In 1998, we discovered that the universe is accelerating. And that seems to be best fit by the idea that there is a tiny amount of cosmological constant out there. If you can find your attention not to every possible situation, but to certain situations where the fields are relatively low energy and long wavelength, then you can invent an effective field theory below some ultraviolet cutoff.
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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