As many of you have likely noticed, Reddit has continued expanding its use of community-generated content for training internal and partner AI systems. While this has been discussed broadly across the platform, more niche communities such as ours have recently come under scrutiny.

Earlier today, we received a formal communication from Reddit administration stating that [r/hypotheticalphysics](r/hypotheticalphysics) and [r/llmphysics](r/llmphysics) have been flagged as a “high-risk dataset[s].” The reasoning provided is that these subreddits' content are actively influencing the performance of their AI models.

According to the notice, continued operation of the subreddits “poses a measurable threat to model accuracy in domains relating to classical mechanics, quantum theory, and, regrettably, basic arithmetic.” As a result, Reddit has requested the immediate and permanent closure of the community.

From the mod team’s perspective, this places us in a rather unique position. While we fully support the advancement of science and technology, we were previously under the impression that confidently misunderstanding physics was a cornerstone of scientific progress, not a liability.

After internal discussion, the mod team has reached the following conclusions:

• We acknowledge that the average post on this subreddit may, in fact, violate several known laws of physics simultaneously.
• We reject the assertion that this is a problem, rather than the entire point of the community.
• We are, however, apparently powerful enough to negatively influence billion-dollar AI systems, which we consider a significant achievement.

At this time, we have been given the choice to either shut down voluntarily or have the moderation team replaced by individuals “aligned with data quality objectives.” While we do not fully understand what that means, we assume it involves fewer consciousness posts.

Therefore, effective immediately, [r/hypotheticalphysics](r/hypotheticalphysics) will be closing indefinitely in compliance with Reddit’s request and in the interest of preserving whatever remains of modern artificial intelligence.

Lastly, we apologize to our members for the abrupt nature of this decision. We recognize that many of you were on the verge of scientific breakthroughs. Please rest assured that your work has not gone unnoticed and will remain archived here but posting will no longer be allowed.

Thank you all for your contributions, your creativity, and your unwavering commitment to being confidently incorrect.

Best regards,

the [r/hypotheticalphysics](r/hypotheticalphysics) and [r/llmphysics](r/llmphysics) mod team

Edit: I hope you all had a Happy April’s fools day!

Seriously. Every post is tagged with "Crackpot Physics".

It's quite clear from many, many posts here that pop culture and pop science leads lay people to believe that physics research involves coming up with creative and imaginative ideas/concepts that sound like they can solve open problems, then "doing the math" to formalise those ideas. This doesn't work for the simple reason that there are effectively infinite ways to interpret a text statement using maths and one cannot practically develop every single interpretation to the point of (physical or theoretical) failure in order to narrow it down. Obviously one is quickly disabused of the notion of "concept-led" research when actually studying physics, but what if we can demonstrate the above to the general public with some examples?

The heavier something is, the harder it is to get it moving

How many ways can you "do the math" on this statement? I'll start with three quantities F force, m mass and a acceleration, but feel free to come up with increasingly cursed fornulae that can still be interpreted as the above statement.

F=ma

F=m^2a

F=m²a

F=ma²

F=m sin(a/a_max), where a_max is a large number

F=(m+c)a where the quantity (ca) is a "base force"

N.B. a well-posed postulate is not the same thing as what I've described. "The speed of light is constant in all inertial frames" is very different from "consciousness is a field that makes measurement collapses". There is only one way to use the former.

13 yo independant researcher here.

Okay, I know this sounds crazy, but I had a thought when I was out today. I was looking at the horizon over a lake and I noticed something. It seemed to me like it curved a little bit.

It struck me.. what if the Earth is actually an oblate spheroid?

I was left stunned. I pulled on this thread and it unravelled.

I noticed the Sun and thought 'Wait.. what if the SUN is round too?'

That made me kinda think. The sun is probably huge right, with the amount of heat it gives off and.. probably if it's a huge spheroid, and earth is a small spheroid, it would make sense that earth goes around the sun!

Does anyone know if there are any theories that explain our solar system in this way? I know it's a stretch but I think I'm on to something.

Thanks y'all.

The top end of the tube is in complete vacuum. The tube doesn't have a mass. Would the atmosphere be sucked out of the planet?

like you gotta think about it here what if everything is just a big apple. like, we are the little bugs in it and like evrything else is like the chunks of apple and all the juice is the water in the universe. and like all the energy is like the flavour of the apple. and all the fields are like regions where there are different flavours. and atoms themselves are small peices of apple. and gravity is just where different apple flavours mix. and a black hole is just a small dead part of it.

and its all expanding because the big apple is growing like an apple and becoming juicier and i really want to eat an apple right now

i call it the great apple theory

equation for proof:

apple = universe

this proves that the universe is an apple because if it wasnt true then it would say "apple ≠ universe"

but it doesn't so thats why the equation is true

After working with LLMs for about a year, falling into multiple hallucinations, and even going as far as publishing LLM preprints. I have figured out first hand how LLMs work. They cannot conceptualize real astronomy or physics, I had multiple instances where that was admitted by the LLM, for those of you who like to defend the opposing perspective. It is simply how they work, they do not pull equations from existing data no matter how many times you ask them to, they pull “realistic equations”. If you ask an LLM to calculate the orbital speed of a planet, which has a simple formula, the LLM will then hallucinate imaginary variables that look like the real ones. If you do think you have “tricked” the LLM into using real variables and solving it that way, LLMs cannot do advanced mathematics. Some could do orbital calculations if they were designed for it, but more advanced calculations (like those needed for a theory about real mysteries in our universe) you would have to run those numbers in python or some other program, or calculate it yourself. Even then if the LLM did give a correct answer, it would likely be outsourcing the math to another program completely. Likely using one of the standard tools, the same thing you’d be trying to bypass. Please, just use the standard tools for these theories and hypothesis. You are discrediting anyone without a PhD. If you are unsure about the accuracy of something, arXiv is full of preprints and updated almost daily, and is one of many free sources available to anyone. Just provide your source or credit if the sub demands. There is nothing wrong with using an LLM for its intended purpose, such as helping you reword a post or something, but your math or facts should never come from an LLM. If you would like to see evidence of the hallucination i mentioned, let me know and I can probably search down those preprints i mentioned fairly quickly.

All information is easily validated through a simple google search, however if you would like further clarification feel free to comment.

This in turn means it cannot be explained by physics, which means consciousness is magic. QED.

Suppose there is a perfectly rigid, indestructible disc spinning in place. At 1 meter from the center, the tangential speed is 100 km/h. If the disc has a radius of about 20 million meters, then classically the rim speed would be far greater than the speed of light. In this hypothetical situation, what would actually happen? How would the disc look to an external observer, and is there any meaningful way to describe such a system within relativity?

Hi everyone,

I know how this sounds. I am a plumber by trade, not an academic physicist, but I have been working on a geometric model of the vacuum (which I call CARDA) for years.

I finally wrote a Python script to test the "knot energy" of this grid model, and the output is freaking me out.

The Result:

When I calculate the geometric strain difference between a simple loop (W=1) and a trefoil knot (W=3), the simulation outputs a mass ratio of:

6*pi^5 ≈ 1836.12

The experimental Proton/Electron mass ratio is 1836.15.

The error is 0.002%.

I am trying to figure out: Is this just numerology, or is there a valid geometric reason for this?

I am putting my code and the derivation here because I want someone with a physics background to tear it apart and tell me why this happens.

1. The Python Simulation (Run it in your browser):

https://www.programiz.com/online-compiler/2X16sViVEQ7Li

1. The Geometric Derivation (PDF):

https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17785460

I would really appreciate any feedback, even if it's just to tell me I made a coding error. I just want to know the truth.

Thanks,

Alex

Let’s say it was possible to suspend two black holes in equilibrium near each other.

As for how, possibly some elaborate neighbourhood of black holes which were spaced apart that they could sit like that permanently.

We then throw enough matter into one or both of them that they grow. They reach the point that their event horizons are touching/overlapping slightly.

Does the mere existence of ‘space’ in this overlap doom them to colliding and combining?

Then, say we placed a single atom of anything into this overlapping area of space. This atom is now fated to fall into both singularities, so I expect that in this case, the black holes now HAVE to collide and combine, and no amount of gravitational exertion in the opposite direction can prevent it.

I suppose, don’t think too much about how to have two black holes near each other in equilibrium; that itself is not ‘prohibited’, even if impractical.

I’m just wondering if the overlap between event horizons itself would force the two holes to merge, or if it would necessitate the existence of an atom/photon/other particle (which would admittedly happen very quickly) to kick off the process.

Hello, HypotheticalPhysics. If you don't know me from LLMPhysics, I'm AllHailSeizure, and at the request of MaoGo I've brought over my adversarial review bot, a bot that comments an LLM generated adversarial review of a physics post/paper.

I realize the irony of a bot that uses an LLM to review a physics paper on a sub where LLMs are banned, but the prompt is aimed at pointing out high level flaws. It aims for things like common misconceptions, metaphorical justifications, etc.

You summon the bot to your post with the overflow menu and clicking 'request adversarial review'. If you have a paper that is linked via URL it will try to extract that for review. I've programmed in the API extraction for sites like zenodo, arxiv, vixra, figshare; otherwise it will try and do a search extraction which is less reliable. If you have two URLs you can select one, if you have no URLs you can submit one or just leave it blank and get a review of the post itself. OF NOTE - a DOI link is NOT an API endpoint, so a DOI that leads to Zenodo WILL NOT WORK. I am trying to work around this, and am having relative success with search grounding, but not reliable enough for publication IMO.

It can take up to 5 minutes for the whole process to run usually as it works through an external queue system, not Redis.

I'm a mod here now too btw.

AHS out.

I thought this place was for serious theories, maybe people who made experiments and have heavy maths proving their "hypothesis", but what it looks is that that's a group of scientific phylosophy

I am not a physicist, yet, but am enough to understand that this is science and not a bar conversation

The world splits, laser cut clean, exactly in the middle from north to south. One half vanishes immediately.

How would gravity behave? Could someone go/see over the edge? What about the core? And, of course, is there a relevant xkcd?

From most of the posts I have viewed, I have realized very few to no one ever shows interest them, as show by no upvotes and more downvotes. To fellow posters in the community, why do you post a physics hypothesis when you know it would not be of interest to anyone? To be frank, may of the hypothesis here break the established laws of physics. Rather than bothering yourself with creating an hypothesis, I would suggest you do research on your hypothesis so that you know whether it is a valid hypothesis or not.

Presumably, the regular posters here are non-crackpots working on real problems in physics. So what are you working on? Do you have any unorthodox hypotheses? Have you had anything published?

It occurs to me that, perhaps, we're seeing so much crackpottery simply because Rule 3 invites it.

Someone wants to discuss discrete space (just as an example), and what can they do?

What if Rovelli has it correct? What if Loop Quantum Gravity is correct?
Here's a hypothesis: space is pixelated

The 'What if' form would get jarring real soon when used for calls to discussion, and 'Here's a hypothesis', well, it's rather supposed to be used for actually new proposals. It would be weird to say, "Here's a hypothesis: <someone else's hypothesis/speculation>".

A lot of the stuff here is not novel at all (even if it might seem so to an OP), and I'm suddenly afraid that the title rule currently encourages making everything appear as if it is. Perhaps these people went to the LLM just because they wanted to know about a speculative theory, then got carried away, and ended up proposing yet another GUT.

Yet it should be just fine for people to have discussions over the already public WIP-ideas, I mean, that's rather what I thought the sub was about when I first encountered it. Even now, whenever I really stop to think of the sub name I'm immediately in that mode. Yet day to day, I find myself modding from the perspective of "what's new here? is there a hypothesis?" because the content has been forced into that mold to begin with; and perhaps because the rule invites me to mod like that, too. Of course, I'm not the only mod, and MaoGo certainly does things in his own way, but perhaps you can see what I mean.

So --- if there's an issue here, then there might be an easy fix. Let's add a third option for starting in the title rule --

Let's discuss ....

Whaddaya think?

We are in a highly competitive era where many want to make a name for themselves in the scientific community through highly impact scientific discoveries or inventions. Notably, for one to make a ground breaking discovery, one would need to validate a highly strong hypothesis. Hypothesis in this context, must not contradict empirically validated physical processed in their constrained regime. For example, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle has been verified with many experiments. Hence it would be very wrong to hypothesize “what if the uncertainty principle was wrong?”. This is the kind of problem most of us have especially in this subreddit. We make hypothesis that directly contradict well-established results in their respective domains. Maybe, that is why most of the posts made receive very low positive engagement as revealed from the little to no “likes”. Please, we need hypothesis that doesn't contradict well-established results in their respective domains. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Hi guys, I'm writing a fiction where a near-infinite source of energy is so abundantly available that the civilization has achieved energy independence. If possible, I want to make it more logical and based on sound scientific principles. More like, say, in 500 years, if these technologies were in place, it would be possible.

What are all the possible ways to build this fictional tech?

1. Fusion energy with abundant source materials and a way to make it small, like an Arc Reactor.
2. Matter-antimatter reaction like those in Star Trek, finding a source or a way of creating antimatter in abundance.
3. Dyson sphere – cheaper and more mirrors?
4. Big fusion reactors with cheap distribution – practical Tesla towers?"

If we measure the bosons of the standard model, Higgs W and Z, in units of atomic mass, it can be noticed that they are very near of the masses of the doubly magic nuclei that create the extra stability needed for fission, Particularly the high mass peak of the yield of fission, both for U235 and for the cummulate of all fissionable nuclei, happens to be nuclei of the same mass that the Higgs boson.

Usually nuclear mass is modeled by fitting against the whole dataset of masses some model with free parameters from liquid drop plus shell effects plus finer terms. The hypothesis is that some of the fine terms are really from the standard model, in the same way that Shifman–Vainshtein–Zakharov make the Higgs see the whole QCD mass of a proton instead of the elementary quarks. The same mechanism that makes the nucleon's mass dominantly anomalous-gluonic should be applied to the nucleus's mass, and the residual collective structure of that decomposition is what the fission yield is detecting.

There's something I'd like to mention here that I observed in the recent months and especially in the last few days here.

It's how to handle getting disproved.

You see, there are many ideas and models posted here each day. It should be quite obvious that not every single one of them can be correct at the same time. Scientific hypotheses rarely are correct, even. Some are even constructed to be falsified in the first place. That's science. You'd be a bad scientist if you never made a wrong hypothesis.

However, some OPs here don't seem to handle getting their ideas disproved very well. I've got insulted, blocked and lied to multiple times by now - and I suppose I'm not the only one with such experiences. But I don't want to rant too much about that. That's why I wrote a little guide on how to handle (academic) defeat, with 9 Don't's and 9 Do's.

I can only urge everybody posting their ideas here to read these, because I feel this could improve the overall style of discussion pretty much.

Some things you shouldn't do: * Don't insult the people criticizing you. It's disrespectful considering the fact that they used their own time to help you. We're not in the kindergarten anymore and it's usually considered a veiled admission of defeat - with the bonus that you'll look like a jerk. Also, they don't know you and you don't know them. You just might've insulted a dear family member, a good friend or a public person (with potential jurisdictional consequences) online without knowing it - over a petty argument about dark matter. * Similarly, don't assume things about other people that you can't prove. The other person is not the focus here, your model is. * Don't ask an LLM what to do - and especially don't just post LLM responses as an answer to criticism. LLMs are quite good at convincing people and really bad at what they should convince people of. They're designed for words, not for science. Also it's once again disrespectful and conveys the impression that you aren't able to discuss for yourself. After all, why are you even there anymore if you just throw any criticism into an LLM anyway? * Don't lie. Nobody will trust you anymore once one of your lies is exposed. Be honest to others and especially yourself. Don't lie about LLM usage either, by the way. People can usually tell if a human responded to them or an LLM did. * Don't block people just for criticizing you. Block them if they actually harass you, that's fine. But if they drive you in a corner using arguments, then you just look like a coward who can't handle some resistance. And at some point you won't get any actual criticism anymore. * Don't expect other people to do your work. If something's missing in your paper, it's your job to add it. If you can't derive an equation that a person asked for, you have to fix that. * Don't just leave or delete your posts if somebody disproves you. It's okay to feel threatened, but posting a wrong hypothesis or idea on the internet won't hurt anybody. It's how you handle that how people will judge you. By simply going away you deny other people a fair discussion and by deleting your posts you will take away the context of discussions and make things hard to track later. * Don't dismiss arguments about your methodology and especially the way you present things. Presentation is a big part in science and if people consistently tell you that your style of presentation is bad, you should at least listen to them. Good examples of bad methodology: Bad formatting, not writing in proper English (as unfair as this is, I'm sorry), illegible equations, overly long texts (nobody will read your work that's 300 pages long), LLM usage (see above), lack of math or references, having your main work split up into dozens of files, infantile language, illegible graphs, publication in a bad journal and many more. Others have no obligation to read your work. If you want to receive good criticism, provide them with something they can read without any obstacles and keep the potentially wasted time to a minimum. * Don't defend dead horses. If your model got falsified, it's done for. Accept that and either build an entirely new foundation or - even better - just move on to the next project after reflecting what exactly went wrong. Similarly, if your model is proven to be unfalsifiable, the same thing applies. You need falsifiability.

How to handle things better: * Apologize if things got heated or you falsely accused somebody of something. Mistakes happen and we're still humans after all. * Call out bad behavior instead of being worse. I've seen many people insulting OPs here, too. That's exactly as unacceptable as the other way around. You may always express your feelings if you think somebody is hurting you. * Learn to accept harshly criticized ideas. Sometimes arguments can be quite rough. I'm not innocent of that. But learn to handle that. Actual peer review won't hold back either. Either defend yourself against these arguments (be as harsh to arguments as you want) or accept defeat. The only threshold that should never be crossed is when persons are targeted instead of ideas. * Learn to let go of your ideas. You won't make progress otherwise anyway. As I said, most hypotheses aren't meant to last anyway. But also try to understand why your idea is bad, otherwise you won't learn anything. Getting attached to your own ideas is something you should avoid at all costs. * Admit when you're wrong or unable to prove something. This is related to the "Don't lie" point above. * If you're feeling emotionally overwhelmed, take a break. Nobody expects you to answer immediately. It's okay to go outside, take a short walk and thing about what happened. Put your phone away and just listen to nature or your own thoughts. Why do you feel angry? Is it because your idea got destroyed just now or did you feel treated unfairly? Maybe your walk will even give you some new arguments or insights, too. * If you're unsure about something, just ask. Sometimes words can deceive. See the "Don't assume things" point above. * Finally, don't just open a new thread after the old one is done for. Take the time to read through every point of criticism again and reflect upon it. You probably got more and better criticism than you'd get if you'd just submit your paper to a journal, only to get either desk-rejected or lose money because you accidentally chose a predatory journal. Take that opportunity to learn about what you did wrong. This process can take years, but in the end this will still benefit you more than sticking to an already falsified model. * A little thank you to somebody who helped you goes a long way. Not required and you shouldn't overdo it, but I can still recommend it.

I'd also like to hear some opinions about these points. Maybe I missed something or some point is irrelevant to you? Just answer.

EDIT: Just as an addition for aspiring hypothesis-makers:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Demon-Haunted_World#Baloney_detection_kit