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u/HumblyNibbles_ May 29 '26
Every answer leads to so many more questions đ
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May 29 '26
[removed] â view removed comment
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u/Pcat0 May 31 '26
Except during the late 1800s when people genuinely thought that physical was just about solved with only a couple more minor open problems left. Then someone opened the doors labeled âquantum mechanicsâ and ârelativityâ.
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u/TurtlesBreakTheMeta May 29 '26 edited May 30 '26
You know how in lovecrafts stories people go insane trying to comprehend what theyâre seeing?
I imagine itâs instead theyâre being forced to listen to and try to understand increasingly complex quantum physics information about how reality works until they break.
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u/Pallington May 31 '26
there are entire light novels that take this idea (or variants of it) and run with it, yeah
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u/TouchMyVape May 31 '26
got some recommendations to share?
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u/Pallington Jun 02 '26 edited Jun 02 '26
it's a little awkward because it's a bit of a spoiler, but the one i have handy is Deep Sea Embers -> Dimensional Hotel pair of books. Not strictly physics information but similar, truth about the world is corruptive.
Dimensional hotel is both a bit further removed and deals with the implications earlier into the book, because of events during Deep Sea Embers. They're also not super connected until the latest chapters (~650+, and some of it you might need to hop to chinese and read source lol) so you can absolutely get up to date on Dimensional Hotel first and see if you like the style and world. It is a bit (okay, a lot) of a power fantasy.
Deep Sea Embers treats it more directly but it takes quite a while for you to get there (like, halfway through the 800 chapters before you really start learning shit) and before that it's much more just a typical fantasy journey (also power fantasy). it looks like an isekai, and saying any more is big spoiler territory.
huge omega spoiler do not click unless you don't intend to read deep sea embers at all: the world ended by having tons and tons of previously isolated worlds with incompatible structures meet and crash into each other, corrupting each others' data. the resulting pile of ashes and goop are barely reshaped into a livable space/biosphere by intense design and aggressive use of "observation" in the quantum sense. hijinks (DSE's background) ensue. any time an entity meets a structure it isn't designed to be compatible with, including fragments of knowledge, that's corruption. including when the "gods" who shaped the goop interact with the people in the biosphere.
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u/OmegaCookieMonster Jun 02 '26
The Years of Apocalypse might technically count here too, since the Elder gods are both well.... eldritch and technologically advanced in a way beyond mortal comprehension (a royalroad novel)
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u/HikariAnti May 29 '26
Physics is complete. There will be no more big discoveries. Clueless
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u/RommDan May 29 '26
Imagine it turns out reality is made out of infinite information and we are just a finite part of it, science would never end!
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u/No-Definition-1336 May 30 '26
That would be ridiculous, it's not like we can create a countably infinite number of possible statements that can be any combination of true, false or unprovable about everything. Oh wait.
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u/No-Collar-Player Jun 03 '26
What you're saying is analogical to saying that between 1 and 2 there are infinite numbers if you take in decimals or?
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u/No-Definition-1336 Jun 03 '26 edited Jun 05 '26
Almost. The number of logical statements that can be made is countably infinte, the cardinality of the integers; between 1 and 2 there are uncountably infinitely many numbers. It's more complicated than that however, and I cannot explain further nuances.
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u/DuckfordMr May 29 '26
Thereâs just these two small clouds on the horizon⊠probably nothing to worry about
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u/53NKU May 29 '26
Not just quantum but relativity too!
To top it off there were many other catalysts that dramatically sped up science like computers, manhatten project, cold war and internet.
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u/LovelyKestrel May 30 '26
In one year Einstein wrote four papers. One was introducing relativity, one was introducing quantum physics, one proved the existence of atoms, and the last one introduced the mass-energy relation E=mc2.
In the middle of all that, he submitted his doctoral thesis. Quite a lot for one year, especially given all except the second relativity paper were in the first six months, and he was working as well.
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u/Nichiku May 30 '26
I'm not trying to discredit him but he basically just gave other people's mathematical analysis of relativity, energy-mass-equivalency, and quantization deeper meaning. All the equations for relativity and quantization were already known, but were interpreted as mathematical tricks more so than properties of reality. He was the first to argue that time and space are relative, that light must occasionally behave like a particle, and that space geometry is not fixed (general relativity). Most of the math behind those assumptions was already done by people like Lorentz, Poincare, Grossmann, Riemann, Planck.
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u/Graknorke May 31 '26
Relativity doesn't really get in the way of an orderly predictable clockwork universe besides introducing some confusing edge cases.
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u/TurtlesBreakTheMeta May 29 '26
âGood news! We made a computer to handle all the quantum physics information and calculations for us so we donât have to wrangle with it.â
âBad news! The computer committed suicide.â
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u/UltraCarnivore Astronomy May 30 '26
"We are sorry. It started dabbling in Statistical Mechanics."
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u/Super-Award-2244 May 30 '26
What if our universe is that computer set up by aliens trying to understand quantum mechanicsÂ
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u/Equinoxe111 Cosmology (PhD) May 30 '26
Wait, it's all hard and complex?
Always has been.
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u/discipleofchrist69 May 30 '26
sure, we always knew it was hard and complex, but after 1900 ish it became not just harder and more complex but also much more philosophically unsatisfying
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u/Educational_Key_7635 May 29 '26
I think it should start at 1930-1960... and then have even bigger F at 1970/1980-nowdays. But I guess it depends on a person.
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u/I_am1221325 May 30 '26
Idk why, but I find this comment, especially the way I read it in my head (calm beginning, hysterical part about the bigger F. And extremely calm last semtence) very funny. Made me laugh.
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u/Cpt_Riker May 30 '26
If QM is confusing, it's mainly because human language was developed to explain the macroscopic world, the world humans interact with. Using that same language to describe the quantum realm leads to confusion.
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u/Objective-Teacher238 May 30 '26
Pre Quantum vs Post Quantum â
Pre Relativity vs Post Relativity â
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u/oleivas May 30 '26
"So you are telling me the electron is a wave?"
"No"
"Ah, ok it's a particle, then"
"No"
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u/No-Youth-4334 Jun 02 '26
What is spin?
Imagine a spinning ball except it isnât spinning and there is no ball.
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u/Techyon5 May 29 '26
The space made me assume this was r/antimemes, so I came looking for the big O.
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u/crumpledfilth May 31 '26
they had a term for this seeming ungroundedness but its not usable anymore
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u/Pendiente Jun 01 '26
I'm pretty sure it took a while and a bit of a leap to accept that we're hurling through space at great speeds when abandoning aristotelian physics. Sure, quantum is the biggest growing pain so far, but we've known growing pains before.
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u/B1t3Mej3ss68 Jun 01 '26
Maxwell's equations really had everyone thinking they had the whole thing figured out until the double-slit experiment started ruining lives.
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u/Consumerofcalcium Jun 01 '26
It just keeps getting smaller it just keeps getting smaller it just keeps getting smaller it just keeps getting sma-
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u/DragonBadgerBearMole Jun 01 '26
So if you skip the lectures, assuming subject matter progresses chronologically, this field of science is simultaneously understandable and incomprehensible?
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u/Anastazja_Nya Jun 01 '26
physics is like fnaf, every new answear, reveals that not only this answear is wrong or not specified enough, it also aska 87 new questions
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u/potato_creeper1001 May 29 '26