Not so sure I liked it actuallyA theory could be anything stupid really?
Your use here appears to be the ordinary general English use of the word theory - just an idea someone has or comes up with that may or may not be true. The word used for this concept in science is hypothesis. In science, the word theory means something else.
English has a lot of words, but there seems to be even more ideas than words, so this bit of philosophy from the 1970s applies:
"There's a sign on the door, but she wants to be sure, 'cause you know sometimes words have two meanings."
The scientific words theory and law both refer to ideas that are well established to be true due to many observations that have been determined to be true (a true observation is a "fact," and this meaning is the same as or similar enough to ordinary English). I'm not quite sure of the difference between theory and law, despite what Wikipedia says. There's Einstein's theory of special relativity, his theory of general relativity, and there's Newton's law of gravity. All of these use formulas. There's certainly a distinction, but I'm not sure it's always clearly defined.
Well, we still talk about Einstein's theory of special relativity
Unfortunately, we can't test "ETERNAL MOTION" that has always been and always will be.Because "we" are not really sure it's fully OK? ;-) ... maybe a TOE is required to take it out of the "theory" state and into the fact corner
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And when there is actually NO EXISTANCE OF A CONSTANT except for change itself >
NO TOE WILL EVER BE FOUND.
As we see that both Mathematics and Physics contain paradoxes, there is the aspect of 'A POINTLESS EXCERSIZE'.
I hope I live long enough to see what the marriage of AI & Quantum Computing will bring/expose
This looks like a theory or perhaps even a hypothesis. If we could just come up with a way to falsify it, it is an accepted theory (hypothesis?) - right? But not yet a Law or Fact...
I found this:
"In scientific reasoning, a hypothesis is constructed before any applicable research has been done. A theory, on the other hand, is supported by evidence: it's a principle formed as an attempt to explain things that have already been substantiated by data."
Now I'm just confused on a higher level ;-D
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About 20 miles south of New Quay. Off to do some more cliff walking today. BTW, we had originally planned to go to the west coast hHghlands in Scotland, and tried to book in February, early March. Every single site we tried was booked. The secret is out. I fear the Highlands are going to be inundated with tourists in the coming years! Looks like to go in April/May, you have to book in September the year before. Bank holidays don’t help either!
Maybe it can be explained like this:-Not so sure I liked it actually
When/will GR be upgraded to a fact or law? Maybe it i but still called a theory... quite confusing :-/
Again, I have no problems with all this really - just struck me that the words used and semantics where a bit "odd"...
Theory: "why" or "how" (vague!)
Fact: simple, basic observation.
The wiki text is as I see it a bit of a logical mess.
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I can measure the strength of a gravitational field with instruments. That is a fact.
I cannot measure GR, but I can use it to explain the gravitational field. That is a theory.
An example of this would be:
Steve or Galu write a paper on some new idea and it is published on xarxiv. That’s a hypothesis. Physicists the world over rush to test the hypothesis and find measurements (ie observable facts) 100% agree with the predictions made in the paper’s equations. The hypothesis is now a theory.
@Mister Audio has "got my goat" again!
What is this gibberish equation? And why uplink a PDF when a simple image shows it in all its "Not Even Wrongness"?
Quite honestly I prefer the attached hypothetical extension of the Standard Model. It is very funny indeed!
My own current interest is in reconciling this constructed image of a neutron star distorted by intense gravity, where you can see round the corners to some extent:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_star
I think I shall ponder the method of images in electrostatics with an earthed sphere to get a grip on the similar mathematics involved:
I can already see that 2025 Nobel Prize for Physics winging its way to me!
Best, Steve.
What is this gibberish equation? And why uplink a PDF when a simple image shows it in all its "Not Even Wrongness"?
Quite honestly I prefer the attached hypothetical extension of the Standard Model. It is very funny indeed!
My own current interest is in reconciling this constructed image of a neutron star distorted by intense gravity, where you can see round the corners to some extent:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_star
I think I shall ponder the method of images in electrostatics with an earthed sphere to get a grip on the similar mathematics involved:
I can already see that 2025 Nobel Prize for Physics winging its way to me!
Best, Steve.
Attachments
We discussed the distinction between hypothesis and theory way back on page 75.
My contribution was to quote from the Merriam-Webster dictionary:
"A hypothesis is an assumption, an idea that is proposed for the sake of argument so that it can be tested to see if it might be true."
"A theory, in contrast, is a principle that has been formed as an attempt to explain things that have already been substantiated by data."
However:
"In non-scientific use hypothesis and theory are often used interchangeably to mean simply an idea, speculation, or hunch, with theory being the more common choice."
You can almost see how string theory started. Lord Kelvin must be having a laugh 😆
You may remember Steve's smoke rings. He showed two boxes which shot coloured smoke rings towards each other.
William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) wrote in 1867, "...a few days ago [I was shown] in Edinburgh a magnificent way of producing [vortex rings] ... when one [smoke] ring passes near another, each is much disturbed, and is seen to be in a state of violent vibration for a few seconds, till it settles again into its circular form. The vibrations make a beautiful subject for mathematical work."
You'll be interested to know that James Clerk Maxwell entered into discussions as he was interested in knots because of electromagnetic considerations. In 1868 he wrote several manuscripts which studied knots.
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Further googling reveals that Lord Kelvin had good reasons to be serious about his 'knotty' model of the atom.
"Thomson could not accept the idea of atoms, at least not as they were imagined at the time, as small, hard bodies.
How could atoms, so conceived, account for the great variety of chemical elements?
How could they vibrate and emit visible light?"
For the really interested reader, the full history is contained within this 18 page pdf: https://www.maths.ed.ac.uk/~v1ranick/papers/silver2.pdf
I've heard of gluons but not glueballs.
https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/new-particle-first-glueball/
https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/new-particle-first-glueball/
I read that scientists have been looking for glueballs for decades.
Originally the bound state of gluons was called "gluonium".
Nucleons (left) consist of quarks (matter particles) held together by gluons (force particles). A glueball (right) is made up purely of gluons.