Backreaction: The present phase of stagnation in the foundations of physics is not normal
How long can they go on with this, you ask? How long can they keep on spinning theory-tales?
I am afraid there is nothing that can stop them. They review each other’s papers. They review each other’s grant proposals. And they constantly tell each other that what they are doing is good science. Why should they stop? For them, all is going well. They hold conferences, they publish papers, they discuss their great new ideas. From the inside, it looks like business as usual, just that nothing comes out of it.
This is not a problem that will go away by itself.
NB: Particle physics is an obstacle to
observational Cosmology ("eyes on the skies") because the Alpher Bethe Gamov calculation of 1948 "proved" (on their second try, when they recognized that Big Bang fusion occurred in the radiation-dominated epoch, not the matter one) that our Universe "must" be almost entirely devoid of normal matter
Normal matter "can't" exist...
at least not more than 6% of the Cosmological critical density. But even though we can only observe 10% of the bright luminous self-advertising self-telegraphing stars & galaxies out there [1], we can already infer that matter-like substances comprise 30% of critical density.
The "impossible excess" of 24% or so is thusly dubbed "Dark Matter"
the endless search for which "warrants" enormous outlays each year
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For the same price, humans could just build enormous & sensitive optical telescopes, and stare out there and actually directly observe what is there is better & better detail.
For 400 years since Galileo, every. single. time. people. built. bigger. and. better. telescopes. they. saw. more. stars. galaxies. and other space objects. out there.
Tried & true. Bigger is better. Telescopes have never ever come close to observing everything out there. Nobody has ever decried the next generation of observatories as "not worth it in hindsight". Failure rate 0.00%
People have so far decried... or at least been dismayed... that every single dark matter detector was "not worth it in hindsight". Failure rate 100.00%
But Alpher Bethe Gamov have "Star Wars Jedi helmet'ed the Cosmos"... they "know" everything that's out there, without looking...
and everyone appears to be so "sure", that they would rather pour money into and endless series of so-far endlessly failing Dark Matter detectors (0% success rate)...
rather than just go for
"Galileo pro plus" (100.00% success rate to date)
If Dark Matter is ever observed to just be a bunch of stellar-mass black holes, black dwarves, brown dwarves & planetary debris...
some people would apparently complain, preferring to believe that normal matter as we know is practically non-existent (!), cosmologically speaking
that violates the core Cosmological Principle of "mediocrity" = "what's here is there", "everything we know is normal and generalizes across the cosmos"
also violates common sense
also has failed 100% of the time to date
also gets ~100% of the funding to date
so I understand
Bible: "reap what you sow"
vernacular: "get what you pay for"
[1]
How Many Galaxies Are There in the Universe? - Universe Today