Why the foundations of physics have not progressed for 40 years
Does anyone else feel like the abstractions and models in physics have gone passed the point where the casual outsider (even a technically and scientifically minded one) can no longer intuitively understand it?<p>Because that&#x27;s how I feel. There are so many things I just don&#x27;t understand now like:<p>1. I originally thought the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle was a natural consequence of using particles (photos) for measurement. Instead however it seems to be a fundamental property of the universe, which I only learned after finding out most of the mass of hadrons comes from the relativistic motion of quarks and it explains why hadrons don&#x27;t collapse to a point.<p>2. What does it even mean to create more space? The universe is expanding. Ok, I can accept that. But what does it <i>mean</i>?<p>3. I find the models for dark matter and dark energy to be... <i>unsatisfying</i>. I realize there&#x27;s experimental evidence for unobservable mass but it <i>feels</i> like a fudge.<p>4. Of course we still have no quantum model for gravity.<p>5. I don&#x27;t really understand what a fundamental force really is. Like why does electromagnetism have a repulsive opposite but gravity doesn&#x27;t? When I tried to look into this I ended up down some rabbit hole of &quot;gauge forces&quot; and got completely lost. Why is the Higgs Field not a force?<p>6. Why are some predictions of the Standard Model so incredibly accurate (like the magnetic moment of an electron IIRC?) while others are so incredibly inaccurate (eg IIRC the QFT prediction of vacuum energy is off by 120 orders of magnitude).<p>7. Why are there exactly three generations of particles (ignoring the Higgs)? What does a generation even mean?<p>I could go on. I don&#x27;t for a second mean to suggest any of these notions are wrong. It&#x27;s just that the models have gotten so complex (it seems?) that it just feels like something huge is missing, something that will eventually seem obvious in hindsight. Or am I just a lemur trying to figure out how an airplane works?