The top answer given here is highly reductionist to the point of misleading. This question comes up regularly in Physics SE, if you’re interested I suggest you check out the answers to the following:
Second one has a highly upvoted but controversial answer by Lubos Motl.
This question is similar, I think, to others like “why is there a speed limit in the universe” and “does light slow down in a material” that are I doubly muddled for science enthusiasts because (1) they are concepts that require deep domain knowledge, (2) even for some who have (1) they’ve been biased by decades of well meaning but harmful educational aides.
Please forgive my response being a little meta, but it bothers me that 95% of discussions where physics "experts" are clarifying something to laymen is those experts clarifying that some factor is actually well understood and makes complete sense and is firmly under the belt of the academic and research community if you just had the knowledge to understand why. Almost never through these same discussions is there acknowledgement or discussion of the unknowns, limitations, or unsolved problems. Judging from years of anecdotal exposure to these "clarifications for the laymen" one would assume absolutely nothing is unsolved in physics.
It seems like the mismatch between technical definitions and common ones and/or the nature of mathematical models vs our first person experience of the universe is a common source of confusion.
I only have an EE’s understanding of physics, so just a tiny bit of modern physics and some semiconductor stuff. But I’m glad to have had the big “it’s just a model” reveal so I can worrying too much about what physics means.
It's balanced out by laymen getting exposed to science media that constantly hypes up how mysterious, unknown, and downright magical everything is, rather than appreciating how rich the literature has become.
I mean, this is how it is for any domain that is sufficiently deep. It's not like we don't have similar examples in computer science - when talking with laypeople, we provide generalizations and abstractions. There are still unsolved questions, like P=NP - but the layperson out there is unlikely to think that programming is "unsolved."
This isn't an indictment of physics and physicists, it's just an example of how advanced domain knowledge is simplified for easier consumption of non-experts across basically every field deep enough to have these sorts of complex topics.
> a highly upvoted but controversial answer by Lubos Motl
Which is, of course, typical of Lubos Motl. :-)
What his answer actually boils down to is the quantum field theory answer: the claim that (a) we need a quantum theory of gravity, and (b) the known quantum field theory of a massless spin-2 field is at least a good low energy approximation to whatever the final quantum theory of gravity will turn out to be. Both of these claims are believed to be valid by many physicists, but neither one actually has any experimental evidence to support it at our current state of knowledge.
> The top answer given here is highly reductionist to the point of misleading
Is there a reason to take your opinion as being right? I am not an expert in physics, I don't want to study for the next 20 years to be one, how can I determine if you're correct, and that the top answer is indeed "highly reductionist to the point of misleading". Maybe _you_'re wrong and the other guy is right.
That's what finally broke by reddit addiction and relying on the Internet for advice.
There's lots of people out there that mean well and have strong opinions and state things with confidence that they don't necessary know for truth.
I recall thinking that I don't critically examine what appears to be expert input from redditors in a field I know little about, but those same voices in areas I am an expert in are almost always wrong, or nuanced in some way to make them useless. I finally drew the line and realized it wasn't just my field that had wrong "experts" it was every field.
I think the final straw was when I asked a really complex question about a aberration in my telescope in the astrophotography subreddits and got very authoritative sounding responses that were far far off base, I realized it wasn't just software engineering.
I wonder how much of it is teens and young adults without a lot of experience giving advice that's the problem here. Probably not, but something to think about. That person giving you advice on how to navigate your relationship with your spouse might be a 13 year old who's never dated anyone before.
Heh, just remember this when you hear someone complaining about how much LLMs make up and hallucinate. Humans just happen to be excellent bullshit generators when it comes to topics they are uncertain about.
Every year reddit gets dumber. And yet it's still the one gem and generally only gem you can find on google.
I miss the forum days. People knew what they were doing. Upvotes were supposed to save us and give us top notch content, instead it's now making us dumber.
No they don't. Experimentation is all we need. Nothing in this can be determined without error. It is easier to believe it is not true. It is no different than the priests that tried to figure how many angels can stand on a head of a pin. But 1) you lack that deep domain knowledge and 2) you are biased. Your arguments are empty. First principles.
https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/219306/if-gravit...
https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/61899/why-do-we-...
Second one has a highly upvoted but controversial answer by Lubos Motl.
This question is similar, I think, to others like “why is there a speed limit in the universe” and “does light slow down in a material” that are I doubly muddled for science enthusiasts because (1) they are concepts that require deep domain knowledge, (2) even for some who have (1) they’ve been biased by decades of well meaning but harmful educational aides.