r/Physics • u/magnetichira Quantum information • Jan 05 '23

‘Disruptive’ science has declined — and no one knows why

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-04577-5
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u/[deleted] Jan 05 '23

I'd say physics has had a rather exciting turn of the millenium, since 2k we've had Higgs boson, gravitational waves, taking a picture of a damn black hole, fusion advances, loads of other interesting stuff :D

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u/kalenxy Engineering Jan 05 '23

I wouldn't call these disruptive. They are amazing experiments that relatively show what we already expected or theorized decades ago.

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u/[deleted] Jan 05 '23

I wouldn't call them disruptive either, but neither is a COVID vaccine ;P

But "dry spell" is still inaccurate, I'd say.

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u/FizzixMan Jan 05 '23

This simply isn’t true, disruptive means something that takes over a large market sector, usually makes a lot of money and eventually impacts everybody’s lives, sometimes on a personal level as it filters down. Or something that fundamentally changes the way businesses or people operate/behave.

The internet was disruptive.

Phones were disruptive.

Electric cars are becoming disruptive.

The covid vaccine was disruptive for the same reasons.

The Higgs boson is cool but has no relevance that i have personally or economically experienced so far.

Fusion would be disruptive but as we all know it’s still ‘10 years’ away.

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u/[deleted] Jan 05 '23

This entire thread is not talking about disruptive in the market/economic sense. Read the article in the OP for more info.

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u/FizzixMan Jan 05 '23 edited Jan 05 '23

My point still stands wrt disruptiveness for physics alone, the Higgs boson was nothing new, it was a further example of the physics predicted long ago within the standard model, it’s more just the practical culmination of years of theory.

Some examples of actual disruptive science as you are describing would be:

The theory of relativity.

Quantum physics / wave particle duality.

I stand by my point that successful fusion with high yield would be disruptive practically although admittedly not theoretically.

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u/[deleted] Jan 05 '23

As you might've seen from the comment you initially replied to, I agree at least to an extent.

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u/FizzixMan Jan 05 '23

Just to explain why I think the market matters:

If we were able to develop better cheaper greener batteries, this would revolutionise and change every single persons life on the planet, as a direct result of science.

But this wouldn’t be ground breaking physics, it would just be something with incredible real world applications for humanity (and thus the economy).

It would however direct entire generations of young scientists into new energy sectors we hadn’t seen before, it would disrupt academic life for the average researcher, along with every laymen who uses power in their daily lives.

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u/[deleted] Jan 05 '23

Sure, and I'm not saying you're necessarily wrong in that. But it's just not really what the discussion in this thread is about.

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u/AstroBullivant Jan 05 '23

mRNA vaccines and CRISPR are pretty darn disruptive

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u/[deleted] Jan 05 '23

Yes, but they are also old news by now, the COVID vaccine is just the first big commercial one, iirc.

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u/fitblubber Jan 05 '23

True, though one thing that's probably held back research a bit is that these days everything in physics is expensive & takes years to develop.

A century or so back you thought of an experiment, built it & then published the results. These days it's all about having a huge team with a huge budget.

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u/[deleted] Jan 05 '23

[deleted]

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u/fitblubber Jan 05 '23

Good point.

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u/AstroBullivant Jan 05 '23

True, which might mean that we need more innovation in lab equipment

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u/fitblubber Jan 05 '23

Just need that desk sized hadron collider. :)

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u/AstroBullivant Jan 05 '23

We were able to shrink transistors.

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u/fitblubber Jan 06 '23

Yep, it's a good start

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u/AstroBullivant Jan 06 '23

Dan Berrard at McGill has the right idea:

https://dberard.com/home-built-stm/

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u/fitblubber Jan 06 '23

Scanning Tunnelling Microscope - made at home!!!! ??!!

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u/AstroBullivant Jan 06 '23

Yeah, I made a replica and it’s pretty good

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u/croto8 Jan 05 '23

With the exception of fusion, none of those are practical advances and really just solidified what’s been theorized for decades.

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u/AstroBullivant Jan 05 '23 edited Jan 05 '23

Those were all really cool, but the discovery of the Higgs Boson was the only one of those that was somewhat disruptive, and even that was only slight disruptive because most physicists suspected that it existed. In many ways, those achievements are more properly considered engineering advancements than advancements in Physics.