“It defies your laws of physics.” Transformers: Dark of the Moon
Einstein wasn’t a theoretical physicist. He actually existed.
I once had a professor that said, “If we would have waited to have mathematically understand how a cantilever beam works, we’d still be living in caves.” The Bernoulli Brothers (not named Mario and Luigi), Euler, and Coulomb figured it out, finally ending the mystery in 1773.
Notably, none of them lived in a cave. But they did come up with practical ways to make artillery, to make rifles and to make all manner of amazing inventions that were optimized for removing their fellow man from this plane of existence, and in some cases turning them into fragments so small and diffuse as to be beyond the capabilities of all the king’s horses and all the king’s men to figure out who they were.
At least until DNA testing.
For the longest time, engineering beat physics. Just like the cantilever beam, what was practical was way ahead of what could be explained. Engineers could build stuff that physicists couldn’t explain, and physicists had to sprint to catch up.
I replaced my morning coffee with tea and lost 85% of the joy in my life.
They did, and certainly the biggest example of weaponized physics are nuclear weapons. Have an enemy? Let’s unleash the forces that transmute matter into their favorite restaurant and gently kiss the area of several megatons of canned sunshine. Oh, and the hard radiation. And the explosion.
The first atomic bombs were built based on a theory, and followed up with an amazingly expensive research project that led to a first-time success. That’s worthy of a good grade, which is maybe why they called it the A-bomb. Me? I would have called it the A+bomb.
Physics was now weaponized, and engineering had to work to catch up to the ideas.
Enter Eric Weinstein.
Eric is primarily famous for being famous, but made money as an investor after getting a Ph.D. in mathematical physics. But in the “being famous” bit, he’s made several observations:
- Physics has been stagnant since 1973,
- Physicist Edward Witten “drove theoretical physics off the road and off a cliff” in the 1980s with String Theory™,
- None of this was an accident, and,
- You should buy his book.
I kid. He’s loaded and doesn’t need you to buy his book. Just listen to his podcast.
I hear the plans were available on Wookie® Leaks.
Regardless, in there is an interesting assertion, and that is that physics was hijacked and slowed down. Now, how would that happen? Well, it would really be easy. Who pays the bills for physicists? Who writes the grants for physics? Who finances the projects?
That’s right. The United States government. And, you may not be aware of this, but if you find something particularly interesting in physics, it can be deemed top secret from the moment that it’s found. Yes. Uncle Sam is serious about his physics. And Weinstein kept coming back to this point that sharing certain just-discovered physics could make that physicist a criminal.
What if, stick with me, we developed something outstanding in physics that was not all that hard to figure out, but that amazing weaponization or strategic impact? I don’t know, maybe a quantum bomb that makes physicists leap, or a ray that turns everyone living in the Middle East into a PEZ©. There would be a strategic reason to make the Soviets and the ChiComs and, well, everyone waste their time on a specific branch of mathematical speculation that keeps them away from the PEZ™ ray.
I read a book about photons one afternoon. It was a bit of light reading.
Michio Kaku said that String Theory© was discovered “100 years too early” to test it. So, what better thing to waste time on than a pure mathematical construct? How to get them to study that? That’s the easy thing: spend money. It’s not even a lot of money, because physicists are used to being beaten up for their lunch money, so they have low expectations.
Let’s assume this is true, at least for the post. It’s a big ask, I know, but it’s not like I’m asking you to pretend that diversity is our strength or that all white people are racist.
Let’s move to the next thread: A.I. has recently dropped 719 math papers that address over 4,000 open math problems. One mathematician even noted that one of the papers in particular would, if written by a human, be in the running for the Fields Medal®. The Fields Medal™ is like the Nobel Prize© for mathematicians, but it’s lighter because mathematicians have low upper body strength.
My dog tried to herd the cantaloupes and seems sad now. A bit melon-collie?
So, here’s where I attempt to bring it together.
A.I. is doing math as well as the best mathematicians on Earth.
Math is the tool chest that supports all of physics.
If A.I. does math, A.I. can do physics.
A.I. will soon be doing physics at the highest level, guided by humans free from constraints.
If fundamental physics leads to the possibility more weapons, or wormholes, or other science fiction advances like, say, Nerf© cars for Asian women, our world could change overnight. I call dibs on the Nobel Prize® for that one.
An Asian woman texting while driving is statistically safer than when she is concentrating on the road.
When Vernor Vinge came up with the term “Singularity” to describe when the pace of change in the world, the level of novelty, becomes infinite. At that point, all bets are off. Is there fundamental physics that we have yet to discover or that we’ve hidden?
If so, it might be that we’re at the edge of that vertical takeoff.
Thankfully, there were still fields of experimentation when I was young that weren’t suppressed by the government. For instance, my early research program conducting stress analysis on female undergarment fastening devices led to a paradoxical conclusion:
Once the snap of the bra was released, theory said that the tension would likewise decrease. However, in my experience, in every instance tension increased, so theory was refuted by experiment.
But that is another story.
