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The dogma of physics
Physics is a complete and finished science. New students should not take up physics as a research subject. There will be no further discoveries that could change or add in a significant way to our understanding of nature. Science has spoken.
Mechanics describes in full generality the motion of rigid bodies. However, plenty of problems in mechanics have no solutions. These are problems such as the planning of robot movement or the three-body problem in astronomy, as well as the problems in the motion of chaotic systems. We will never obtain satisfactory solutions to these problems.
Fluid dynamics has had a certain degree of success, but is essentially intractable. The Navier-Stokes equation will never be solved in full generality, nor will there be any progress towards a rigorous understanding of its solutions. Turbulent motion of atmosphere or of plasma will remain forever a mystery.
Thermodynamics plays a major role in technology. However, statistical physics and kinetics is too mathematically difficult to be of any real use for either theory or practice. There will be no further progress in understanding the fundamental problems of entropy and the thermodynamical arrow of time.
Electrodynamics (both classical and quantum) is a supremely important and successful theory. In principle, electrodynamics governs all chemistry and all solid-state physics. However, it is hopeless to use quantum theory for describing properties of solid materials (such as their rigidity or superconductivity) or for predicting the parameters of chemical reactions. We are forever doomed to using blind experimental search for new materials or new reactions.
The fundamental questions of quantum mechanics - the problem of interpretation and of the quantum-to-classical transition - will remain muddy and unclear. It is easier to brainwash students into not asking questions than to teach them the almost unsurmountably difficult calculations necessary in that domain. There is also no hope that these calculations will ever be conclusively successful and have predictive power.
High-energy physics has had its heyday when new particles were being discovered every year. This era has gone forever. Despite our best efforts and ever more expensive particle accelerators, we will never discover a new fundamental force or a new particle that does not fit the Standard Model. Physicists will be searching in vain for exotic neutrinos or for particles that penetrate the hypothetical extra dimensions of spacetime.
There be no success in trying to patch up the fundamental theoretical flaws of high-energy physics - the divergencies of quantum field theory and the mathematically incorrect calculations that one is accustomed to perform in that domain. Neither a new "grand unification", nor supersymmetry, nor 11-dimensional string theory, nor any other exotic speculation will be successful in simplifying the haphazard collection of facts and theories known as "high energy physics".
And yet the Standard Model of particle physics will not provide answers even to such basic questions as the derivation of the proton mass (supposedly to be computed from first principles). The required calculations will remain mathematically intractable.
Gravitation as discovered by Einstein remains to this day undisputed and incontrovertible. No experiments will ever be found to contradict it. Neither will we find any successful alternative theory of gravitation (classical or quantum) that could become a viable contender. At the same time, certain basic issues such as the problem of the possibility of causality violations ("chronology protection"), the problem of the final state of black holes, or the fundamental mysteries of cosmology - the problems of "dark matter" and "dark energy" - will remain unresolved. Physicists will not discover any particles or fields that could represent "dark matter" or "dark energy", and yet no other explanation will present itself.
With time, scientists will be progressively less inclined to think about these difficult problems that do not promise quick publication of results. Instead, most scientists will go deeper into details of already known theories, improving the precision of experiments in already safely established and uncontroversial domains, or finding new and financially profitable industrial applications in these domains. Other scientists will go further into the direction of abstract speculation, seeking safety in progressively more far-fetched hypothetical theories that have no practical prospects of being experimentally verified or refuted within the scientist's lifetime. |