this post was submitted on 08 Mar 2026
19 points (95.2% liked)

askchapo

23237 readers
102 users here now

Ask Hexbear is the place to ask and answer ~~thought-provoking~~ questions.

Rules:

  1. Posts must ask a question.

  2. If the question asked is serious, answer seriously.

  3. Questions where you want to learn more about socialism are allowed, but questions in bad faith are not.

  4. Try !feedback@hexbear.net if you're having questions about regarding moderation, site policy, the site itself, development, volunteering or the mod team.

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
PorkrollPosadist@hexbear.net
replaceable@hexbear.net
VILenin@hexbear.net
SexUnderSocialism@hexbear.net
khizuo@hexbear.net
Wakmrow@hexbear.net
19
So how does theoretical physics "work" exactly? (hexbear.net)
submitted 2 days ago by ConcreteHalloween@hexbear.net to c/askchapo@hexbear.net
44 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

To explain, I'm just a big old ignorant layman, but with other scientific fields I at least CONCEPTUALLY understand how they came to their findings.

Like if a Geologist tells me something about rocks I'm like: "Okay, idk how geology works, but I assume you did some kind of experiments involving rocks so you probably know what you're talking about."

Or if a neurologist tells me something about the human brain: "Okay, idk shit about neurology, but I assume you did some kind of brain scan or took some brain samples or did some kind of scientific experiment thingy to know this stuff about brains. I don't know the exact details but I can at least abstractly understand the process by which you learned this thing you're telling me now."

Then I'll see some news report about some finding a theoretical physicists made and it'll be like: "The Universe is made of strings! And also the sun is a black hole! The universe is shaped like a doughnut!"

And my honky ass is just like: "How the fuck do you know that shit? What are you looking at? How did you figure that crap out?"

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Owl@hexbear.net 16 points 2 days ago

Theoretical physics has a problem where the most famous scientist ever was a theoretical physicist, so people have high expectations for it to churn out new mind-bending ideas to write pop sci articles about, but mainstream theoretical physics has come to some deeply unsatisfying answers, so only weirdo fringe theories like string theory get pop sci attention.

The real thing is still the standard model, which is a catalog of sub-atomic particles that everything is made of, and their interactions.

One of the main things they're up to now is figuring out dark matter. There's a dozen ways you can measure how much mass there is out there in space, and they all agree that there's way more than we can account for with stars. We really don't know wtf the other stuff is, and all the candidates have problems. More gravity measurements will probably help. The actual work-end of that is telescopes.