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i thought this was initially BS -- this is essentially what the scientists in the late 1800s and early 1900s were thinking until quantum mechanics and relativity were discovered. but do you think humans are done discovering absolutely new things about the universe? are we in the so-called "fine tuning" stage, where we will just build upon the basic discoveries already known? more and more i'm starting to think that we're done finding out new things and we're just going to perfect what we know.

string theory, m-theory and all that other stuff i consider to be just "perfecting" current theories. sure there are a lot of mathematical theorems to be proven as well, but those don't necessarily reveal any insight into the basic workings of the universe. sure, we have to figure out the brain, but that's not what i consider "basic". anyway...what do you think.

2006-10-27 12:36:38 · 7 answers · asked by General P 2 in Science & Mathematics Other - Science

7 answers

I have a strong suspicion that your feeling (sometimes my feeling as well) is just the symptom of your being contemporary with modern science (AND your not being one of those who actually make the discoveries!). You know, and you mentioned, that in the times just before quantum mechanics, no one would have imagined that in a few years our entire understanding of matter would be turned upside down. They also thought at the time that they are only fine-tuning... You can't really estimate how much you don't know about the world, simply because you don't know it. Only time can tell if we have anything great to discover yet.

Also, great discoveries are often made great by posterity :P Ever heard of Gregor Mendel? He got recognised some FORTY years after he published his wonderful stuff on heredity, and today he's firmly in the Hall of Fame of modern biology... Einstein published his papers on special relativity and the photoelectric effect in 1905, and he won a Nobel prize in (I think) 1921... Planck wasn't thinking he discovered something absolutely new when he quantised black body radiation, and AFAIK he wasn't very keen on the implications of what he had done. Maybe you are thinking that M-theory and stuff like that is just "perfecting", but in a decade some unknown paper on string theory, published last week by a no-name physicist might be regarded as a turning point equally important to Planck's desperate solution to the ultraviolet catastrophe...

2006-10-27 13:08:57 · answer #1 · answered by Anonymous · 0 0

Not even close. Are space and time quantized, or infinitesimally divisible? (This is a HUGE unresolved question). Is the cosmological model of spacetime background-dependent or relational?
Does the inverse square law of gravitation apply at the Planck Length? If not, that would tend to "prove" (I use the word loosely) that more than three spatial dimension must exist. Most if not all the responders above are right on. Physics went through a phase (just prior to the discovery of relativity and quantum mechanics) where the community thought "we're just about done!"
Boy were they wrong!

2006-10-27 22:48:06 · answer #2 · answered by Anonymous · 0 0

The present understanding of the universe can't even answer some of the most basic questions: Is the universe finite or infinite in size? Is there only three dimensions - or four with time - or more? Is space travel feasible, given the enormous distances involved? Origin? And if we include the medical profession, we have just scratched the surface.
I strongly suspect that a hundred years from now, the proposition that we had all of the basics down pat in the 20th century will be as ridiculous as the same contention you refer to in your question concerning the 19th century.

2006-10-27 19:54:23 · answer #3 · answered by LeAnne 7 · 0 0

Discoveries will be made as long as man has the ability to question. This process is slow, granted, but still we move on.
Theories must be proven and even more theories developed but no we are not done. I'd say stick around for about a thousand years things will change.

2006-10-27 19:49:07 · answer #4 · answered by diablo 3 · 0 0

The 4 basic principles are the same, like you posted- in the past Newton thought he nailed it, but Einstein proved the rules changed at the speed of light, the issue of Black Holes, mainly the event horizon have changed, Hawking admitted information wasn't lost, I think there's still new discoveries, new rules, not just "perfecting"!!!! :)

2006-10-27 19:44:18 · answer #5 · answered by yeahoo 2 · 0 0

In evolutionary time, our primate species has just come down out of the trees. So to conclude that we have nothing more to learn is a little premature. And since we lack the intellect and the sensory abilities neccesary to perceive our surroundings, I suspect it will take millions of years of further evolution before the questions will even be known.

2006-10-27 22:04:05 · answer #6 · answered by gone 7 · 0 0

Hell no!

With just the idea of quantum mechanics we don't even know what the questions are yet!

2006-10-27 19:40:33 · answer #7 · answered by Funky_Medema 3 · 0 0

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