How do physicists come up with their ideas or theories?

Question

Please answer in detail, such as the thinking process, formulation, etc.

Answer 1

A lot of research.

What does research entail?
It means reading a lot of the published and pre-published papers in peer reviewed and relevant journals. Testing out with simulation and by hand the mathematical models and theories.
Experimentally they need to know what was done before and what they need to improve on it.
This means the a successful physicist needs to have a good math, programming, and physics background.
Once they have this base they can see what they can improve on or develop.

If one works in the industry, one does what the company wants. If a company wants a certain application the physicist will research it and try to figure out the best way to achieve this goal.

In academics you work in your chosen field and usually try to improve on what is known or develop better techniques to probe what ever you are working on.

How does process work?

If you chose the path of being a phycisist, here is the general lay out:
1) Go get your BS in physics or whatever field. Hopefully you gain the basic math and physics knowledge here.
2) Go to graduate school. Here you pick up more advanced background. Most core topics include Mechanics, Electricity and Magnetism, Statistical Mechanics and Thermal Dynamics, Quantum Mechanics, Mathematical/Computational Physics. Some may include Nuclear Physics and Optics.
3) Pass your tests and join a research group to obtain your masters/PhD.
Here you will specialize in whatever you are doing. If do High Energy Physics, you'll probably get sent to CERN, FermiLab, SLAC, Brookhaven etc. If you are doing Condensed matter physics maybe to Los Alamos, Lawrence, Livermore etc. If you do Astrophysics, maybe to an observatory etc. Computational, you sit in office to computer. Theory, same. During this time you will learn the history, background of your specialty. You figure out what improvements can be made what the cutting edge of each field is. You hopefully develop good researching skills and analytical skills and technicals skills related to your field. You will have a project that you and your PI (primary investigator) will work on, be it improving the detection and sensitivity of an instument or simulating a model that is part of a larger model. You may do several projects that result in papers getting published. When you have done enough you will get your degree. Hopefully you will have obtained the background and information in the process of
a) How to do research
b) What needs are there in this field
c) Who are the people that do relevant work in this field.

4) Now if you still want to be a physicist you can take several paths. You can go and look for a job in the industry, national lab, or academics. Many go do Post-Docs that give them work experience. Here you will take on greater responsibility. As a senior graduate student you might have had to train new graduate students, help write grants and proposals, contribute and write papers for publishing. As a successful post doc, you will need to master these things. You can do one or more post docs. You can even do post-docs in fields that you are not familiar with. But you have the background from obtaining your degree. You are able to figure out hopefully what funding there is for in terms of theories, ideas, experiments etc.

If you go directly to Industry, you will go through the normal job process and find a company that will hire you. You will get training and then you will work your job. National lab is similar.

Now that you have the proper background, and understand what funding there is, what people are trying to do in your field, you will know what ideas and theories to work on. It is only a matter if people will fund you and support you. If you are good then you will get the support and hopefully be successful in your endeavor.

Answer 2

I wish I could give you a better answer, besides innate creativity. All I can say is that the process is involved, lengthy, extremely painful in which unsuspecting observers have been know to go mad. It all starts with a large metallic chair with leather restraining straps, a metal cap with wires attached to a high metal poll sitting atop a large bell-tower, a broomstick, a handheld drill with a 0.25" concrete drill bit, latex gloves (medium) and a tablespoon of Skippy peanut butter. Aside from that, I'm not quite sure. I wish you the best on your search...


BY THE WAY...
Did Edison go to M.I.T., get a doctorate, join a research team...and on and on?...no, he had an idea, was creative, and intelligently tried over and over until he obtained the light bulb!

Did Noah have prior sailing experience? Was he part of some navy? Was he a degreed zoologist? Was he a licensed ship builder? No...he had faith and was obedient to God.

Perhaps, there is more than the culturally accepted way to do great things, even for physicists formulating ideas or theories.

Answer 3

There are two types of research. Pure and applied. Pure research comes about by human curiosity. Usually, it's research being done on an entirely new problem. Applied research is research built upon previous research.

Scientists observe something happening in nature. If the observation is something of the unknown, then they will use the scientific method of reasoning to try to find the conclusions to the problem. In physics, applied research is the most used.

Most theories in physics are built upon others. With every new theory is a new problem. This is Applied Research...

For example, Einstein developed General Relativity. Later on, Quantum Mechanics was developed. Yet a problem came when the two theories couldn't be applied to each other, so Super String Theory (SST) came about trying to find the answer to the Grand Unified Theory (Attempt to Unify of General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics). With SST, 5 sub-theories developed, but what good is 5 sub-theories when what you really want is one (unified) theory. So in the last 10 years, scientists realized that these 5 sub-theories were really all the same theory, but were different manifestations of the same thing. Out of that, came then, Super-gravity and M-theory, where we currently are...

That's one way scientists have been working on constantly evolving theories.

Answer 4

Everyone here is wrong. Including me. ;o] Feel free to theorize on why. Heh, j/k.

But what most of the other have failed to articulate is the process by one gets to an inspiration.

Having, myself, done a bit of theorizing, philosophizing, observation, reading/research, I suppose I'd put it fairly simply:

Firstly you need to find an area that you are interested in researching. You can't really "do research" until you've identified what it is you're looking at, and why it is of interest to you.

Once you have determined WHAT interests you, you can go about determining WHY it interests you.

Do you enjoy determining why a thing works, or how it works? Does it intrigue you that there appears to be an imbalance in atoms wherein most of the mass is clumped around the center, but electrons tend to move around the outside. Perhaps your curiosity leans toward understanding WHY they do this.

One you have figured out WHY a thing interests you, you can begin to research the thing that interests you, and begin to understand the why. Inevitably this leads to more questions, many of which may be old questions with known answers, but some of which may be novel. The novel questions are the most interesting since there isn't yet an answer, and you may wish to investigate further.

It is this process of questioning, and then further questioning that is known as science and/or research.

Personally, I tend to find a subject of interest and then find as many diverse resources pertaining to the subject as possible (different perspectives, alternate theories, etc.). Then I read, and read and read, until either I understand it, or get tired of it, or decide I need to understand something more fundamental first in order to understand the larger picture. In the latter case, I delve deeply into the more fundamental aspect until I understand it. Then I return to the more complex question with the new understanding, and attempt to apply the new understanding to the question, and generate new interesting answers to it. Then I do more research to see if the question and its implications have been asked before, and if so, what results if any were achieved either in support or in contradiction to the theory.

I suppose that part of the process is to try to understand as many things as possible, as many parts of a process as you can, then attempt to meld the parts into a cohesive whole.

And also to take similar models from other fields, or knowledge from other fields that appears in some way to bear resemblance to what you're studying. Then you can theorize if these things are actually related, and if so how.

I suppose the theorization process if composed of research, understanding and drawing parallels between different concepts.

IE, I see a plasma lamp. I see that it has a filamented structure. I understand that the sphere in the middle is an anode, and that the filaments are streams of electrons or charged particles attempting to go to "ground" (or someplace that is accepting excess electrons). I also understand that they interact relatively strongly with electric currents and/or magnets.

http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/plasma+lamp

I also know that this is called a glow-discharge.

http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/glow+discharge

I also know that there are things called Birkeland currents that run from the sun to the Earth.

http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/Birkeland+currents

Knowing that two things behave similarly raises the question, "Is there a parallel. If so, what is the significance of this parallel, and how can this be a useful parallel?"

http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/geomagnetic+storm
http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/coronal+mass+ejection
http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/solar+flare

If the earth and the sun are involved in an electric discharge, might other planets and the sun be involved with the sun in an electric discharge phenomenon similar to a plasma globe?

If that is true, how is the sun like a plasma lamp? Well, we know that a plasma lamp must have an electric current supplying it (an energy source). So, what does the sun use for a power source? The current model says "internal fusion." However, other evidence contradicts that hypothesis (low neutrino counts, the corona of the sun is several orders of magnitude hotter than the inside, which makes no sense in a convection model where the insides should be hottest since they're the parts undergoing fusion). Perhaps there is another explanation. The anode in a plasma lamp is powered externally, along a circuit. Perhaps then the sun too is powered externally along a circuit as well and we have misunderstood the internal structure of the sun.

Thus we now have a new theory of how the sun is powered (electricall, from the outside). Of course it is interesting and relevant because we want to understand how OUR sun works so we can make predictions about the larger universe.

Discoveries and invention are all about doing your research and understanding phenomena as best you and/or others can. Then seeing connections between different phenomena that might appear to be related. Then you can posit certain suppositions about form and function, and attempt to support or refute your assumptions. Sometimes you're the bug, sometimes you're the windshield (sometimes theories die painfull under scrutiny in the lab, sometimes the results are "interesting" though not necessarily coreect or what was expected)... It's an ongoing process of theory, research, experiment, observe, record results, theorize, research, experiment, observe, record results, cross-correlate, theorize, research, experiment, observe, record results, etc.

But mostly I think it's about seeing connections that nobody has seen before. Pattern matching. Leading to a supposed connection. Leading to a theory about WHY they appear connected, then doing research experimentation and analysis to confirm or deny the hypothesis of how they're related phenomena, etc. etc. ad infinitum.

This was probably a ramble. More of a gut reaction than a scientific treatise. But, that's just how I work I guess. Information flows into my brain, gets jumbled up and cross-correlated and spit out again in a semi-usable form. Though it could use a bit of refining. C'est la vie! But that's my 2c. And maybe one more thrown in for good measure.

Research the fundamentals. See patterns and recognize similarities to known patterns. Attempt to tie them together. When in doubt, blow "stuff" up.

Answer 5

they think of something than do research about it and maybe a few experiments to formulate their theory and flush it out before they publish

Answer 6

They have a question. They research, test, and evaluate. They find an answer but 5 more questions. They research, test, and evaluate some more and find 5 more answers, but 25 more questions. They research, test, and evaluate some more.........

Answer 7

Observing and asking questions ( not at yahoo answers) to them selves first

Answer 8

They have math labs. They sit around and get totally stoned on math.

Answer 9

Unlike you they do not eat the apples that fall on their heads!

Answer 10

On the shoulders of giants.Then they use some imagination.