The Crisis in Particle Physics

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Martin: I knew by the third or fourth tweet in this thread, I kind of figured out the joke. And the joke is at the very end, Martin reveals that indeed, all these quotes are from a very long like 100 page article on the crisis in particle physics from the year 1977. That's the joke because everyone always thinks that their field is in a crisis, right? The mid 1970s are like the golden days of particle physics and quantum field theory, right? So how can this be true and how should we think about what it means right now? As you are hearing people who are pretty respectable as well as completely fringy lunatics complain about the current state of physics

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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