Theoretical Physics....?

[SwingsitlikeHogan]

Interesting little piece this morning on Today programme (07:45 - On Sounds 1hr45mins in) - on how scientists create the sound of a neutron star created by passing soundwaves through the 'perfect fluid' - thermigas? (sp) when atoms behave according to quantum rules - as waves rather than 'billiard balls' clattering about.

 

[ScienceBoy]

First you must have a guess, prove you can be right or wrong and then one day someone more clever than you will prove it.

What we do now as theory is no different to what the best minds 1000 years ago were doing.

Think 100, 500, 1000 years from now, how important could it be then?

Each scientist, each generation, each discovery and each theory over time lead to great things, each can look back on those who came before and pass on progress to those who immediately follow.

 

[jim8flog]

We watched The Theory of Everything last night, joyless film, don't bother if you haven't seen it. Anyway, it struck me whilst watching it that theoretical physics, this is what Stephen Hawkings studied, is largely pointless. They create a theory then test whether it can be proved or not. There is no end result which benefits mankind as far as I can see in any practical sense.

Hopefully there are some physics people on here. Explain to me what I am missing, have I got it wrong? Do theoretical physicists actually produce work that advances mankind or is it purely, as the title suggests, theoretical and knowledge led.

The Hadron collider helps to keep a large part of Switzerland warm

 

[jim8flog]

Sorry for my late addition to this thread the Tardis was a bit off today

 

[jim8flog]

Or was that yesterday

 

[SwingsitlikeHogan]

I look up into a cloudless night sky and I see a gazzillion pinpricks of light - yet I know that I am actually looking at a 180x360 deg horizon-to-horizon packed sky - there are no gaps - just that the light from those I cannot see has not yet reached earth - and I look and I wonder...and I want to understand...and we try...

 

[Colonel Bogey]

I don't care. There's nothing out there but stars, and as lovely as they are, and as long as they stay up there, that all I need to know. The money that is wasted on these things is ridiculous.

 

[stefanovic]

I look up into a cloudless night sky and I see a gazzillion pinpricks of light - yet I know that I am actually looking at a 180x360 deg horizon-to-horizon packed sky - there are no gaps - just that the light from those I cannot see has not yet reached earth - and I look and I wonder...and I want to understand...and we try...

"There is nothing in the world except for empty curved space. Matter, charge, electromagnetism and other forces are only manifestations of the curvature of space. (John Wheeler).
As for sugar cubes.
https://percentagecalculator.mes.fm/interesting-facts/the-entire-human-race-in-a-sugar-cube

 

[PhilTheFragger]

"There is nothing in the world except for empty curved space. Matter, charge, electromagnetism and other forces are only manifestations of the curvature of space. (John Wheeler).
As for sugar cubes.
https://percentagecalculator.mes.fm/interesting-facts/the-entire-human-race-in-a-sugar-cube

And whisky ??