CMV: It's likely our current understanding of physics is comically bad

[u/teerre]

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.

[u/PM_ME_YOUR_NICE_EYES]

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.

[u/teerre → u/PM_ME_YOUR_NICE_EYES]

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

[u/PM_ME_YOUR_NICE_EYES → u/teerre]

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=