Is it possible that the whole basis of modern physics is false?

Question

all physics revolves around gravity, a force wqe really don't know anyything about, only the effets of it,

could everything be going in the wrongf direction

people seem to agree that gravity came before matter or some other matterless energy, what is this energy

why do we only start from scratch with quantum physics, why not with all physics

now the insults

Answer 1

The real problem is that the money for supporting research has chosen to go in only one direction before that direction has really proved itself. Programs that head in directions that might falsify the established theories have no chance to obtain funding. Therefore, we are condemned to live with the mistakes of the past for generations to come.



General relativity has done a pretty good job of describing the effects of gravity within a certain range of scales---roughly from 10^-10 meter up to about 10^18 meter. Consequently, scientists have assumed that Newton's universal law of gravitation must hold at all scales and distances. Observations to the contrary are swept under the carpet by inventing fudge factors like dark matter and dark energy. Rather than trying to find the real cause of gravity, they try to pass it off as an intrinsic property of 4D space-time continuum, which is nothing more than a mathematical fantasy.

Answer 2

Is it possible, yes?



Is there any evidence that would lead us to scrap physics as we know it, no?



And besides, any theory would have to incorporate our current theories as special cases.



Consider what happened to Newtonian mechanics.



It didn't work for fast things. So Einstein developed a new theory, which included Newton's as a low-speed limit.



It didn't work for small things. So quantum mechanics was developed, which included the classical mechanics as a macroscopic limit.



And your propositions are just way off the mark. All physics does not revolve around gravity. It's just one of the fundamental forces, and at our energy scales, the weakest one. We know a lot about how gravity and the other forces work. We can't say why they work, but we can describe very well how they work. Who says gravity came before energy? Gravity is a form of energy. That's self-contradictory.



Insults: you're being dumb. (just because you asked) ;)

Answer 3

Is it true that the gravitational field of a point mass goes as G*m1*m2 / R^2? Well, it may be true or it may be false. The only way to decide is to see if this equation accurately describes what happens in experiments.



Lo and behold, it fits the experimental data very well. Therefore the formula is correct, or at least the error is too small to detect, which means it's good enough to use until we find a better one.



So it goes with the rest of physics. You compare the equation with the experimental results. If they agree, your equation is valid (at least in the context of the experiment). If not, you start looking for sources of error in the experiment. If you can't find any, then you start to doubt whether the equation is correct.

Answer 4

This is the answer of Dr. Edward Witten to this question:



"I just think too many nice things have happened in string theory for it to be all wrong… Humans do not understand it very well, but I just don’t believe there is a big cosmic conspiracy that created this incredible thing that has nothing to do with the real world."

Answer 5

We don't know what the fundamental laws of physics are. Physicists have different ideas about gravity, so it not true that they have made up their mind about this.



It would be very bad if physicists had made up their minds about the structure of a fundamental theory because then many alternative theories would not be investigated.



Now, physicists are pretty much united about quantum physics. So, if Nature is not quantum mechanical, e.g. if quantum mechanics is just an effective theory, then we are going in the wrong direction. Is that possible? Prof. 't Hooft thinks it is, see these articles:



http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0701097



http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0604008



http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0212095



http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0105105



http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0104219



http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0104080



http://arxiv.org/abs/hep-th/0003005



http://arxiv.org/abs/gr-qc/9903084