Fake Physics
This is a frustrating era for physicists. In the mid 20th century they were like gods, giving the world the atomic bomb and the semiconductor. Today many branches of physics are stuck. The cosmologists can&#x27;t find &quot;dark matter&quot;, and aren&#x27;t even sure it&#x27;s necessary.  The string theorists have pretty but un-testable theories.  The fusion guys can&#x27;t make fusion power work. Quantum mechanics and general relativity still haven&#x27;t been reconciled. And nobody has a useful handle on gravity.  These problems have been outstanding for decades now, with some churn, but little progress.<p>(The bright spot is near absolute zero, in low, low energy physics. Lots of interesting experimental results from down there in recent years.)<p>The multiverse approach (the universe forks at every quantum event, and all those universes continue to exist, forking further) is the default you end up at given what we know now. Hawking once said it was &quot;trivially true&quot;. But it&#x27;s unsatisfying.  It means most of the fundamental constants are arbitrary, for one thing.  Then there&#x27;s the anthropic principle (our universe works well enough to have life because we happen to be in a fork where the constants have values which make chemistry work). That&#x27;s unsatisfying, too.  This un-testable stuff is more philosophy than physics.<p>This, from a historical viewpoint, is a failure. From Lord Kelvin to Fred Hoyle, physics was about measurement and prediction. Theories which can&#x27;t be grounded in experiment are of little use.  Today&#x27;s physicists are losers by historical standards.  This has career effects. Los Alamos is a lot less prestigious than it once was, and there&#x27;s been substantial downsizing.[1]<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2012&#x2F;03&#x2F;04&#x2F;us&#x2F;los-alamos-braces-for-deep-cuts-at-lab.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2012&#x2F;03&#x2F;04&#x2F;us&#x2F;los-alamos-braces-for-d...</a>