The Worries of Fundamental Physicists

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There's still a lot of work to be done, especially when it comes to the strong interactions and QCD. A lot of modern fundamental physics is on the speculative side because we have the theory that works. We're trying to go beyond it. People propose new ideas and then they try to test them. Most of them are going to fail. But that doesn't mean you don't need to do it anyway.

Physics is in crisis, what else is new? That's what we hear in certain corners, anyway, usually pointed at "fundamental" physics of particles and fields. (Condensed matter and biophysics etc. are just fine.) In this solo podcast I ruminate on the unusual situation fundamental physics finds itself in, where we have a theoretical understanding that fits almost all the data, but which nobody believes to be the final answer. I talk about how we got here, and argue that it's not really a "crisis" in any real sense. But there are ways I think the academic community could handle the problem better, especially by making more space for respectable but minority approaches to deep puzzles.

Blog post with transcript: https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/07/31/245-solo-the-crisis-in-physics/

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