Physicists know that photons exchange energy in quanta. They know the relationship of frequency and wavelength. And they know that matter has a DeBroglie frequency and similar mathematical formulas. So why haven’t they realized that the implementation of these mechanisms is incredibly precise? Down to the quanta. This means that the structure of nature is accurate in individual quanta all the way to the Planck frequency, ~1044. In other words, the very nature of physicists theories are mechanisms that implement quantized processes with 44 decimal digits of precision, and yet physicists are attempting to front with precision up to 20 decimal digits as a virtue. In reality, the fact that they put forth this argument demonstrates a huge lack of self introspection.
It is actually quite astonishing that physicists rest their laurels on both precision and accuracy and crow about 1 part in 10n error as being so impressive as to make their theories almost certainly correct. Here is an example with n equal 8 digits of precision.
Quantum electrodynamics (QED), a relativistic quantum field theory of electrodynamics, is among the most stringently tested theories in physics. Famously taught by Richard Feynman, it has been described as a theory with a level of elegance that is characteristic of one that represents a fundamental truth.
The most precise and specific tests of QED consist of measurements of the electromagnetic fine-structure constant, α, in various physical systems. Checking the consistency of such measurements tests the theory.
Tests of a theory are normally carried out by comparing experimental results to theoretical predictions. In QED, there is some subtlety in this comparison, because theoretical predictions require as input an extremely precise value of α, which can only be obtained from another precision QED experiment. Because of this, the comparisons between theory and experiment are usually quoted as independent determinations of α. QED is then confirmed to the extent that these measurements of α from different physical sources agree with each other.
The agreement found this way is to within ten parts in a billion (10−8), based on the comparison of the electron anomalous magnetic dipole moment and the Rydberg constant from atom recoil measurements as described below. This makes QED one of the most accurate physical theories constructed thus far.
Wikipedia
Serendipitously, after I had started drafting this article, Alexander Unzicker released a short video echoing many observations of the hypocrisy in physics. At the 6:45 mark Unzicker talks about the calculation and measurement of the fine structure constant to 12 decimal places of precision and accuracy. Have a watch. Also see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precision_tests_of_QED.
We have a situation where physicists tout experimental results with, if we are generous, nearly 20 orders of magnitude precision in a system of nature that has at least 44 orders of magnitude. I assure you that nature doesn’t care at what scale humans started. Measuring fewer than half the decades of precision that nature presents is not impressive from the point of view of nature (personified). Physicists have an incredible capability to be in denial of anything that might suggest trouble. The paradoxes, the open problems, the lack of an implementation — all of which we are reminded of time and again via outreach education. Physicists are somehow capable of making these major unknowns and their failure to understand them into a virtue that the public should oooh and ahhh about!
I made this comment on YouTube : Spacetime is an aether, not an abstract geometry. Spacetime is made of what you call “dark matter particles” but are really just low apparent energy Noether energy engines that don’t interact much with standard matter at low energy. The interaction they do have are to :
- transmit gravity,
- assist in flying away with energy products of a reaction as a photon or neutrino or as another standard model particle,
- influence photons via the changing of characteristics to implement expanding spacetime aether.
- and accepting energy from gradually redshifting photons and other standard matter.
Physicists will make progress once they think of QFT fields as being generated by point charges and that point charges are asymptotically save and immutable. Immutability solves all those troublesome physics issues like singularities, the UV catastrophe, and renormalization. Bottom line the most stable structured particle in the universe is the Noether core which is made of three orbiting electrino : positrino dipoles coupled at different energy scales. Every generation I fermion, the photon, the W and Z bosons and the Higgs boson all are based on the Noether energy engine. Then there are other personality charges providing decoration that give each particle its standard model personality configuration. Physicists don’t understand mass, but it has a lot do with the orientation of the three dipoles.
J Mark Morris : Boston : Massachusetts
Neoclassical Physics and Quantum Gravity 