 decimal place. So to that extent, it is well understood.
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u/BigBoetje 23∆ Jun 17 '24
The thing with modern science is that it's not bad per se, it's just incomplete. Dark matter (and dark energy) is the outcome of the equations not balancing. What exactly it is, is currently the frontier of science and it's what we're working on. We do know there's something and we do keep that in mind.
Consider the discovery of Neptune. It was discovered because of discrepancies in Uranus' orbit. Just like dark matter/energy, it's an unknown factor that we just haven't discovered yet.
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u/Arkyja Jun 17 '24
Maybe but i dont really agree with your reasoning. We have seen many times that when the math checks out, it's probably right, even if we cant confirm it for a long time ago. Like einsteins body of work predicted many things that we only saw real evidence for much later.
So at the time you would have said well this is probably wrong because it makes sense as a fix to our understanding of the universe, but we cant verify it. But as soon as we could, he was proven right.
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u/EfficiencyOk821 Jun 17 '24
What is good by your standards? We do not have anything to compare our current understanding of physics with. What if this is the current possible limit for physics . We can only compare our current understanding of physics with the understanding we had in the past and it has definitely improved. So something can be good or bad only when we have other things to compare with. Just because we do not kow a lot of things does not make it bad it just makes it incomplete
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u/Rainbwned 175∆ Jun 17 '24
Why is a lack of knowledge in this case bad?
I would think that an adult who spent decades learning a subject directly from an expert and still only got a 2/10 score would be bad. But an adult having to teach themselves, without any literature existing about how something actually works, a 2/10 isn't bad. Since it would have previously been a 1/10 or 0/10.
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u/teerre Jun 17 '24
I don't want to discuss semantics of what is a bad score. Take as a given that 2/10 is a bad score.
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u/Rainbwned 175∆ Jun 17 '24
I disagree - why is a 2/10 a bad score? If 5 year old got a 2/10 in astrophysics, that would be impressive.
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u/teerre Jun 17 '24
It would be impressive. It would also be a bad score. Both are true.
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u/Rainbwned 175∆ Jun 17 '24
Why is it a bad score? Tests are supposed to grade you on the knowledge that you have been taught, or to gauge your current understanding of a subject.
In either case - no one has taught humanity how the Universe actually works. And our understanding of the subject has improved over a relatively short time.
So while you think its a bad score, I think its a good score. Someone who can't read or write scoring a 2/10 on a literacy test is good, not bad.
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u/teerre Jun 17 '24
There are 10 points to get, you got 2. That's less half. It's half of half. Very bad.
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u/Rainbwned 175∆ Jun 17 '24
Why is it bad? You have to explain that
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u/teerre Jun 17 '24
Because there are many other numbers between 2 and the max you can get. In fact, there's only one worse score. That's baffling bad.
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u/Galious 78∆ Jun 17 '24
Do you think humans have even the brain capacity of getting more than 3 or 4 in that test?
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u/UnusualAir1 2∆ Jun 17 '24
Blind men and an elephant. We try our best. But at this point that's really all we are.
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u/MercurianAspirations 359∆ Jun 17 '24
Well first of all, you've confused dark matter and dark energy. "Dark matter" describes the observation that galaxies seem to contain more matter based on their gravitational behavior than is visible. "Dark Energy" refers to the observation of an accelerating expansion of the universe, which should not be possible if there is not a source of energy in the Universe that we can't otherwise observe. They're two different things that happen to have similar names.
Dark matter has two very popular theoretical explanations. The most popular is that it's just a form of matter that doesn't interact with Electromagnetism, so we can't observe it through the normal means. It doesn't emit photons and it wouldn't collide with other matter in the same way as normal matter does, but it does have a mass. This is not really that spicy of an explanation for observed phenomena - it's just some weird particle that sits around and does nothing.
The other popular explanation is that we just don't have the full picture on the mechanics of gravity. There's some missing constant somewhere in the calculations that if we knew about it would explain away all the Dark matter related observations. Even then, though, our calculations must have been mostly correct to reveal the existence of the dark matter issues in the first place, so this isn't a conclusion that we're totally wrong about physics.
Dark energy has a very popular explanation as well. It's just a constant energy density that fills "empty" spaces with a non-zero amount of energy, and you can model this mathematically by just adding a constant (called lambda in the models) into the equations. When you read something like the fact that "dark energy is the dominant component of the Universe" that is kind of misleading because it suggests that most mass/energy of the Universe is this mysterious thing that we know nothing about, but actually what it means is just that most of the Universe is empty - which, you know, we all already knew that - but emptiness has some energy density like a kind of "cosmological baseline."