I suppose how "old" physics is depends upon what part of the
discipline is intended and what frame of reference is used.
Newtonian mechanics, optics, acoustics, etc., have been settled issues
for a long time. Celestial mechanics as done today is not very
different from how it was done by Euler and Lagrange. The study of
electricity did not come into its own until the nineteenth century.
Everything 'electronic' in the broadest sense of the term is dependent
on the work of Clerk Maxwell in the latter half of the nineteenth
century. Subatomic particle physics and quantum mechanics date from
the first half of the twentieth century. The work of Shockley, Bardeen
and Brattain on semiconductors, at the very end of this period, led to
their receiving the Nobel Prize in 1956. Has there been any discovery
in physics since then of comparable theoretical importance or
practical impact?
From at least my point of view - that of a reasonably educated layman
who does not pretend to be a physicist - recent highly publicised
'research' in physics about such things as 'chaos theory' and 'string
theory' appears mainly to be cosmological speculation that has not
been, and is perhaps not able to be, subjected to experimental
testing. Modern 'scientific' cosmology is not much more than
Epicureanism tarted up with maths.
On Oct 30, 1:52 pm, rbirch <rbi... at (no spam) merchant-general.com> wrote:
On Oct 30, 10:22 am, "hhc... at (no spam) yahoo.com" <hhc... at (no spam) yahoo.com> wrote:
On Oct 29, 1:22 pm, pyroboy1438 <pyroboy1... at (no spam) aol.com> wrote:
Anybody have anything new to share?
New? Define new.
Physics is rather old, having never changed with time. Still, to buy
into the physics game requires anywhere between 4 and 10 years of
concentrated study, It takes this long to know who the players are,
and what the rules are.
Harry C.
It appears you believe you're on a different newsgroup than you
actually are. This is rec.pyro, not rec.physics.
Russ
PS: "Physics" has changed a lot. Physics is a study... a science. It
changes daily as we continue to learn more about the way things work.
The laws of physics, as we believe we know them, also change when we
find out how wrong we are. The real laws of physics will reveal
themselves as we continue to discover them and we correct our
misinterpretations of how we think things work.- Hide quoted text -
- Show quoted text -
