So I picked up last
week's New Yorker to find one of it's thorough and insightful articles of the
same name, in this case by Jim Holt on the demise of string theory, and the
books by Smolin and Woit. What caught my attention was the apparent fact
that what caused string theory to suddenly take over all of theoretical physics
is that physics has run out of data! Apparently everything
they've thought of trying to explain has been, except for a few decimal places
and things like cosmology, so the physicists went off on a wild tear that,
having nothing to explain, lead nowhere.
I was sort of
thinking, if there's a data shortage, maybe they could look at all the good data
we've been tossing in the trash for centuries, the data tails clipped
off and disposed of in the process of approximating the regular processes we
found. Those 'tails' contain all the evidence we have of the
beginnings and endings of things, all the unstable and connecting
processes. Is it limitless? I don't know,
but it seems like a door to nature's deep
thought. At the very least they expose how
nature doesn't conceive of things 'bling bling bling' like
we do, but exhaustively completes every last elaborate step.
Figuring
that out seems like it could last us a good long while.
Phil Henshaw ¸¸¸¸.·´ ¯ `·.¸¸¸¸
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
680 Ft. Washington Ave
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