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Discussion and Debate
Discussion and Debate
Physical & Life Sciences
Elusive, baffling neutrinos, and unknown physics
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<blockquote data-quote="sjastro" data-source="post: 76470254" data-attributes="member: 352921"><p>With regards to Wolfgang Pauli's quote (who evidently was a nasty individual who made Newton by comparison seem like a nice guy);</p><p></p><p>There are comparisons with the state of affairs of gravitational waves in the 1980s when I was a student in applied mathematics.</p><p>We were taught that after about a decade of failure of detecting gravitational waves using weights hanging off springs is was highly doubtful any experiment was capable of detecting them.</p><p>Interferometers were portable units found in laboratories, the idea of using interferometers spanning kilometers was considered science fiction at the time.</p><p>From the theoretical side the predicted waveforms were beyond the scope of general relativity.</p><p>Mathematicians had to violate the "mathematical beauty" of general relativity by coming up with a linearized version of the theory which took it outside of the realm of physics into the field of computer science and algorithms.</p><p>Even then success was dependent on brute force computer power in coming with up convergent solutions of the linearized field equations.</p><p>As it happened by 2006 computers had become sufficiently powerful to come up with convergent solutions and the predicted waveforms were used by LIGO with its 4 km long interferometer arms to detect gravitational waves nine years later.</p><p></p><p>The moral of the story is I am an optimist as history has shown we resourceful and sometimes smart enough to eventually overcome the scientific problems of our time.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="sjastro, post: 76470254, member: 352921"] With regards to Wolfgang Pauli's quote (who evidently was a nasty individual who made Newton by comparison seem like a nice guy); There are comparisons with the state of affairs of gravitational waves in the 1980s when I was a student in applied mathematics. We were taught that after about a decade of failure of detecting gravitational waves using weights hanging off springs is was highly doubtful any experiment was capable of detecting them. Interferometers were portable units found in laboratories, the idea of using interferometers spanning kilometers was considered science fiction at the time. From the theoretical side the predicted waveforms were beyond the scope of general relativity. Mathematicians had to violate the "mathematical beauty" of general relativity by coming up with a linearized version of the theory which took it outside of the realm of physics into the field of computer science and algorithms. Even then success was dependent on brute force computer power in coming with up convergent solutions of the linearized field equations. As it happened by 2006 computers had become sufficiently powerful to come up with convergent solutions and the predicted waveforms were used by LIGO with its 4 km long interferometer arms to detect gravitational waves nine years later. The moral of the story is I am an optimist as history has shown we resourceful and sometimes smart enough to eventually overcome the scientific problems of our time. [/QUOTE]
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Physical & Life Sciences
Elusive, baffling neutrinos, and unknown physics
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